Recording and Monitoring of Barn swallows and House martins by primary school children
The advantages of the schools involved
Birds are an ideal educational subject for children and are easy to include in a school’s study programme.
Children love wildlife and birds and swallows are their best known friend. Swallows are found in almost all schools, in urban centers or in rural areas. Nests are usually close enough to be observed with the naked eye. You don’t need special observation equipment like a telescope or binoculars.
Children can acquire new skills, such as conducting a survey, analysing information from their observation, making comparisons and making conclusions based on observation, through these activities.
Conducting observation of the nests of swallows by your class and if possible continuating it and the following years, can help the better understanding of the swallows.
Course structure
Learning objectives:
Students observe swallows and their nests.
They’re talking about swallows.
Realize the needs of swallows and other living beings
They learn what improves their habitat and what harms it.
How to Work
- Provide general information about swallows in Greece.
- Talk about the basic needs of swallows.
- Organize groups (preferred number per group of 2-3 students) to observe and record swallow nests in your school neighborhood.
- Count the number of active nests and abandoned nests, record the findings of the survey, map the location of active nests on a google map of your neighborhood.
- Ask local residents about their feelings about swallows, for example, whether they welcome swallows or not, and their reasons.
You will need:
- Worksheets
- Pencil,
- Map of the area around your school
- Compare each group’s result and nest maps to make clear the area where active and abandoned nests have been observed. Summarize the survey results and draw a map of final nest distribution.
- Consider the differences between nest distribution and location.
- Consider whether swallows can meet their basic needs (food, water and hazard protection) from the environment of your area or not.
- Discuss what we can do about swallows and the environment.
- You can request the creation of a group (or more) to monitor an active nest of its choice.
The team will undertake to:
- Measure and record the number of chicks, if possible.
- To count the number of young leaving the nest.
- Encourage children to continue to monitor nests every year during the same period and create an observation record.
Important
- Students are divided into small groups (2-3 students) and go out to conduct their research during about the same period during the day.
- Keep a good distance from the nest. If you get too close or disturb swallows during breeding, they may leave the nest behind even if there are eggs.
- “Active nests” are those in which there are swallows or chicks or those which are in the process of being built by adult swallows.
- Measure the nests of each species (barn swallow or house martin) separately.
- The “residents of the area” are people who live in the research area.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.wbsj.org/nature/research/tsubame/img/swallow-guide.pdf