I’m sure all of the other Natural Communities trainees agree that the past three months have flown by. Here, at RSPB Loch of Strathbeg, alongside day-to-day people engagement on the reserve, we have ran several successful events…
Co-hosted with Aberdeen Astronomical Society, our ‘stargazing’ event saw over 100 people turning up to discover the night sky. We had experts on hand with powerful telescopes looking at the stars and planets. The event proved massively popular and despite the overcast conditions, visitors caught fleeting but marvellous views of Jupiter and the Moon. The inflatable planetarium or ‘Cosmic Dome’ we hired, was a big hit running 4 fully-booked shows throughout the course of the evening.
For our next event, as part of Aberdeenshire Celebrates ‘World Community Arts Day’, we invited families along to build and decorate their own nestboxes and bird feeders. The reserve was a hive of activity all day with lots of hammering and sticking and we had some inspired designs…
To round the day off we builT a campfire, carved our own skewers and toasted marshmallows – yum!!
Following this ‘Artsy’ theme, we decided to have an art exhibition in our visitors centre. The exhibtion was fantastic displaying wildlife art from Elinor Grieve, Karen Hartnell, Kath Hamper, and photographer Cain Scrimgeour. On the first day of the exhibition we had lots of kids art’s and crafts activites and on the second day we had an art workshop. The Fraserburgh Art Group joined us in the visitors centre, to do some sketching and show-off the beautiful Loch of Strathbeg-themed art they had been working on. Our visiting artist Elinor Grieve was on-hand, throughout the exhibition weekend, providing advice about drawing and painting wildlife.
We have lots of differents events planned for the next few months, including Guided Puffin Walks, A community Beachclean and a bird-ringing demonstration. For more information on these and other events at Loch of Strathbeg, click here.