This morning Olivier and Jonny helped out at Hill Hook Nature Reserve in Sutton Coldfield.

The task was 'water kicking'. This meant checking the streams water quality. We did this by using the nets to put water into trays then seeing the number of different species.

This was really interesting, one tray showing 7 different species including; shrimps, water snails and even a stickleback fish.

We also found some freshwater limpits on a rock as you can see from the picture.

The water was also tested for it's phosphate level, which gave a reading of 0.6 which apparently is pretty decent.

Overall it was a very interesting morning and it was really surprising to find such a mix of species in a small stream.