This is the eighth week of our online home learning resources, hopefully you are enjoying them and learning something. This week we are looking at weirs. Do you know what a weir is? At the end of this session you will do! The Wildlife Fact file for this week is about the kingfisher, an unmistakable visitor to our rivers. Keep your eyes peeled for the bright blue and metallic copper colouration of this beautiful bird.

We have introduced these online learning opportunities in response to Covid-19, which has prevented us from going into schools in the Ribble Catchment as we normally would. This is our way of bringing our educational topics to you at home so you can continue to learn all about rivers and wildlife. Each week we will be providing a new main topic, a Wildlife Fact file and a quiz.

Find out all about weirs – what they are, why they were built and why Ribble Rivers Trust removes them!

This week’s Wildlife Fact file is all about the kingfisher, read about it below and click on the image to open it as a pdf.

QUIZ

1. What colour is the kingfisher?
   1. Purple and silver
   2. Blue and copper
   3. Green and gold
   4. Red and silver

2. What is a weir?
   1. A barrier across a river
   2. Something that lets water flow under a road
   3. A piper for fish to swim through
   4. A brush for eels to swim up

3. Where might you find a kingfisher?
   1. Grassland
   2. Moorland
   3. Freshwater
   4. All of these habitats

4. Why were weirs built?
   1. To stop fish migration
   2. To stop ducks from swimming upriver
   3. To allow people to swim in a river
   4. To control to flow of water

5. What time of year can you see kingfishers?
   1. All year round
   2. In the spring months
   3. Only in the summer
   4. Usually in the autumn

6. What are two main negative impacts of weirs?
   1. Ducks fall off them and they change the river habitat
   2. Hindering fish movement and negative impacts on river habitats
   3. Fish can’t get over the weir and it stops the river flowing
   4. They attract invasive species and allow eel migration

7. What environmental factor associated with climate change threatens kingfishers?
   1. Flooding
   2. Too much wind
   3. Over population of kingfishers
   4. Too many cats

8. How does removing a weir improve the river habitat for wildlife?
   1. It makes it easier to catch fish
   2. It makes the river safer to swim in
   3. The habitats become more biodiverse
   4. It makes the river more peaceful

9. What is the average lifespan of the kingfisher?
   1. 1 year
   2. 2 years
   3. 3 years
   4. 4 years

10. What happens to the river habitat upstream of a weir?
    1. It has greater biodiversity
    2. The water evaporates too quickly
    3. The water flows more quickly
    4. It is ‘drowned’ with deep, slow water

Click here for the answers