Volunteer ranger Ruth Lawton started volunteering to help nature and ended up helping herself too. Here is Ruth’s story.
I am a volunteer ranger at RSPB Sandwell Valley, which is a small corner of countryside in a very large Country Park, in the middle of the urban conurbation that is Birmingham and the Black Country.
This is me sitting in the wooden story telling chair that our former estate worker made.
As volunteer ranger my main job is picking up litter – it’s an urban park so that might include picnic detritus, nappies, empty cans and juice cartons, and endless amounts of tissues snatched out of people’s pockets and hands by the wind! I also spend a lot of time picking up dog poo (and sometimes it’s even been bagged up and then flung into trees and shrubs. Why?)
Birdlife at RSPB Sandwell Valley is plentiful – there is a huge heronry in the country park so we get LOTS of herons. Amongst the usual ducks we also get ‘dumped’ domestic ducks, some of whom seem to settle in well. Part of my job is to talk to members of the public about the wildlife they are seeing and hearing, persuading them to change some of their less useful habits for better ways eg I offer them little bags of bird seed as a swap for their bags of bread. I must admit that the geese, swans and ducks are VERY unhappy with me – they much prefer the substantial appearing bread! At this time of year I am also asking people to put their dogs on leads to help look after the nesting birds and the babies J
We also have our own flock of parakeets – we think there are about 30 of them and they use our feeders at the Visitor Centre! We also have a family of foxes.
When I first started it was quite hard work, at least two dustbin bags filled with rubbish and lots of clambering around in shrubs and undergrowth trying to capture poo bags and cans etc. But people notice that someone is caring for their environment and some of them start taking more care themselves. Now I usually don’t fill a dustbin bag and the incidences of unbagged poo and ‘flung’ poo bags have decreased so much. Isn’t that great? It means it’s worth doing. It’s worth doing from my own point of view too. Doing this voluntary work saved my life. It gave me something to do that was meaningful at a time when I was despairing of my life. I rediscovered happiness, and had an outlet for my obsessive compulsive tendencies – I WILL reach that piece of litter that is eluding me! There is always a wonderful distraction – the return of Stumpy the oyster catcher, chatting with the foxes, catching up with the regular dog walkers.
Thanks to volunteers like Ruth the RSPB is able to do even more for nature. If you would like to get involved, get outside and meet people (Ruth thoroughly recommends it!) then check out our volunteering opportunities to find out what’s near you.