What a great afternoon it was! Four members of Goathland Nature Group joined the children, parents and staff of Goathland Primary School for a bioblitz in their Forest School. We were also fortunate to have Wendy English (Botanist from Whitby Naturalist Club) and Emma Walker (REConnect team) to give some expert advice.
We had encouraged everyone to download and use iNaturalist so that we could all record as many natural species as possible in the field.
The children, and adults too, seemed to enjoy exploring the terrain, looking for beautiful wild flowers and as many creepie crawlers as possible! The sunny weather certainly helped and it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm from everyone in the task.
An amazing 85 observations were made, with a total of 45 species identified.
All data was uploaded to iNaturalist and is visible under the place of “Goathland Forest School” We hope that the children will be able to use this data in other aspects of school life in the coming weeks.
One of the aims of the Goathland Nature Group is “to engage in activities to educate ourselves and others in understanding and appreciating the natural world”. This session definitely ticked this box and we hope to be able to repeat the bioblitz in the years to come.
Look at our iNaturalist page if you want to join us recording nature in Goathland.