Room 18's Tales of Fur and Feathers

Long ago there were no people or animals living in New Zealand, there were only birds and the birds flourished. Some lived in the tree canopy eating insects and berries and others lived on the forest floor eating worms and grubs.

Then people brought animals and these animals began to feed on the birds from the forest floor. These birds were flightless, they couldn’t escape from the animal predators. Hence the tales of fur and feathers.

Our journey began when Ayla mentioned local wild dogs. Room 18 (7, 8 and 9 year olds) began investigating the care of household pets and other animals. We found several newspaper articles which we read and discussed. Then the SPCA kindly came and talked to us about caring for our pets.

The “Stay Dog Safe” Resource Kit for Schools (Dept of Internal Affairs) triggered us to write and share with our families and friends how to respect and behave around dogs.

When an article appeared in the local newspaper about how we can foster birds in our garden, we arranged for a class visit by Mr Graeme from Forest and Bird. He showed us rat tracking and trapping. We were really excited about being able to make a difference to the rat problem and hopefully save some native birds!

We wanted to find out how many native birds were around our school. This meant learning the names of local common birds and identifying and finding out what is and what is not a New Zealand native bird. Discussion followed about low native bird numbers. We were sad to see so many of New Zealand’s birds disappearing. We decided to help.

This website is part of our journey to encourage New Zealanders to treat their pets kindly and responsibly, help trap wild rats and save our native birds.