Hi everyone, here's a blog from Dan, our newest long term residential volunteer at Mersehead.
My name is Dan Snowdon, and I’m volunteering at RSPB Mersehead for 6 months this summer. I’ve been here a month now and it’s been great, so I thought I’d share with you some of my experiences so far!
On my very first night I joined one of the guided walks to help me get to know the reserve. We were led along the gorse-lined Rainbow Lane, across the merse (a Scottish term for ‘salt marsh’) and finally down onto the beach at dusk, where thousands of barnacle geese came noisily flying down onto the mudflats to roost. It’ll be a long time before I forget the sound of them overhead as the sun set pink against the hills behind us, and caught the tops of the Lake District mountains across the Solway Firth.
Since then I’ve done all sorts, including helping out at an off-site event, greeting visitors in our newly renovated visitor centre, and helping to build an access road for cattle over some very damp grazing land (where I also investigated how heavy a wellington boot becomes when you fill it full of water). I’ve seen a peregrine falcon hunting over the merse, hen harrier patrolling the reedbeds and my first ever red kite, which was spectacular, showing off its amazing red, white and black plumage in the sun.
My role here is split between people engagement and land management, so it’s been nice to go from a hard day’s work in the great outdoors learning about the reserve habitats to a more sociable role in the visitor centre, where I get to share what I’ve learned with visitors (and treat myself to a hot chocolate...and maybe a flapjack too. Or a chocolate muffin).
Just last night from my bedroom window I could hear natterjack toad calling, snipe ‘drumming’ with their tail feathers (always sounds more like someone blowing quickly over the end of some milk bottles to me), lapwing displaying, a song thrush singing and a tawny owl hooting somewhere in the distance. ‘Wow‘, I thought, ‘I must write a blog about this tomorrow!’. So that’s just one month of experiences – I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer holds.
All sounds fantastic, thanks to Dan for writing a blog!
Bye for now,Liz