Bushnell Trail Cams in Schools in Durham!

Over the next few months, I will be working with Durham Wildlife Trust on a very exciting project taking Bushnell trail cams into schools. I will be writing a lot more about the wonderful work that is going with this Wildlife Trust in a later post… I just had to share a little bit with you today as it is amazing what you can discover in school grounds if you place a trail cam there! Great bits of technology for kids, the trail cams are always well received in schools and it is always exciting setting them up and then checking out the footage.

I left Lichfield at 6.15am, thinking that would be plenty of time for me to get to the first school I was visiting… Ebchester Primary, who had been having great success with their trail cam. How wrong could I be! It actually took me SEVEN hours to get to Durham, after an accident on the A1 closed the road, meaning that I was stuck….. for a very long time! Very frustrating as it meant that I did not make it to meet the staff and pupils who have managed to capture some amazing clips in their school grounds. Here a few screen captures to give you an idea….

….. and a more common visitor!…..

I hope to return to attempt another visit in 2013, but well done guys!!!

I managed to make my second appointment; Grange Primary School. They have much smaller grounds in a more urban environment but they had captured some clips of birds visiting and their teacher had taken the Bushnell home and set it up in her small garden and captured some great bird clips and even a mouse visiting at night!

Kirsty Pollard, from Durham Wildlife Trust joined me today and she is running the programme. We spent the afternoon with a Year 3 class and talked about how we know where animals might have been… what clues do they leave behind? The kids were really keen and very quickly told me about footprints, droppings, hair or food remains. We talked a little more about footprints and then had a go at making our own with clay and then by pouring plaster of paris into them… all great fun… and surprisingly little mess!

A big thank you to this class who really enjoyed this activity…… #gallery-5783-2 { margin: auto; } #gallery-5783-2 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-5783-2 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-5783-2 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

I will be spending the next few days visiting some more schools and their trail cams. Hopefully, some more photos to come tomorrow.