A Focus On Nature

A Focus On Nature

BTO Bird Camp – Zach Haynes

Well I’ve written up the various instalments of my post on the BTO bird camp at the weekend on my blog (yearofnature.blogspot.com). What an amazing weekend! What was so special about it? First of all the nature of course. I saw so many species, quite a few I’d never seen before but quite a lot that I only see when I go on holiday to Norfolk.

What else was special? Well I got to spend the weekend with a group of people my age who were all just as passionate as me about birds and nature. I say my age, I was the youngest and smallest there. The age limit was meant to be fourteen. A few of us were younger but we applied anyway as this weekend sounded so good! I was really glad I got to go and it didn’t matter about age. Everyone was really, really friendly and as we all had the same interests there was so much to talk about. I don’t think it was quiet for a moment, except maybe when we were looking at something through our bins in wonder or when we were napping on the bus getting to some of the events as we all got up at 4.30am each day!

That didn’t matter at all as it was brilliant to spend time in a group like this. At school there are maybe a few people that like nature a bit but no-one I can go out to a reserve with or talk nature with properly. So to be able to do a huge range of nature activities over a whole weekend with a group of people like this was just incredible. It was so great to be in a group that really got that nature is cool. I met some truly awesome people and made some fantastic friends. I learnt a lot from them too, everybody was very knowledgeable and all knew about different things. Luke Nash summed it up brilliantly in his blog:

“I want to thank the young birders at the event for being such nice people & great birders. You are the best people I know”

Not only did all the young naturalists learn from each other, we had loads of BTO experts around for the events that were absolutely incredible. It’s really hard to know where to start! We learnt about nest recording, how to find nests, how and why we make records of them and even saw how baby chicks are ringed so their activity can be tracked and we can find out more about them. I hadn’t done this before so I shall look forward to trying this out and joining the BTO nest recording scheme.  Ringing was another activity we did and again the reason for doing this is to learn more about the birds. Birds without rings are given one and all of their measurements (weight, age, wing length, gender etc.) are taken. If they have a ring the number is recorded and all the measurements are taken. I love the BTO bird facts and have used them a lot in my blog posts. It is because of ringing that we know how much the average blue tit or heron (or whatever) weighs and their oldest recorded age. We even saw the little GPS tags that are now being used for some birds to track their movements so we can learn even more about their behaviour.

We also did some patch surveying or bird census work. We only got to do it once where you walk round and record all of the birds in an area and what they are doing. The idea with this is to do it lots of times over a log period and you can then see how all the bird populations are doing in a certain area. I will have to try this for my garden to practise, or maybe the street as my garden’s not very big.

Bird watching was the main activity of the weekend though and I learnt some really useful things. I have started to identify bird calls but I saw just how important and useful listening is. I was amazed at how quickly one of the experts Paul could find and identify birds by their calls, he was an incredible birder and taught us loads about the different calls. I got to see lots of species, around 100 over the weekend, and a lot of new ones I’d not seen before, it was incredible. If I had to pick a favourite it would have to be the Bittern as I’ve been looking for one for so many years, it was wonderful to see one lazily flying across the top of the reeds at Lakenheath.

So after this weekend it looks like I’ve got some new friends to go birding with and learnt lots of new things about birds and the science the BTO does. All this will help me to see more birds and wildlife but I will try and use my new skills to help wildlife even more.

Here’s a few things the other Young Birders and the BTO staff had to say about the weekend.

https://twitter.com/wildlifebloga/status/736985090446741504

https://twitter.com/sampittmiller/status/737320232847544320

https://twitter.com/Viola_RS/status/737381249698922497

 

If you get the chance to go to BTO #birdcamp17, seriously DO IT! You will not regret it!

“If it wasn’t for the fantastic work put in by the BTO and the cameron Bespolak Trust, I would of never have learnt the skills required to take part in BTO schemes such as Nest Recording, CBS and Bird Ringing, and for that I shall always be grateful to both organisations.” Elliot Montieth

Zach Haynes is a young conservationist living in North Yorkshire who loves nothing better than getting out into the countryside exploring and watching nature. His aim it is to try to “get all people, especially those my age, to realise how important nature is. We need to protect it for us and future generations”. Zach very much hopes to have a career as a Naturalist or Scientist though after being in the audience of Autumnwatch Unsprung and talking about his blog on BBC Radio York he is also quite interested in exploring careers in the media too.