The Warden Experience

Hi everyone,

How are you?

So on Tuesday we had our first of this Easter holidays young persons wardening event.

So a while back in the office we were talking about stuff for teenager - who are largely an under represented group when it comes to events. We were talking about how we need to encourage those teenagers that are into wildlife - as they will be the conservationists of the future. We were talking about the fact that when we were teenagers we would have loved the chance to do something on a reserve to help... and so The Warden Experience was created.

This Tuesday was our first of this year - we ran one last year as a test to see if we could do it (and yes we can!).

We had a lovely small group of teenagers ranging from 12-15 years old who got their hands dirty giving us a hand on the reserve.

We started off creating/ fixing a bit of fencing by the Purfleet hide. We have a section of screening to limit the disturbance of visiotrs walking into the hide - we want the best possible views of wildlife!
This is what it started out as:

And our fabulous young wardens (with the help of Ben our Assistant Warden) added in some posts and screening...
 

to create this:

In the afternoon the gang helped us monitor our lapwing nests - our lapwings have got off to a great start, and we currently have 29 lapwings nests on Aveley that we are monitoring! Our first nest was a full 20 days earlier than in 2013, and the number of pairs is already ahead of last year! Woohoo!

The gang had a great day, and have booked to come on our next event - which is on Tuesday 15 April (11 am-3 pm)... and it's free!


We still have a couple of spaces if you are interested!  Details can be found here...

Maybe we've found the next Rainham wardens...

haven't they done a lovely job? Well done guys and thank you!