Why our school needs a bird feeder!

In our Literacy and Inquiry time we have been looking into the possibility of developing area of the school to make it more 'green'. Dylan and Adam are thinking about getting a bird feeder for our school. Check out their idea!

Why our school needs this bird feeder.

This is our idea for a bird feeder. We think it will work really well on a big tree on bottom grass as it has
a really big branch so the bird feeder can hang off it.

The bird feeder will be made out of PVC pipe, wood, metal rods and gardening string. We have
chosen these materials because we think it will hold well together. We are going to use recycled timber
so that is is good for the environment. We were also thinking about using materials that are from our
recycling bins to make bird feeders - we could use nutella jars, milk bottles or any other plastic things
that could fit. We are going to develop this thought more. We aren’t sure whether we want to paint it or
not because we are worried the birds might scrape the paint off, and eat the paint and it could poison
them.

The bird feeder will help to attract more birds. On our bush walk, Joakim told us it is better to
have a bird feeder rather than a bird house. He said that birds choose where their nest will be so if you
have a bird feeder, they are likely to choose to put their nest near the bird feeder. Attracting more birds,
will help make the area better. At school we love to look at birds and hear birds so then we can do even
more research about them. We would love to have native birds in our school because they are really
important. They are important because they only exist in New Zealand. It would be so cool if we had so
many native birds that they even flew to other countries.

How will it help ecosystem? By having more birds, this will help there to be more trees. This is because
birds poop out the seeds of trees and drop the seeds in new areas. By doing this, we could spread more
ecosystems. If we want more native trees on the peninsula, we will need more birds because they need to
be balanced. By having more birds, we will naturally have more trees because they attract each other.

Our next steps is to think about what types of seeds specific types of birds like. We would want to get
seeds that attract native and uncommon birds. We don't want to attract pigeons and seagulls but rather
kereru and tui and other types of birds. Even if we attract birds that aren't native, we just want to attract
uncommon birds. So we will need to know what seed attracts them.

By Dylan and Adam, typed by Anna