Families have carried out OPAL survey activities as part of their exploring nature days during the summer holidays. The majority of the children were under 5 and many of the parents only spoke basic English. This meant the activities had to be basic and easy to follow.
The first session was based at Burberry Brick works nature reserve. Families took part in the OPAL Bugs Count and tried to find as many bugs as they could in 15 minutes in each habitat. The first habitat was on soil and short grass and they found a variety of bugs including grasshoppers, moths and spiders. The second habitat was plants and trees where they found true bugs, beetles and earwigs. The final habitat to look at was hard and man-made surfaces and we headed back to the children’s centre to search around the buildings and paving. The main thing found here were spiders. Both children and adults enjoyed catching creatures in the bug pots to take a closer look.
The second session was based at Ackers pond. Families used nets to take a sample of the pond invertebrates. They used the OPAL water charts to see what they had found. A variety of things were found including a caseless caddis fly larvae, midge larvae, leeches, snails, water shrimps and a water scorpion. The children also looked at the clarity of the water and could see 11 opal symbols on the OPALometer. They also dipped a pH strip into the water to see what colour it went, this showed a pH of 5.5. Both parents and children enjoyed looking at the variety of under water creatures they had collected and were surprised that they had such an accessible wildlife haven in the centre of Sparkhill.
The second session
