Woodland Wanderings

Taking a group of teenagers for a wander through the woods can be a daunting prospect. Will they enjoy it? Will they be interested in the wealth of natural history facts you are so keen to impart? How long before the first cry of 'I'm bored' is uttered?

But this week, that is exactly what myself and my colleagues did - several times.

Yes we took along a few gizmos and gadgets to aid discovery, but mostly, it was mother nature herself that did all the work.

With a group of autistic young adults, we explored an area of native English woodland, using the Woodland Trust's brilliant winter tree id resources to identify ash, hazel, oak, cherry and birch. Then listened to the arrival of spring with the aim of a inexpensive contact microphone and some borrowed headphones that enabled us to hear the sap rising inside the trees.

The following day, a group of  'at risk' year 9 students spent two hours exploring the wilder reaches of the arboretum, armed with nothing more than a simple wildlife spotter sheet, a list of things to look out for, a single pair of binoculars, the collected knowledge of what we carried in our heads and the promise of a prize for the person who spied the most items. Throughout the two hours we watched buzzards soaring on thermals, listened to woodpeckers and a tawny owl (and tried calling them ourselves), found hazelnut shells nibbled by squirrels, woodmice and voles, spotted deer track, hedgehog pooh, squirrel dreys, badger setts and King Alfred's Cakes and walked to the end of the track just to see where it went.

And the prize for the person who spotted the most? First choice from a bag of left over birthday sweets.

Two days later, as the sun set over the arboretum, a group of girl guides crept around the tractor yard watching and waiting for bats to wake up. Pippastrelles were detected in two locations before we headed through the woods on a moonless night, with torches turned off to see what we could hear. A solitary tawny, a parliament of rooks and a gruffalo were all found as we made our way to the open spaces of the downs for a spot of stargazing through the breaks in the clouds.

Not once was the dreaded phrase 'I'm bored!' uttered, although Cliff Richards greatest hit 'summer holiday' was sang repeatedly.

But what did happen, was that give a young person a little bit of guidance, the opportunity to explore and a safe environment where it's ok to get things wrong or give the wrong answer, then they start taking in more of their surroundings, noticing things beyond those that are in front of their face and asking intelligent, thoughtful and enquiring questions.

Although I was stumped by

'Why's the sky blue?'

Time for google.