Day 172 - The Big Spring-Watch & Tadpole Rescue!

Hi all today's Day 172 and recently there has been a special edition of BBC Springwatch called Easterwatch. On this show they were trying to figure out how Spring travels across the UK. To do this they asked the viewers to do a lot of this for them. They called this 'The Big Spring-Watch'. Me and my parents jumped to the idea and have been searching ever since. There are 5 things that they have told us to look out for which are all listed below:

An Orange Tip Butterfly at Fairburn Ings

1. Hawthorn
2. Swallows
3. Seven-Spot Ladybirds
4. Orange-Tip Butterflies
5. Oak Leaves bursting

I have seen all of these things but I haven't been able to get pictures of Swallows (yet)here to see it). This is a fun thing, it's kind of like a treasure hunt but even better, and it's great to know that you are helping track one of nature's out-there mysteries.
, which happily arrived back above our garde today and Seven-Spot Ladybirds but everything else I have got pictures of and I have even done a post on the Butterfly (click

The Big Spring Watch was actually started by the Woodland Trust but they are working with Springwatch to help promote it.

To take part in the Big Spring Watch you have to do 3 things. They are all listed below along with links to them:

1. Register for Nature's Calender (it's free!)
2. Find out what to do and download some guides (that's optional)
3. Record what you have seen (it's as easy as 1 2 3!)

Small puddle with a big tadpole population

Like I said above, I have seen all of the things and a lot of others that Springwatch isn't asking to be recorded, like Chiff Chaffs, Willow Warblers, migrating toads and Frogspawn. I actually saw Frogspawn as early as March which baffled me, intrigued me and interested me all at same time - I didn't realise the frogs would start so soon, especially as I had been waiting for the toad migration to start so I could do toad patrol (see my post on this here), they were quite late this year.

Me helping the puddle not to dry out

We saw frogspawn and tadpoles in a puddle that we saw last year as well. Obviously, because it's a puddle, they were in danger. My family are almost obsessed with saving animals (see my Prickles post) and we just had to save them. We waited until they were tadpoles and took some home but we still left some there so there was a population there as well as at my house.

I am not going to go into the details of all this but I will probably going to do a post on them sometime in the future.

Here is a link to the Big Spring Watch page

The Big Spring Watch

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.