The Hope Garden is incredibly fortunate to have funding from Local Places for Nature to cover some workshops with Ysgol Cilgerran. The first one was Wildlife Identification, with ecologist Yusef Samari from WWBIC, the West Wales wildlife recording centre.
This was the first workshop we’d held. I don’t know about my colleague, accomplished landscape designer Marianne Jones, but I was really nervous! What if Yusef hadn’t organised activities for the children? What if they were bored? What if they would rather go back to school? In the words of AA Milne:
“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”
“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.
Piglet was comforted by this.
Children from Ysgol Cilgerran examining a bug on a dish held by ecologist Yusef Samari
A few minutes later, the children were running around the field with nets and inspection jars, back and forth, some whooping with joy in the bright Friday afternoon sunshine. I needn’t have worried. Yusef was magnificent; calm, enthusiastic, authoritative yet open to enquiry. It was very open, with no real objective other than look at what is around you and find out about it. For a short while, this messed with my list-of-things-to-do but I gradually relaxed into the swing, and ambled about, helping to look for the Fleabane Tortoise Beetle.
A green version of the Fleabane Tortoise Beetle (Cassida murraea)
And we found one! On a patch of Fleabane across the other side of the allotments.
The children also found a Four-spot Orb-weaver spider, the heaviest spider in the UK.
The Four-spot Orb-weaver (Araneus quadratus), having some lunch
And the stars of the show were a collection of Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillars, which were huge and quite beautiful, with false eyes on their to scare off predators. They were hanging out near a Square-stalked Willowherb, which is a food plant.
Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila elpenor) caterpillar
The children really seemed to enjoy themselves. I was asked twice on the walk back if we could go wildlife identifying next Friday as well!
The really good news is that we (Hope Garden, WWBIC and Ysgol Cilgerran) are jointly making an application for wildlife ID equipment (lenses, nets etc) and training, so that the school can engage in regular trips and make long-term contributions to the records centre.
A huge thank you to Ysgol Cilgerran and here is to the next generation of ecologists.