Hedgerow Heroes Mini-beast Challenge

This afternoon, Emma, from Hedgerow Heroes and Keep N.I.Beautiful, joined us for the last of our three workshops focusing on renewing the natural world and species habitat.
This time we had a mini beast hunt, in and around our new hedge and the wider school grounds. Working individually or in pairs Emma set the challenge to find various minibeasts. The person who found the most colourful or the one with most legs would be rewarded with a night off homework next week!
Our brave teams set off to explore the grounds with their bug boxes. Searching under rocks, stones, our new woodpiles and minibeast hotel, under trees and around our new hedge plants, they were all rewarded with many interesting invertebrate species. Did you know slugs' and snails' slime is toxic to other minibeasts? Or that we found a rather lazy St.Mark's fly who just couldn't be bothered to fly off! Pill bugs curled up to protect themselves and woodlice scurried to hide themselves away.
The winners of the challenge Reighan, Joe and Ryan look forward to their night off next week.
Thanks to Emma for once again highlighting species protection,enkindling the pupils interest in mini-beasts and encouraging them to do more research on this topic.