Wow! Great news....

Ashton Gate primary school have sent further updates on their Trout and About project. Things are starting to happen in the cool waters of the classroom fishtank........

Monday 23rd February 2013

Sadly more trout eggs died. Julie came and worked with us and we went pond dipping! We found an egg right at the bottom of the fish tank, and we were all surprised. When we went pond dipping we found Back Swimmers, Fresh water shrimps and even more! It was cool and we had fun!

Barni

Tuesday 26th February 2013

We have really, really good news! Today, when we looked in the tank, we found two alevins! But sadly even more eggs died. The eggs are so famous now they’ve been in the paper! 5B came to visit the trout eggs and were very excited when they realised that two had hatched. Our alevins have been hiding with the eggs in the hope that we haven’t noticed them but, of course, we have definitely noticed them. James Pond is still alive and all we can do is hope that the rest will make it. 

Steph

See if you can spot the alevins below!

This morning I noticed that we had some alevins too at the Avon Wildlife Trust office. I think I was as excited as the students at Ashton Gate primary school! Yesterday when we explored the school pond at Ashton Gate we found a male smooth newt looking rather splendid with his full crest along his back and tail. Students logged key biological indicators to assess if the pond was healthy or not. Some found it to be quite healthy and some found it to be very healthy which was a very good sign considering it's still February.

Tomorrow I'm off to Parson Street primary school to investigate a local stream with Year 5 students. Here's hoping it's a nice sunny day!

I've also posted some amazing drawings on our Flickr account that pupils from parson Street did last week. Take a look and see if you can recognise the key adaptations that help trout to live in a freshwater habitat.