We had a lot of woodland visitors come to see us in the forest this week which was very exciting! It helped us appreciate the forest even more and made us think about things we can do to make sure the forest is a welcoming place for all.
One morning, we were saddened to find a very scared hedgehog who got stuck in one of our nets. We thought about how he might be feeling at that moment, not being able to go to his home or to find something to eat. We realised that he might be feeling sad and frightened, so we made sure we gave him lots of space and to talk quietly so as to not startle him. Very gently, our educator Robyn, carefully cut the netting away from him and slowly picked him up to put in a box. While she did this, we talked about what we can do to make the hedgehog feel better. One of our friends thought it was a marvellous idea to prepare some food for him, except we weren’t sure what hedgehogs eat. We did a bit of research and found that we mustn't feed hedgehogs milk or oatcakes (which was one of our brilliant ideas). We did however, find out that hedgehogs love to eat berries, seeds, and bugs which are plentiful in the forest! After saying goodbye to our new friend, Robyn took him to a quiet part of the forest to find his way home after a very exciting but exhausting adventure.
Our next set of visitors are the amazing butterflies. The weather has been cool and wet which made it hard for the butterflies to visit previously. But with the weather warming up again, apart from our usual visitor –the red admiral, we also had the commas, common blues, meadow browns and cabbage whites. We watched as they danced around the forest to make eggs and wondered where they would lay their eggs. Some butterflies only lay their eggs on certain plants so we have to really be mindful of our no picking and no licking rule as well as our no shaking and no breaking rule so we don’t accidentally pick a plant that a butterfly might need.
It was so interesting to learn about the way our woodland friends use the forest and we’re even more determined to follow our kind and gentle rule for everyone!
Have a lovely weekend and we’ll be back next week with more stories of our adventures in the forest.
Little Forest Folk
Morden