Christmas Event, Bracken Hall - Sunday 4th December 1:30 pm

Despite the rain and cold conditions we had a great time at our Christmas event, although it was a tight squeeze in the classroom at Bracken Hall!

Our birdsong workshop went down really well. We learnt about the calls and songs of: Blue tit, Long-tailed Tit, Robin, Blackbird, Mistle Thrush, Wren, and Nuthatch. Why not brush up on your birdsong skills? Click on the name of a bird above to learn more about the bird and listen to its song again.

To help us remember these calls we learned some handy hints:

• Robin sings the “can’t-be-bothered song”!
• Long-tailed Tit, makes a sound like a bird being squished!
• Blackbird has a very flutey call similar to Mistle Thrush, but these can be separated by the Mistle Thrush's 'football rattle' call.
• Wren sounds like a wind up toy going a bit crazy with its very fast song.
• Nuthatch makes a fast dui-dui-dui call.

We were able to get a really good look at some specimens of these fantastic birds, We also had a fantastic real otter specimen in the classroom! Find out more about otters by clicking on this link. Here you can learn about the different species of Otter, find out what you can do to help them, and play some fun games!

After our learning our birdsongs we made some pom pom robins. All the Airedale Otters did really well and had some great results to take home. We then tucked into some lovely food while Andy kept wrapping away at the emergency pom poms! 

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to everyone who came and made it such fun event. 

The Airedale Otters leaders would like to thank all our members and parents for their continued attendance this year. We hope to see you all again at our next event in January 2012: a nest box building workshop as part of an exciting conservation project we have planned to encourage Pied Flycatchers to nest in a local private woodland. We will be putting the nest boxes up in February. We will also be making bird feeders at the next event for you to take home in anticipation of the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch on 28-29th January 2012. More details, including the venue and date, coming soon.

Have a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year!