At the end of July this year, my wife and I took a trip to Loch Garten in Scotland, volunteering with the RSPB as part of their Osprey Project. I have always been interested in wildlife, but am far from an expert, and didn’t know of any way that I could get involved with conservation without the requisite knowledge and experience. When my wife – who has volunteered for this kind of thing before - informed me of the possibility of spending a week as a residential volunteer for the RSPB, I agreed to go, but I must admit that I was a bit worried about what I’d let myself in for! This worry only increased when, upon arrival, we were informed that we would be taking the night shift that very evening!
The night shift involved staying in the forward hide, alone in the forest from 10pm-8am, keeping watch on the osprey nest to make sure it wasn’t disturbed by trespassers and/or poachers, as well as keeping a record of what the osprey – mother EJ, father Odin, and recently fledged chicks Rowan and Willow - were up to. Luckily, it went off without a hitch and I didn’t have to chase off anyone getting too close to the nest. However, the real test would begin the next day.
You see, when you are on shift during opening hours, you spend most of the day in the visitor centre, speaking to guests and answering any questions that they may have regarding the osprey and any other wildlife in the area. I am not an especially confident speaker and often struggle to talk to strangers and can even be prone to anxiety attacks when among large groups of people. Couple this with my knowing next to nothing about osprey,and you get some sense of my nervousness heading into the situation. Thankfully, I managed to get through the first day, answering questions that I already knew the answer to, and passing people across to members of the team for ones that I didn’t. It was fine, but I was unsure how well I was really doing.
On my next opening hour shift, however, I had a bit of a breakthrough. One of the guests asked about the bats that lived in the forest. Bats are something I actually have a bit of knowledge of, so I was able to answer his questions with confidence, but after a while the conversation inevitably moved on to the osprey. Well, as it turns out, I’d actually picked up quite a bit of knowledge about osprey in just two days, without even realising it! I was able to talk about how long EJ and Odin have been nesting on the site (this was their eighth year together, although EJ has actually been nesting there since 2003 – if they both return next year, they will be the longest lasting osprey couple that Loch Garten has ever had, so let’s root for them), and was able to impart many pearls of osprey knowledge, as if I’d always known them!
The rest of the week, I continued to surprise myself - talking to families who entered the visitor’s centre, even managing to get some of the children genuinely interested in the osprey. In fact, one particular family and I spent over an hour chatting, and their young son was very pleased to find out that he shared a name with one of the chicks. By the time I left, I had gone from being incredibly nervous to hoping that I would be returning next year to do another week or two!
Tony Hillman