The Rainfall Project

So just how much rain have we had?

The Eco Team have linked up with a crowdsourcing4climate project at the University of Birmingham.
It is part of a pilot study to record community rainfall and also involves the University of Manchester and the University of Leicester.

Everyday members of the Eco Team collect the rainfall data, take a photo and tweet the information so BUCL can collect the information. a map is then produced and sent to the school.

To start with we followed the instruction for a homemade rainguage. This used an old lemonade bottle with jelly in the bottom to give a level surface to measure the rain against. a ruler was attached to the side to make measuring easier.

Everything went well for a few days, well no rain but getting warmer. Then on a really warm day the jelly melted and didn't set level. So reading the rainfall became a bit difficult.

Finally the jelly began to break down and the surface was no longer level but we had started using the Forest School rainguage and are now continuing with this.

 



How does it compare with last year?
Well on 19.6.12 it was 0mm, 20.6.12 0mm and 21.6.12 5mm  and the weekly total was 55mm(records from Forest School Log)

The Hedgehog

Quite a while ago the Eco team set up Hedgehog boxes on site with help from the Park Ranger service.

For sometime now we've know that there is a hedgehog that uses our site. He/she seems to come and go and this winter must have stayed elswhere. However, this week the hedgehog was back using the box for it's daytime sleep.

So we set up a camera to record any evening activity and this was the result.

A bit dark but you can see the hedgehog off for a night of hunting. Hasn't been back for a couple of days so have to wonder where he/she is staying now. Will update when the box is used again.