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The River Watch Activity Pack
Identifying the animals
Key Objective:
To identify the animals that live in the river
Equipment needed
- Small fishing net
- Freshwater name trail key
- Tray and jug
- Small white plastic tea spoon
- Magnifying glass
- Recording sheet
What to do
- Fill the jug with river water and pour it into the tray making sure the tray is stable on the ground.
- Check that there is about 5cm or so of water in the tray.
- Use a small children’s fishing, shrimping or butterfly net to disturb the bottom of the river (or the side if the river is deep) for 30 seconds.
- Make sure the net is facing upstream into the flow and then any animals disturbed will be caught in the net.
- Use the river to wash any sediment out of the net and tip the animals into the tray.
- Use the plastic spoon to catch a small animal and use the key to identify it.
- Record the results on the tally sheet and then put the animal back into the river.
Problems
If the river is too deep use the sides and the banks to get the animals into the net. Make sure the children do not go too wild in disturbing the river bed as this will tend to stir up the mud too much. It will take a long time for the children to get their eye in to identify the animals.
Why are we trying to do this?
This is the key piece of data we collect.
- The animals (or macro invertebrates to give them their correct name) present in the river give a clear picture as to the quality of the water.
- The species that indicate very clean water are very sensitive and a small amount of pollution from a sewage works, a farm or the run off from the road may be sufficient to kill off these species.
We would expect there to be differences in the animals present along the river even over a small distance of 100 m or so.
Resources
Identification of pond animals
www.naturegrid.org.uk/pondexplorer
 www.wrt.org.uk/education/wetfeet.htm
Freshwater pollution
schools.ceh.ac.uk/advanced/freshpoll/freshpoll9.htm
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