Upper Primary Leadership Lunch with Terry Townshend

By Niamh Redmond and Charlie Macaulay (Year 6 Students)

Last week, BSB had the pleasure of welcoming a special guest to our school! Terry Townshend visited our school and ran a Leadership Lunch for us. Terry talked all about his job in Beijing, and his mission to conserve animals all across Beijing. It is a common mistake that Beijing is home to no animals except for some bugs and birds. In the lunch, Terry told us all about the mammals and birds that call Beijing their home. I think that when I say that I learnt many new facts, I can speak for everyone who attended the lunch, even Mrs. Sanders! For example, did you know that Beijing is home to a very rare bird named the Beijing Swift who never lands on the ground once they leave the nest. He told us about other schools making an impact towards helping the wildlife in Beijing and things that we can do to protect wildlife. We at all gradually drifting towards ridding Earth of all nature, but everyone can do something, and if everyone does something we can save Earth’s nature. Beijing is a great place for local wildlife, and it ranks second in the world for bird species, with 520 species discovered. 

Lots of swifts in Beijing love to lay their eggs in old traditional Chinese buildings, since the wooden beams at the top are perfect conditions for their nests. Beijing Swifts can’t land on the ground since their wings are too long and their legs are too short. Terry Townshend told us that he and his team at Wild Beijing visited an old Chinese building at the Summer Palace and discovered hundreds of swifts feeding their babies and making nests in the wooden beams. He fitted 13 tiny GPS backpacks onto 13 swifts, in the hope to discover where they would go to migrate. Some guesses of where they would go were India and Australia. A year later, Terry and his team went back to the Summer Palace and in the first hour, they retrieved 12 backpacks from 12 of the 13 swifts. Later, they checked the GPS and found out that the swifts migrate to the beautiful city of Cape Town for winter and then migrate back to Beijing. It was also recorded that the British Swift takes a very similar path and goes all the way to into the Kenya region. The flight paths of the British and Beijing swifts actually cross, but so far there is no record of them encountering each other.

As you can see, Terry taught us lots about the world around us and what we are doing with it. We learned about biodiversity, architecture, wildlife and conservation all in one lunch. Terry is also the first person to run a Leadership Lunch who had no link our school. We all had a great time at the lunch, so many thanks to Terry and everyone who made this lunch possible!