A Tale of the Dying Ash Tree – a woodpecker

A Tale of the Dying Ash Tree -- a woodpecker

The pupils of the Krasnow primary school took part in the activities devoted to the lives of woodpeckers in the Krasnogruda park.

There is an old ash tree in the park which used to be home to a woodpecker. The evidence for this is the hollow high on top of the rotting tree. Now the hollow is inhabited by a nuthatch. With binoculars we were observing the upper parts of the ash trees in order to find out what was happening higher. Some of the hollows appeared naturally after the branches had broken off. We also saw another ash tree which was completely devoid of bark. This was the result of the activities of an insect, black gooseberry, which bites under the bark surface, digs tiny corridors there.
We also talked about a number of reasons why ash trees are dying out not only in Poland but all over Europe.

The time after the walk was devoted to woodpeckers. The participants had to look on their own for some necessary information about woodpeckers with the reference to books, texts and illustrations. Then the collected information was presented on special boards. The participants also prepared mini stories and narratives about some features and habits of woodpeckers.

In the end they were divided into teams and worked on mini presentations about woodpeckers.