The State of Nature

On the day that a State of Nature report has been published showing that 15 per cent of our species are under threat of extinction and 41 per cent in decline since 1970, it seemed right to spend it outdoors appreciating and learning about the wildlife that we have left, and, as we always try to do on Fridays, thinking about what we can do to protect our wildlife.

Ferdy had also suggested we learn about hibernation (because the Moomins hibernate), although his suggestion that we practise hibernation by staying in bed all day was not one that I took up.

After attending harvest festival at school, we headed straight out to our local forestry centre, with The Wind in the Willows as our soundtrack.

We looked for evidence of animals and found rabbit holes, verified by Ferdy who found the rabbit poo nearby. Scattered all around the centre are wooden sculptures of animals and when we saw (or rode) on one, we discussed what it does in the winter. Ferdy thought that badgers hibernate because in Peter Rabbit on CBeebies Tommy Brock (the badger) is always having a nap, but Billy later told us they don't, they just sleep more (like us..).

A huge amount of time was spent in the bird hide, where we spotted squirrels gathering nuts (they don't hibernate) and a plethora of birds including nuthatches and long tailed tits. There is also an extensive guide to birds in the hide and we played a brill game where one of us had to say a bird and the others race to point to it. Even Gil could play if I told him the first letter. It was a bit noisy though and we didn't see many more real birds afterwards.

Our final task at the centre was to collect conkers; rollies (very round ones for good rolling), and cheek strokers (flat edged ones for stroking on your cheek).

This large bag of conkers was then used back at home to play a game learning about greater than and less than.

For Ferdy's writing today he wrote a letter to a new penfriend I have set up for him: Luna who lives in Spain and is the daughter of one of my friends (she speaks English, although it's a good incentive to learn a bit of Spanish). He even wrote some questions with question marks...

One of our few mammals that do actually hibernate is the poor hedgehog, I say poor because their species has declined by 95 per cent since 1970. We felt really sad about this; they feature in many of the books we read, but Ferdy and Gil may never see a real one.

Reading Wide-awake Hedgehog to us