Bat week

The focus of Animal Care this week was to develop our students’ knowledge and understanding of British bats, especially the Greater Horseshoe Bat – the bat that we named our school after!

The students explored exciting activities to help our bat neighbours through improving our school’s environment, making it more wildlife friendly.

Last term our students were awarded the Bronze Bat Buddy Award; they are currently working towards their Silver award. To achieve this, the students have to participate in various learning activities to earn points towards this. So far, our students have learnt about bat ecology, anatomy and behaviour.

Another activity our students have been involved with is making wild flower ‘seed bombs’ – a fun, hands-on activity to improve the habitat for the bats’ prey species. All of these efforts go towards the Devon Wildlife Trust’s Greater Horseshoe Bat project. Some of the students have helped to set up a bat detector in our field to monitor the bat species found around our school for the project’s bat survey. They are looking forward to discovering which bats are present!

There are many plans for our students to be involved with different local wildlife surveys and conservation projects, to help protect and improve our local wildlife and its habitats. Look here for more updates!