The Birds of Killingworth
Caring for our environment
by Janice Ross
Suitable for Whole School (Pri)
Aims
To consider our responsibility towards the environment.
Preparation and materials
- You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (The Birds of Killingworth) and the means to show them.
- You will also need to be familiar with the poem The Birds of Killingworth by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is available at: https://tinyurl.com/5n88pebe
However, the poem is very long, and a summary is given in the body of the assembly.
Assembly
- Show Slides 1-3.
Ask the children what they can see on the slides.
Listen to a range of responses. - Tell the children the following story about the birds in a village called Killingworth. Explain that the story was originally written as a poem by a man called Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The Birds of Killingworth
The villagers of Killingworth had a problem, and they had had enough! They were thoroughly frustrated by the birds that kept on eating their crops. The birds ate the grain seeds they had sown, they ate the vegetables they had sown, they pecked at young juicy seedlings and they helped themselves to the delicious summer fruits like apples, raspberries and redcurrants. Something had to be done about it!
Show Slides 4-6. These show a pigeon, a goose and a blackbird.
The villagers were determined to get rid of the birds and save the crops, so they set to with guns, traps and bird lime. Soon, they had done what they had set out to do.
That spring, the village was very quiet. There was no dawn chorus; in fact, there was hardly any birdsong at all.
The villagers planted their crops in the fields as usual, and they expected a great harvest now that there weren’t any birds to destroy the crops.
However, when autumn came, there was a new problem. There were very few crops to harvest.
Ask the children whether they can think why this might be, and listen to a range of responses.
Explain that there were so few crops because the wheat, barley and soft fruits had been eaten, not by birds, but by myriad grubs and insects. Caterpillars were now ruling the vegetable beds in people’s gardens, and beetles had taken over the farmers’ fields. As a result, many villagers went hungry that winter.
The village elders called a meeting. They realized that, although the birds did eat some of the fruit and grain, they also ate the grubs and insects that fed upon the crops. Without the birds to eat the insects, the harvest was small and food was scarce. What could be done?
Ask the children what they would do in these circumstances, and then listen to a range of responses.
The elders sent to other villages for help. Birds were caught, put into sacks and set free in Killingworth to build nests, raise their young and feed upon the insects and grubs that had been destroying the crops. - So, what had the villagers learned? They realized that although their removal of the birds had been intended to lessen the damage to their crops, the birds had also been doing a great deal of good.
They had learned an important lesson. The following spring, they rejoiced when they heard the birds singing as they flew over the fields and gardens once again.
Time for reflection
We may think that the people of Killingworth were not very clever. It seems that they understood very little about the environment.
Sadly, though, the world is now waking up to the fact that we too have understood very little about the environment. By trying to make life better for ourselves, we have used up resources carelessly.
Ask the children to think about some of the problems that we have caused by not caring for our environment.
Listen to a range of responses.
Ask the children to suggest some little steps that we could take to look after our environment.
Listen to a range of responses.
Prayer
Dear God,
We thank you for the beautiful world that you made for us to live in.
We are sorry that we haven’t looked after it as we should have.
Please help us to see the small things that we can do to cherish and protect it.
Please help us always to look for ways to protect the environment.
Amen.
