Tashinny National School has won a prize in a national nature photography competition as part of the Greenwave project. The Greenwave project aims to track the onset of spring as it spreads across Ireland to try and determine if spring moves from south to north across Ireland or inland from coast to the centre of the country.
As part of the project, students were asked to submit photos of their sightings. The students of Tashinny National School won a prize photography competition for their photo of a swallow sighting. Yvonne McHugh’s class went out to look out for the fi
rst sightings of ash, horse chestnut, hawthorn trees, the primrose and the swallow; all of which are signs that spring is arriving. This year the students also had to look out for frogs and frogspawn as they are very early indicators of spring.
Stephanie O’ Neill, Project Manager of Greenwave, said, “We would like to congratulate the winning students from Yvonne McHugh’s class in Tashinny National School in Colehill. The standard of photos this year was fantastic, but Tashinny National School’s entry stood out as it captured the interest of spring. We really appreciate the genuine interest in the project displayed by Yvonne McHugh’s class and we are delighted that Greenwave is helping the students develop their science skills by studying how plants and animals react to warming and lengthening days in spring.”
Once the students had a sighting of any of the species or animals, they registered the details on the Greenwave website and photographed the subject. Students were also encouraged to record the mid-day temperature each day. These daily temperatures were then recorded on a special wall chart provided, making it easy for school children to recognise patterns.
All the data and photos are available on the Greenwave website (www.greenwave.ie) where visitors can view the findings and track nature’s progress over time.
The full article contains 331 words and appears in Longford Leader newspaper.
