Spring Watch Challenge 2007

All the members of Fox Club, along with new friends from NABU’s Rudi Rotbein Club in Germany, are invited to take part in a joint ‘SpringWatch’ challenge!

Rudi Rotbein is the children’s wing of NABU, Germany’s nature conservation organisation, and the local Lower Saxony branch is called ‘Wild Kids’. NABU works actively to protect wildlife and runs campaigns to help the environment too.

We are going to see who is first to spot different kinds of wildlife, in particular along our hedges. The species we are looking (or listening) for are the chiffchaff, the common frog (or froglet), the bumblebee, the blackthorn flower and the ground-ivy flower.

Do you think we will see them in Cornwall first?

There will be a prize for the most species spotted and another for the earliest record for each species. These records will then be compared with those collected in Lower Saxony by NABU members, and the results published on both our websites and in the next Wild Cornwall and Pawprint magazines. It will be fascinating to find out who sees what first!

Our five SpringWatch species

Common frog (or froglet)

These can be found, as froglets, from as early as April in Cornwall.

Ground Ivy flowers

These purple flowers can be found as early as February in Cornwall.

Blackthorn flowers

These white flowers appear on the branches before the leaves from March onwards.

Chiffchaff

This olive-brown warbler produces a monotonous 'chiff, chaff...' song from as early as March.

Bumblebee

The red-tailed bumblebee queen looks for a nest site on the first warm days of spring, which could be as early as March in Cornwall.

Recording form

Download our recording form and post it to us before the end of June or as soon as you have found all five species.

• SpringWatch recording Form in Word Format 241b
• SpringWatch recording Form in PDF Format 239Kb

SpringWatch Events for 2007

For details of these and other wildlife events, visit our events section.

Other pages on this web site that may be of interest:

• Find out more about our German twins, NABU’s Rudi Rotbein Club in Germany.

Fun learning .. Introduction Resources Seaquest for Kid's Free pictures Activities Pond Pack Postbag Diary Fox Club Volunteers Kids stuff Publications Tap Routes SEARCH . . . . . . . . .