George's Thoughts #3: Turtles, mud and electronics

George, our visitor experience intern, is back again with some more musings on life at Frampton Marsh...

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I can’t believe it’s only been one month since I’ve started here. May has arrived, and the days are flying by. I wake up each morning to the occasional sound of the cuckoo outside my bedroom, which is a nice wake up call. Every time I walk down through the hedgerow path, I hear the purring sound of the turtle dove which is also very nice to hear. I haven’t seen them yet but I can definitely hear them somewhere.

The best thing about being with a team of people is that you get to go out with them on social evenings; such as going to restaurants and the cinema in Boston to watch the new Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2. The film was spectacular and also an improvement over the original in my opinion. Doing this sort of thing makes me feel truly welcome.

I went to Norwich two days later to attend a special reserves development day for visitor experience people like me! It was a good talk, mainly focusing on the new PDA system that the RSPB is now implementing into every reserve in the country to sign people up as RSPB members. Being quite tech-savvy myself, I enjoy working the device and showing other volunteers how it works.

There were sightings of the black-necked grebe during the first week of May but they soon vanished and we haven’t been able to spot them again. I was kind of hoping they would settle down and start a family, or maybe they’ve gone into hiding (or even flown off). However, the four ducklings being looked after by a female mallard are growing up fast. They even join their mother in fending off a rival male mallard! Obviously these are birds that I’ve seen from the visitor centre. Recently Frampton Marsh has been honoured by black-winged stilts, broad-billed sandpipers and great white egrets. I must make an effort to go out onto the reserve and see these birds in action.

Also during the first weekend of May I took my first weekend cover. Myself and another volunteer, Eleanor, starting talking about bird Latin names and I found it to be quite interesting. I’ve even learned some bird Latin myself, for example the black-tailed godwit is Limosa limosa. The genus name Limosa in Latin means “muddy” which pretty much describes what the godwit can be found on while feeding on invertebrates.