Hey everyone hope you’re well and in good mental health, I’m going to be talking to you today about Burgh Castle again and what we got up to last week. We attended the Norfolk Makers Market at the Forum in Norwich and then on Valentine’s Day we attended Buckenham Fen with a bird expert, Mark Cocker, where we went to see the roost of birds.
It was one of the arty people that came up with the idea of going to Makers Market at the Forum, where we showed them how we could make roundels like we did for our sculpture model we did at Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail.

We would get some willow that at been soaked in water so it was easy to work with, two pieces to make it stronger, so then we had a frame to work to. We would then get this strong tissue paper that had been cut into a circle of 8cm diameter. We would glue peices of tissue paper to the willow and cover the paper in glue. We would then get bits of nature that we collected from Burgh Castle and also cut up magazines to put on the tissue paper in any arrangement that we liked. We would then get a smaller circle peice of paper, and put that on top like a sandwich. Once that was done we would glue that top piece of paper as well, and then we would hang them up to dry for a couple of hours. But with the amount of people that was walking through the Forum they where drying quite quickly. We had 604 people coming to our stall.
The best thing for me was that when we opened the stall we had a couple of young men from City College come and take part in this activity They wanted to learn so much from what we wer doing and they were asking questions about the project we were involved in and what else we got out of it. And there was the retired teacher who came along and loved what we were about. We also got BBC Radio Norfolk Voices team come down and interviewed a couple of our members about what we were getting up to, which is great. Also the amount of people that wanted to leave a donation for materials cause they just wanted to say thank you for our stall.

So that now brings me on to the next thing we got up to. On Valentine’s Day we went with Mark Cocker to look at birds and the nature at Buckenham Fen in Norfolk. It is a nature reserve, well what can I say ,it didn’t disappoint. We got there around 4pm and there was a small group of golden plover, and there was already geese flying over, ducks eating the grass and we were even treated to Chinese Water Deer, a couple of them running around. Also there were some hares hopping about – I was shocked of how quickly they can move. There also was a river running along the site, if any of you like fishing you would be well in your element.

Then we were treated to 3 barn owls flying over the other side of the river which was a fantastic sight to see, and as we walked further around the site the owls that were flying over in the background started to come nearer to the river so you could get a closer look at them if you had the binoculars on which was great. When I got back I rang my grandma and told her what I had seen as she loves owls.
We started to walk to near the beginning of the site to see the main attraction of the roost, which I had ever only seen on television. The birds started to gather all around us in the sky then they seemed to group together and well what can I say, the noise and the the sght of 20,000 birds that were flying turning twisting all in synchronised movmement, it was amazing. The only downside was that I didn’t have a decent camera to catch it with. If you’re into your wildlife then go check out your local nature reserve and lose yourself in such beautiful scenery and the noises.

Thank you for reading hope you have enjoyed another round of up what we have been up to on our project.