Hello and welcome to our weekly Forest School blog number 7.

The Blue tit chicks have all fledged now. A couple of them fell out of the nest box, but safely landed in the flowerbed below. Seven flew off, but sadly one chick died, we think it was due to the heat, as the two days before they left were hot days.

Here are a few last videos for you to enjoy.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fnGPs2a_bWRikGHr0NmCNNLZiRi6w6O0

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iHoTUVhcdy5nBIWpA3xD5aC7gTgtBFdj

We have removed the nest and cleaned the bird box in case another bird wishes to use it. It is an amazing construction full of moss, dried grass, hair, and feathers. The nest is 10cm high, but the actual size of where the eggs were laid is only 6cm wide and 2cm deep.

Bees

I thought we’d think about bees as they are amazing insects and as important to us as trees.

There are about 20,000 different bee species in the world. Most are solitary types that live alone and don’t make honey. Social bees live in colonies. In Britain there are 270 different species of bees and just under 250 are solitary.

Sadly, bee numbers are declining as they are struggling to find places to nest and feed.

We had a swarm of bees in a tree in a neighbours garden. They were looking for a new home.

https://itsybitsyfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/bee-facts-for-kids-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf

Be a Bee Detective

Is it a bee or wasp?

What bee-friendly plants can you find in your garden or out and about?

How many different species can you spot?

http://www.seenature.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/FoE-UK-Bee-Identification-Guide.pdf

See like a bee

Wild flowers depend on clever little bees pollinating them. Bees have awesome colour vision. They see different primary colours to us. So they see wild flowers in a very different way.

Bees like us have three photoreceptors in their eyes. So all the colours they see are based on three primary colours. BUT whilst our photoreceptors see blue, green and red. The bees see blue, green AND ultraviolet. We obviously can’t see the ultraviolet. AND the bees CANNOT see red!

On your wildflower hunt look for …

ALL the blue, purple, and violet flowers you can. Now spot all the yellow and white flowers.But are they really yellow? Remember if you’re going to see like a bee yellow is blue! That is the ultraviolet at work AND it is the same for the white flowers. White is blue for bees.

Bee vision!

Make a pretend UV light. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsCrjtcVamU

Have lots of fun!

Mrs Morris