Volunteers are needed on a one-off basis to help with general gardening, pond maintenance, tidying of the garden, planting, and construction of feeding stations and bug houses.
 
A work party will be held on Saturday 14 April from 10.30 am – 3 pm at the primary school on School Road, Reepham. Children are welcome to participate, but must be supervised.
 
In addition to help on the day, the school is also on the lookout for:

• timber for constructing bird feeding stations;
• pallets, bits of roof tile, drainpipes, etc., for constructing bug houses;
• hanging baskets, plant pots, old bird feeders or unneeded bird food.

 
For more information or if you are willing to help on the day or provide materials, please contact: Kate Whitehead 07849 154840, email: ourwildthingsnorfolk@gmail.com, or see the new page on Facebook.
 
Why help?
 
British wildlife is in decline. Familiar garden birds such as sparrows and song thrushes are “red listed” owing to concerns about their population decline, while hedgehog numbers were recently reported to have fallen by 50% since 2000.
 
More worrying are reports of children being less connected with nature. Nationally, the picture is pretty bleak, with an RSPB study concluding that four out of five children in the UK are not adequately connected to nature.
 
“I don’t think that’s as true for any of us in Reepham and the surrounds,” says Kate Whitehead. “We’re lucky to live in a rural bit of a rural county, and our children have opportunities to see barn owls swoop as the night falls, hares box in spring and weasels dart across the road.
 
“My career in conservation started in the playground, finding old nests in hedgerows, collecting feathers and marvelling over frogspawn.
 
“Children today have many more distractions: hundreds of TV channels, games to play and places to travel. It’s important to foster that wonderful inquisitiveness that children have in the natural world; if they understand nature, they will value it and take care of it into the future.”
 
A new afterschool wildlife club for Reepham Primary School students will be running in the summer term to inform and inspire children about the natural world and hopefully encourage future David Attenboroughs and Kate Humbles.