As part of this year’s series KCLR installed a recording device on the grounds of a local school.
The unique and exciting project in partnership with the Institute for Climate Sound and Society at Harvard sees the gathering of audio, at locations across the country with participating radio stations, which will be analysed by scientists at Harvard and Copenhagen universities to identify species and to support the study of biodiversity and monitoring of animals and plants in danger of extinction.
Boasting more than 52acres, the campus of Kilkenny College, a day and boarding secondary school, was deemed to be the perfect spot for our audio moth recorder which was installed up a tree in a secluded section of the grounds last June by KCLR Programme and Operations Manager Ken McGuire.
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What the students think…
Students there in October outlined their thoughts on what surrounds them on the grounds:
Alex Waugh
I’m a border boy in second year in Kilkenny College. There’s a good few birds and stuff around, a lot of nature, it’s nice and, like, gives a bit of peace, it’s fairly nice. Even though it’s in the city there’s heaps of stuff going on, I’d always see birds flying around, there’s loads of wildlife.
Mostly birds but we’ve seen a few frogs going around and loads of bugs. I saw a hedgehog there a few weeks ago outside the boarding office, I’d say that’s the coolest thing.
Lucy Dunne
I’m in third year at Kilkenny College. You notice a good few rabbits down in The Hollow but you wouldn’t really hear much because it’s a school, it’s fairly loud, there’s always cars and children going everywhere. But you’d see stuff, in the evenings you’d see rabbits or foxes, it’s really nice, you’d see them hopping around down the end of the pitch and they go off and they chase each other, it’s really nice to watch, it’s really cute.
There’s loads of natural wildlife in the woods and then down in The Hollow and in all the hedges, loads of different wildlife. In the mornings it’s really quiet when we’re going to breakfast and obviously during the school day it’s really busy so you wouldn’t really see much, you’d see the odd bird around.
I’d say there’s a fairly big variety, wouldn’t see much of it because I’m always on the go, but there definitely is lots of different things to be looking at if you’re paying attention you’d see the rabbits and all the birds and some foxes.
