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More Than Birds…the lesser-known Extreme song (hoho…#90shumour). Although my Award is focusing on our avian friends, sometimes it’s hard to keep from being completely dazzled by something else. Last week I was working in Aberfoyle on route 7 and popped into a wildlife hide in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, where I got a close encounter with this fellow. Squirrels are often referred to as sitting in the shadow of their tail – this comes from their genus name ‘Sciurus’ coming from the Greek words ‘skia’ (shadow) and ‘oura’ (tail) – and red squirrels are masters of this. In other mammal news, one of the band-members of Extreme was apparently called Patrick Badger. Who knew.

We are Avenue End Primary and this is our John Muir blog. This is one of the ways we will share our experiences and journey. Our mission is to become outdoor learning experts. We want to develop our skills and knowledge to help support younger learners in our school.

We met Sarah from the RSPB for the first time and she told us what did she did for her job. We went to the Hogganfield Loch to explore and see what birds we could find with our binoculars. We found loads of different birds including swans. The swans at the Loch are very use to being fed by humans so they were very confident and came over to us.

We discussed habitats and where things live. We talked about what a habitat has to provide. We then made our own habitats in the woods by creating shelters. We split in to groups and had a contest. We all thought this would be a great lesson to do with the younger children.

We did some stamping to lure worms to the surface of the ground so we could pick them. We then discussed diets of different birds we might see around the Loch. Sarah then showed us to how to make bird feeders using fat and seeds. The fat is really good at winter for keeping the birds warm and full of energy. We put the feeders in different trees around the Loch.

We decided to pick up the litter on our school grounds and the Loch. We all wore gloves and had litter pickers. We kept a survey of what we found. We were upset when we found 35 glass bottles on the school grounds. We told everyone in assembly about what we did and reminded them not to drop litter.

A group of Volunteer Rangers with the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park are working on our John Muir Award at Discovery level over the next few months. We will be completing four adventurous tasks which we will share with you here on the Record eBook, via Facebook/Twitter and with our fellow Volunteers via the Basecamp website. The award will be gained as part of our regular Volunteer Ranger / Conservation Volunteer activities this year. This award is an ideal way to recognise our efforts and encourage exploration of the National Park surroundings, engage with environmental issues and share our experiences with others.