I, said the sparrow...

Continuing our guest blogs, here is Poppy again with some thoughts about what she got up to last weekend:

--------------------------------------------

Hello, hellooo! Poppy here again.

Whilst back from Uni, I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit the Boston Wildlife Explorers group. Being away from home, I’ve not had the chance to attend as regularly as I’d like. But it was lovely to be back at Freiston Shore. And what a glorious day it was for the meeting on Saturday.

The theme for this month was ‘Tree Sparrows’. I came away knowing a great deal more about them than I did before, that’s for certain! There were three activities put together for the meeting, which included a presentation, a craft activity and a walk.

The presentation focused mainly on the tree sparrow, but first introduced us to the sparrow family (Genus Passer) more generally. Did you know there are over 20 species of Sparrow? Simon explained to us that we are most likely to see the house or tree sparrow in Lincolnshire. He even showed us how to ‘spot the difference’ between the two. House sparrows, for example, have a grey cap and cheek, whereas tree sparrows have a brown cap and a white cheek (and black spot!). Simon even explained how we can give the sparrows a helping hand. By providing them with food and nest boxes, we’d be doing them a world of good.  

Fitting in nicely with our theme, was the craft activity. This month, Jonathan had us making our very own tree sparrows (Yes, I did join in!). Using old pages of books and different colours of acrylic paint, children transformed their templates into abstract examples of tree sparrows. They even fashioned legs from old wire and pegged their creations to sticks!

For the third activity, Adrian and Rodger had set up telescopes on the lawn. This allowed children the opportunity to get to grips with using telescopes. They managed to spot plenty of tree sparrows on the feeders. At one stage, they even attached a mobile phone to the eyepiece of a telescope. It allowed those that found them difficult to use to properly see the sparrows. After some brilliant use of the scopes, children had the chance to walk around part of the reserve with binoculars. They managed to spot plenty of tree sparrows again. Freiston Shore is actually quite well known for its tree sparrows, and they can be found there all year round.

Frampton Marsh has a good number of tree sparrows too; they use the feeders outside the window of the Visitor Centre. So you’re bound to get great views of them here as well, even without binoculars!

Overall, it proved to be a brilliant morning over at Freiston. If you’d like to find out more about the group and their future events, be sure to visit the website: http://www.rspb.org.uk/groups/boston/