Pupils from a Thetford school had a day of discovery when they sampled an area of field to record the number invertebrates in it.
The year nine pupils from Thetford Grammer School took part in the What's Under Your Feet project organised by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and EDF Energy.
The youngsters selected an area of the field to sample and dug their 30cm x 30cm turf sample and sifted through the soil and turf to count and record the invertebrates found in it.
They recorded 488 ants; 143 earthworms; 17 grubs; one spider; one centipede; one maggot and one snail.
The earthworms were then taken back to the lab to have their length measured and their mass taken - there was a grand total of 50.37g of worms.
Tracy Granger, head of biology at the school, said: 'It is a fantastic project. We had some star worm collectors and the children really enjoy being citizen scientists and discovering what is living in the ground beneath their feet.'
The British Trust for Ornithology are using citizen scientists in schools across the country to collect data to find out whether the decline in number of British native birds is correlated to the amount of food available for them.
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