Green World

Hello Everyone, This week our animal is the Great Spotted Woodpecker. It is the most common and widespread woodpecker in England. Habitat They live in forests, gardens, parks and other green spaces. They can become regular visitors to garden feeders if you have them. They perch on a variety of things including telegraph poles and more commonly trees. Appearance The Great Spotted Woodpecker is back and white with red markings under it's tail and on it's head. It is very distinctive but can be confused with the lesser spotted woodpecker, which is smaller and has slightly thinner markings. Diet The great spotted woodpecker is omnivorous. It can eat beetle larvae and other invertebrates including adult beetles, ants and spiders. They can raid smaller bird's nests for their eggs or chicks. In terms of plants, they can eat tree sap, buds and berries. They are regulars to garden feeders. Nesting The Great Spotted Woodpecker ...

Hello everyone, Today's animal of the week's post is about marine iguanas. Habitat Marine iguanas live on the Galapagos islands , which are situated on the equator, just off the east of South America. They don't live any where else in the world. Almost every Galapagos island has a different species of iguana. Diet Marine iguanas eat algae. They have to dive into the sea to do this. They have become excellent swimmers. They can dive down to depths of 20 metres. Marine iguanas can hold their breath for a very long time, more than 15 minutes. Marine iguanas have evolved to match their surroundings. Being cold-blooded means that they get very cold when they go swimming for algae. They have black scales, so that they can absorb as much warmth from the sun as possible.  Threats Unfortunately marine iguanas have quite a few threats.  1. El Niño  El Niño is a kind of storm. It happens every four to seven years. El Niño destroys ...

Hello Everyone, Welcome to this week's animal of the week post. This time about the ladybird, and personally I can't wait to find out more about these creatures. Enjoy! Which ladybird we are investigating today? Today, I am telling you about the seven-spotted ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata), which is the most common ladybird in Europe. Other species include the Two Spot Ladybird and other uncommon ladybirds such as the 16 Spot and other peculiar types. Habitat The seven-spotted ladybird lives in a variety of habitats such as meadows, gardens and hedgerows. They can also be found on farmland, especially with crops such as alfalfa, clover and wheat and corn before it grows too tall. Diet The seven-spotted ladybird feeds on a range of aphid species. This is why they are often referred to as a gardener's best friend as they eat these creatures who can damage plants. They can also eat white flies and anything else that is soft-bo...

Hi! It is International Whale Shark Day today, so we thought, we would do this week's animal of the week about whale sharks. Are whale sharks, sharks or whales? Whale sharks are not whales and they aren't a mix of whale and shark. They are sharks. So, why are they called whale sharks if they aren't whales? Well, they are very big. Whale sharks normally grow to a length of 5.5-10 metres. However, the largest whale shark to be accurately measured was 18.8 metres long! That is about as long as a lorry or as high as a short oak tree. Basically, whale sharks are massive. Habitat and Diet Whale sharks prefer warmer waters. They live in all tropical seas. Every spring, they are known to migrate to the continental shelf of the central west coast of Australia. The whale shark is one of the three known filter-feeding shark species in the world. Like whales, they eat plankton.  Images: Image 1:  This image is o...

Hi everyone, This week's animal is the Little Egret. This is a less well-known bird, so we are excited to share it with you! Habitat Little Egrets are a species of small heron and live in many different places across the world such as Africa, Australia, southern Asia, Europe and the UK. Like herons, Little Egrets live in open spaces that have a lake or river running through them. Some of the ones that live in Europe migrate to Africa. Diet Because it is an aquatic bird, the Little Egret feeds on a range of fish, amphibians, small reptiles and birds, insects and worms. They aren't fussy! Some Little Egrets have made use of humans and have been known to throw bread into the water to attract fish for it to eat. Dangers Little Egrets are classed as Least Concern , so their numbers aren't declining like many other amazing birds are at the moment. That's all for this week, we hope you have learnt some new facts! Images: 1...

Hello, Today we wanted to tell you all about Maria Sibylla Merian. Maria was born in Germany on 2nd April, 1647. Like many young girls at that time, she loved to paint. Every day she would gather flowers from her garden and paint them. Sometimes, the flowers would have caterpillars on them and she would paint them changing, day by day, into butterflies. At that time, not much was known about insects, and people thought that butterflies magically sprouted from the mud. Maria knew from what she had seen while she was painting, that this was not true, but no-one believed her. As time went by, Maria became a great watercolour artist. She wrote about her discoveries, but scientists only took books written in Latin seriously, and Maria wrote hers in German. When Maria and her daughter were living in Amsterdam, Maria found display cases in museums filled with exotic insects collected from South America. Maria thought that if she could study the bu...