Montalbo's citizen scientists look into decline of birds

A GROUP of determined school pupils braved the rain to act as citizen scientists and collect important data about bugs.
The children from Montalbo Primary School gathered the information as part of a national scheme called The Pod.
Eight-year-old Katy Patterson explained: “We are going to dig a hole, flip it over and see what bugs there are.” Her classmate, Becky Minikin, added: “Some birds are getting less and less each year in our country. We want to see why.”
Class teacher Dr Felicity Greenwell said studies had been done into habitats and other reasons why bird populations might be in decline, but never into their food sources such the creepy crawlies that live underground.
Individual groups of children scooped up a 30 square centimetre patch of ground and put it into a container. They examined the soil to find out which types of invertebrates live there, such as worms, centipedes, beetles and spiders. They also measured the size of their finds and took careful notes which will form part of The Pod’s national database.
The information will then be looked at by scientists from the British Ornithology Trust (BTO) to be analysed.