Week 12 - The Kingcombe Centre
We had a lovely morning at The Kingcombe Centre where we were shown around by three members of the Dorset Wildlife Trust team. We started the morning by going into the visitor centre to look at their collection of animal bones, snake skins & minibeasts that had been found around the reserve, then walked to & looked at the stream (this part was far too deep for dipping) & explored the pond area. We learnt about the minibeasts that can be found in each of these areas. After this, we headed over to another area of the nature reserve that was more suitable for stream dipping, although some of the children did still manage to get a welly full of water! The children listened carefully to the instructions from Matt & then made their way into the water to collect some aquatic minibeasts with their nets. They remembered that once in the water, they must gently move the bed with their foot to encourage more minibeasts to come to the surface, so that they could be caught in the net. Once collected, the children carefully emptied the contents of the nets into a tray of water from the stream. The children found lots of minibeasts & looked at the identification pictures to discover what they had caught, which included freshwater shrimps, springtails, water beetle & a bullhead fish!