30 Days wild - A Wildlife Trusts initiative for June 2015
Monday 29 June 2015
30 Days Wild - Doing something wild everyday
Day 29 - Painting a quick watercolour of an orchard before school. Inspired by artist John Gale to just have a go, so I did.
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| Orchard by Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig |
Tuesday 30 June 2015
30 Days Wild - Doing something wild everyday
Day 30 - Ringing Canada Geese
Today is the last day of #30DaysWild and I wanted to go out with something big. Maybe a rarity at Chew Valley Lake?
Then I realised that today was the date arranged for corraling, catching and ringing the Canada Geese at Chew Valley Lake. The Geese are flightless at the moment and so we only have a small window of about 10 days to do the ringing.
It was perfect for the last day of the month and fairly unplanned on my part.
They used a boat to corrale the geese onto one side of the lake and then onto dry land, where we shut them into a fenced off area.
Then a couple of ringers picked up each bird, got them into the right holding position and gave them to people ready to take over. The carriers then had to carry the goose under their arm, avoid letting it bite them, then hold it whilst I or another ringer ringed it. After that they carry the goose to the people ready to weigh them before letting the geese go.
I managed to ring lots of geese, which was brilliant. It was quite hard as the metal ring was big and made out of hard metal.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig ringing a Canada Goose, Chew Valley Lake Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig |
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Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig and Chris Craig, Chew Valley Lake
Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig |
Then a few days ago, I was chatting to Dad and realised that today was the date arranged for coralling, catching and ringing the Canada Geese at Chew Valley Lake. The Geese are flightless at the moment and so we only have a small window of about 10 days to do the ringing.
It was perfect for the last day of the month and fairly unplanned on my part.
They used a boat to corale the geese onto one side of the lake and then onto dry land, when we shut them into a fenced off area.
Then very experienced ringers sex the geese, hold them and give them to you ready to take over. I then have to carry the goose under my arm, avoid letting it bite me, then hold it whilst someone rings it. After that you carry the goose to the people ready to weight them, give the identifying number, sex and them watch them weight the geese before releasing them.
It was a long evening and we arrived home physically exhausted from the whole thing.
About the Writer
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Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly
Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig
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Mya-Rose Craig is a 13 year old young birder, conservationist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She is looking forward to going Mountain Gorilla Trekking in East Africa in the summer and watching Penguins in Antarctica in December 2015, which will be her 7th continent. She has recently been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter
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