Bird Week at Millbrook Garden Centre

This half term Millbrook Garden Centre are hosting events all week, mainly for children but some for adults too, celebrating birds. Gravesend RSPB were duly contacted to see if we would like to be involved and so a few of us went along to engage with adults and children about the birds around them.
Millbrook have pre-booked activities on every afternoon this week where children can make and decorate such things as bird feeders and boxes, so when Malcolm and Sally were asked to participate they thought perhaps a talk about garden birds followed by a walk around the centre to find some of these birds would be a good idea.
So today at 10.30 Malcolm gave his first informal talk in the cafe. I say informal because it was left that if people were interested they should just turn up and sit in the cafe with a cup of tea if wanted. And luckily people did turn up and enjoyed hearing about and seeing the birds they could see in their garden, about the birds that never used to come to gardens and about the ones that are getting increasingly rare. People were very keen to share their own experiences about the birds in their gardens and seemed to enjoy the talk.

Following this Malcolm encouraged his audience to join him on a walk around the centre in order to show them some of the birds he had been talking about.

A few keen members did tag along and a short while later they ended up at the bird hide where myself and Sally had positioned ourselves to speak to anyone who might come along and show an interest. It is surprising how many people visiting the garden centre do not know that the hide and wildlife area are there.
For the rest of the day we had a steady flow of people visiting the hide with whom we chatted and shared experiences. Of course it helped that it was such a lovely day and people were keen to be outside. It is amazing what a bit of sunshine can do. A successful day and Malcolm and Sally will be there again on Friday so why not pop in?

Irene