My first day as an RSPB guide

Guest blog by Erin Fletcher, age 12

On Saturday 8 April,  I volunteered at RSPB Minsmere for the first time as a guide. I was very excited and couldn't wait. My mum came with me as I am only 12 years old.

Erin in her RSPB uniform

We headed off to the East Scrape and on the way we saw 8 sand martins flying over near the sand martin holes. We stopped at the stone-curlew field but couldn't see any. It was a lovely sunny day and heard a Cetti's warbler singing loudly along the North Wall. We arrived at East Hide where there were many birds. We reported our sightings over to reception which included avocets, redshank, black-tailed godwits, turnstone, shelduck, Mediterranean gulls, oystercatcher and many black-headed gulls. We also heard a bittern booming.

We stayed at the hide for a while then headed off to the Sluice area. Along the way there were lots of chaffinches plus a lovely flock of linnets flying over. We quickly stopped at Lucky Pool where we found redshank, avocet and shelduck. There were many dunnocks in the nearby bushes plus we managed to get a good look of a Cetti's warbler.

Cetti's warbler by Liz Cutting

We continued our walk towards South Hide and saw a swallow fly over. We headed straight to Wildlife Lookout to catch a good look at the beautiful male mandarin duck which has been there all week.

We walked round to Bittern Hide and had a great sight of two male and one female marsh harrier. A lady asked me to help her tell the difference between a male and female and I explained that the male has white markings in the wings and the female is a more browner bird. She was very impressed with my knowledge and it felt really good to be able to help people with what I've learnt.

We then headed off to Island Mere where we stayed for quite a while. Really glad we did as we managed to see snipe, male bearded tit, reed bunting, little grebe, four great crested grebes (two were displaying to each other) plus a stoat running along the boardwalk. There were also five marsh harriers flying around the whole time. A lovely lady started chatting to me asking me about various birds and again I helped with my knowledge. She was really impressed with what I knew for someone so young and thanked me for helping her. We headed up to Whin Hill where we saw a beautiful adder completely out on the grass. We carried on up Whin Hill and headed back to the Visitor Centre for some much needed lunch. My first day as an RSPB Guide has been really really amazing and I can't wait to do it again.