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Bird box kits ready for collection - can't wait to see the families progress!

Over the next month we are going to attempt our Family John Muir Award - we’ll spend 24 hours outside undertaking some challenges and activities covering the four themes of Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share in order to complete the Discovery level of the award. We’ll do this around our local area and know how lucky we are that we live within the boundaries of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. Today we took part in a scavenger hunt around Callander. We found all the points and did the challenges and read the facts about bats, geology, and wildlife. We found lots of different types of trees including ash, sweet chestnut, oak and beech and also loads of beetles and different types of birds on the river. During the listening challenge Joseph heard birds singing, cars, children laughing and the wind. We didn’t see any deer or red squirrels unfortunately - maybe cos we were being too noisy!

We found lots of eaten sweet chestnuts close to a used badger latrine and badger set. However, as the skins had been peeled off the chestnuts and left behind, we thought the main munchers were squirrels

We discovered this ancient giant oak, sadly half is dead or dying, but the other side seemed healthy. Ferns and even an Ash sapling were growing in the tree. I wonder how many children have climbed its branches and had adventures around it! J and L loved being in the old branches. Next visit we will take a tape measure and try to work out its age.

We really enjoyed exploring short trails with our senses. Touch becomes more sensitive and L loved the earthy scent of the rotting tree stump. There is something truely wonderful about hugging, touching, stroking and really feeling trees.

The reflections in the pond were stunning, the sky clearer in the water than above. We felt the life-belt rather jarred the view - imposing man-made into nature. Yet the duck house (rather broken on the little island) didn’t matter, nor did the fact that the pond itself is man-made!

So many times I've meant to sit down and write a blog, but what a year....as with everything else in 2020 so far, plans have gone awry and my intention to focus my Explorer award on National Cycle Network routes in Edinburgh has altered. Instead I am loitering a lot along South Ayrshire's coastal route 7 where the beaches are deep with shells, sandwich terns and gannets dot the sky, and low tides reveal rockpools and beasties that attract oystercatchers, curlews and ruddy turnstones. Far back in the summer, I was birdwatching at Doonfoot beach alongside route 7 when a man with a long lens camera gestured me over and pointed to a Ringed Plover chick. Or that's what he said he was pointing to. I saw seaweed and rocks and pebbles. Nothing that looked like the stark ministerial dog-collar of the adult bird. Look closer, he said, just there. One of the mottled pebbles was not a pebble at all, but a soft-focus Ringed Plover chick, eyes tightly closed against the world or the sand. It was captivating but we didn't linger - if an adult sees an intruder near its nest or chicks on the open beach it flies a short distance away, calling and behaving as if it has a broken wing to attract the predator towards it. A technique which must be effective alongside the chicks' sandy camouflage if they are to survive the dogs' noses, stomping wellies and children's sandcastles of a seaside resort - hopefully this little one did.