Racing around Conwy

I'm Rhianna Braden, I'm 14 years old and I am currently volunteering at RSPB Conwy as part of my Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award.  I will be blogging about some of the reserve's events, such as the Wildlife Explorers Group that meets monthly at the reserve.  Wildlife Explorers is the junior membership of the RSPB, and the events at Conwy are for members aged eight and upwards.  I joined them for their meeting last Saturday afternoon.

Summer is coming to an end but as autumn approaches the Wildlife Explorers are out looking for wildlife! The Wildlife Explorers club decided to take advantage of the weather and do a bird race competition! With the help of volunteer bird spotters Tony and Alan, everyone was split into two teams. Team Alan and Team Tony! The challenge was to find as many different types of birds as possible around the reserve within one hour, and the team with the most birds would win. With the route of the reserve chosen the teams set off. This is what happened with Team Alan.

The first bird hide search was a success as the team found lots of different birds for the list, with  a great view of a grey heron. 

On our way between the bird hides, we ran into the other team who told us they had found a lot more birds then we had. With this in mind the team worked even harder to spot as many birds as possible.

After stopping off at three bird hides Team Alan headed back to the education room to meet the other Wildlife Explorers. In the end, it turned out that Team Tony had found more birds than team Alan, with a score of 22 to 30. Being the good sports that they are, the other team happily shared their edible prize with the rest of the club!  Most of us saw some birds that we had never seen before too! All in all the afternoon went very well and we hope that the next club meeting will be as much fun!