On Tuesday we went to the Linwood Community Woodland where we were putting up bird boxes. It had been a while since we had been to the Woodland so we were all eager to see how our absence had been felt. On of the first things we noticed was that a branch had broken off so Jim and I quickly got to work chopping it up to prevent it falling on someone and causing more damage after that was done it was time to get started on the bird boxes.
Ian, Ken, Robert and few more took on the task of finding suitable trees and putting up the boxes and luckily enough the winds from last week had passed over making it a much better conditions than we had originally feared. While they were putting up the bird boxes another group of us decided to do a litter pick and we got quite a god haul of litter. By the end of the day we had installed 9 bird boxes and collected numerous bags of litter.
On Wednesday on of our volunteers was particularly excited as we were going to his favourite place, RSPB in Lochwinnoch. It wasn’t the nicest of days but we weren’t going to let that dampen our spirits. We headed off round towards the hide, on route we stop at a small area that had bird feeders and a barrier for us to hide behind and get a good view. We spotted numerous different types of birds including a tree creeper.
When we got to the hide we all piled in and sat down to some more bird watching aided by our guide from the centre we managed to spot a good few more species including a cormorant that at first seemed unwilling to be spotted, diving under water every time we tried to get a glimpse. After tea break we headed out and did some nature related games which everybody enjoyed.
On Thursday Julie was away so I was left in charge and we were off to Rashilea Primary School to plant trees. There were a few obstacles to overcome at first like for example the fact that the only way to access the trees was to carry them out through the gym hall/ dinning room. First of all we grabbed all of the smaller trees and planted them up. It was a beautiful day the sun was shining so we quickly made progress and got the trees planted meaning it was time for challenge number 2, the Kilmarnock Willow.
Martin and I decided to be the people to move that through so headed off into the school. We got to the gym hall to discover a class mid way through a gym class which added to the already daunting prospect of having to haul the tree out. We managed to get it out and luckily enough for us we managed to procure a shopping trolley to aid us in the task. At tea time the willow was planted and we moved round the memorial garden section of the primary school where we dug holes so that the kids could at a later date plant fruit trees. By the end of the day we had planted 9 trees which was a great effort!
Thanks again to all our volunteers I will hopefully see you all out again this week.
Kerr