Our 2010 weekend away was organised around a visit to the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss.

The weekend started bright and early for some of the party
as we joined Leighton Moss Wildlife Explorers for a Dawn Chorus walk.
And no Dawn Chorus would be complete without ending with a bacon buttie!

Those of us who had enjoyed a lie-in arrived at the reserve at 9am to join the rest of the Group and the
Leaders from Leighton Moss.

Jim and Tim showed us the moths that had been trapped during the previous night.

We then joined Rita and Rachel and the other Leaders to go on a birdwatching walk and tried bug hunting, pond dipping. It was great fun and the weather was glorious.

We found lots of spider mites, centipedes and millipedes under the log slices in the orchard.
We even found several toads burrowed underneath the logs.

Amongst the pond dipping discoveries were mayfly larvae, diving beetle larvae, a whole host of daphnia
and a superb caddis fly larvae in its carefully constructed case.

Sadly the good weather didn't hold out for our afternoon walk with Jim to Trowbarrow Quarry Nature Reserve and the heavens opened but we were prepared!. The rain didn't dampen our spirits, as we walked through the beautiful limestone scenery.

We even tried singing in the rain which seemed to scare some of the darker clouds away!

  On our walk to Trowbarrow we took part in the Bee Scene survey for Plantlife www.wildaboutplants.org.uk.

The UK has 24 species of bumblebee. Some of the most beautiful species are in danger of disappearing. Bumblebees are very important creatures because they pollinate a large number of flower species, both wild and cultivated. The Bumblebee Conservation trust is involved with the project in the hope that through their own involvement, many more people will appreciate the humble bumblebee and take steps to provide the flower-rich habitats which bees so desperately need.

We discovered that the Trowbarrow area was good for Bumblebees.
Our visit results are saved on the Plantlife survey on-line map.

Our evening activities had the theme of 'Night-time wildlife'.

We ate fish (or sausage) & chips for our evening meal!.

We then designed rain-loving play dough creatures, coloured in three dimensional ducks

and set moth lures outside the Education room.

Tina told us about some of the animals that like to come out at night.

We experimented on Junior Leader Julian to show how difficult hunting in the dark was,
and we dressed Hope to show how animals have special adaptations to hunt and survive at night!

We dissected Barn owl pellets and identified the skulls and bones of mice, voles and shrews.
It was fascinating.

As parents arrived to collect everyone, Dave told us all about Barn Owls and the Cheshire Barn Owl Group.

On Sunday morning we joined the Peregrine Watch at Warton Crag to learn all about these incredible birds
of prey. We had fantastic views of the male Peregrine and heard the female calling to him from the nest.

A family of ravens had fledged earlier that morning and incredibly we saw Jackdaws move in to steal and recycle twigs from the raven's nest to build their own.

We then headed down to the beach at Morecambe, by the statue of comedian Eric Morecambe.

Our time at the beach started with a sandcastle-building competition.

The adults played rounders and we played lots of games and relay races and on the sand.

We made human sculptures of a sea anemone and a rag-worm, then we did some experiments with the sand.



Our stay at Morecambe was rounded off with a family quiz based on the Tern Project.
The amazing sculpture trail on the sea front.

We returned to the site at Fell End for our afternoon of tree planting.
We planted 80 rowan trees in a wildlife area as part of the CSV Action Earth campaign.

Click here to see the full Tree Planting Report with CSV Action Earth.

Our weekend was rounded off with lots of games and prizes.

Lots of children and adults took photographs during the weekend.
We have created a special page to capture all of these memories.
Click here to view the collection of 'snaps'.