School Holidays? Jeeze oh! time flies when you’re busy, I mean having fun. 🙂
So we are almost into July and there has been lots of events happening and a few adventures kicking about as well. To start us off at the beginning of June we had an SNH open day at Creag Meagaidh NNR. Tales of the weather from past events at Creag Meagaidh lead me to believe that they had done something seriously bad in the past that had upset the weather gods, but lo and behold on the 2nd of June it was a scorcher!
Blue Tit in hand of bird ringer at Creag Meagaidh
It was a lovely day and a lovely day out with lots of fun activates including; Argo safaris, virtual stalking, mini highland games, music, bird ringing to name but a few.
Jumps at Bikefest
After that came the Bikefest in Kingussie, which was also a great success, perhaps the weather was not as glorious but the day still brought a great turnout. The event had spin bikes, electric bikes, Danny MacAskill’s bike, a penny farthing, a huge inflatable bag with ramp for doing tricks and jumps off of and into.
Danny the Damselfly
Then after that I assisted with the Bioblitz event at The Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. This turned out to be another fab day with lots of enthusiastic children, making painted stone bugs and carrying out citizen science questioners for badges. Our stall was kitted out with microscopes and fabulous specimins including a water scorpion and hover fly. We also had a fascinating tank filled with an array of colourful creatures including a bees, butterflies, moths and damsel flies. The day ran smoothly and a lot of citizen science enthusiasm was drummed up (Good job Noelia!).
Common Blue Butterfly
Also going on in the background of these events was an on-going nature project with Gergask Primary. The project started off looking at water, which developed into looking at creatures found in streams and then on to Ospreys. The project ended with a trip to Rothiemurchus fish farm where we sat in the photographer hides waiting to possibly catch a glimpse of an osprey diving down and catching a fish from one of the ponds. We also took the school to visit the Loch Garten Osprey Centre at Nethy Bridge where the children could test the staff at RSPB on their Osprey knowledge.
Gergask Primary at Loch Garten Osprey Centre
Speaking of Ospreys, Alvie primary was also taken for a trip to look at the Osprey nest right in their back garden. The school were able to walk down the road to Loch Inch to view the nest site there which is home to three chicks.
Osprey family at Loch Inch
My own personal adventures were bird related also. I was out looking for Peregrine nests. In one of the days we found two nests, one with three chicks in and the other with, dare I say it, FOUR CHICKS! On another day our quest for nests was not so successful but on this occasion we did manage to spot three Eagles with a hope that they had a nest near by!
Osprey-cam at Loch Garten Osprey Centre