Bird poo children’s project

Select a bird poo with seeds in it

Here is a project that children can do over the school holidays. Send them down to a wilderness area and see if they can find a bird poo that is full of seeds. Collect it up then sow it in a seed container and see what grows.

This demonstrates how useful birds are in distributing seeds.  Many of our native trees and shrubs have evolved to rely on our native birds to distribute their seeds.  The tawa, miro, pigeonwood and nikau, all of which have particularly large seeds, rely on our native pigeon - kereru – for their distribution.

Some introduced birds also help. The fruiting spikes of the kawakawa are prized by blackbirds.

Then sow them in a pottle

Unfortunately not all seed distribution is good. Birds do not distinguish between weed seeds that may be invasive or seeds of plants that may be alright, or even desirable, in your domestic garden but are not wanted in native bush areas. We have seedlings of bay trees, cherry trees and exotic palms just to name a few, germinating throughout the gully.