Wild Walkabout!

More children's holiday activity days have been taking place at Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve over the last few days. Yesterday we were building dens, fire lighting and cooking bread in the baking sunshine. The best wildlife encounter of the day was when one of the adults lept off her log seat and much to all of our astonishment a large goat moth caterpillar appeared from underneath her! This was closely followed by more goat moth caterpillars appearing in some of the dens. It is at this time of year that they leave the trees they have been living inside of and move to pupate underground.

Today was a rather more soggy adventure. We spent the morning looking for animal droppings and found some belonging to fox, badger, rabbit and roe deer. The children then had a go at making some edible poo!



In the afternoon we went down to the river, sailing boats made from rubbish. We then went river dipping and caught bullhead, lots of stonefly nymph and shrimps and 2 beautiful demoiselle nymphs.



It is the first time I had walked down the river since it was in spate last week and I was amazed by how much gravel and the size of the logs which had been deposited on the banks of the river.