January sees the return of the RSPB’s Big Birdwatch campaign. So we decided to make the most of the beautifully crisp Winter’s day with a walk in the beautiful surroundings of the Aldouran Wetlands to carry out our survey.
Buddying up younger pupils with older ones, we headed through the village armed with our bird-spotting sheets on clipboards. We missed the Wetlands very much while we were ‘living’ at Kirkcolm during school refurbishment so it was so good to get back – and to enjoy it in the snow was an added bonus. We also spotted the commemorative stone for our local Olympic curlers!
Reminding the pupils of the need to be quiet for fearing of scaring the birds away, each pair found a spot to base themselves in and watched and listened. It is a joy to take the time to stop and just take in your surroundings and the pupils were encouraged to do exactly that.
Our results were noted down using tally marks – the bird feeder stations at the Wetlands were doing a roaring trade! An average was taken of our findings and passed to Ms Whorlow who co-ordinates our Eco work. Safe to say we have a very healthy bird population in our local area. After all, who wouldn’t want to live here?!
