Minute of our time here
here twice a year and they would ask me to point her out so that they could take a photo.
One of the main things that I have learned is that there are so many other people involved in this. We can remember Kane Brides (WWT’s Monitoring Officer) coming here as schoolboy.
We’ve seen him grow into the man he is now. We’ve learnt a lot from him and he’s learnt a lot from us.
I love meeting people and chatting to visitors who show a genuine interest in the migrating swans, especially young people.
The number of young people that get involved in it is really impressive. We have a young girl whose parents bought her a decent pair of binoculars and she comes and does ring-reading. I think she must be about six or seven now.
She’s not the only one. Lots of other children show a keen interest in the migrations of birds.
The older visitors also show an interest. It’s surprising. We used to holiday a lot in Scotland and someone would stop us and say ‘you volunteer at Martin Mere’.
It’s been a very enjoyable 20 years. It’s not just about the wildlife, the wildlife connects you to other people.
We’ve seen a lot of changes here. We’ve seen the reserve grow bigger.
The guy that got us into this retired years ago although we still swap Christmas cards. Everyone has been wonderful.
We’ve loved every minute of this. Being invited to catches is quite something. Our local news BBC North West Tonight got involved. We fitted tracking devices to some swans and they wanted to name two of them after the two male presenters.
They had a competition to see which bird would reach Iceland first. They were very privileged to be allowed to film.
I think people would be surprised by how efficient we are at managing wild birds.
Humans are potential enemies to them yet we ring and monitor these animals that fly thousands of miles from remote locations in the far north without much issue.
My role is important because the more we know about wildfowl the better we can look after them.
The successes of ringing and catching birds means we know where they’re going, what route they’re taking, where they’re stopping off, so we know where we can help out if there is a problem on the way.
We can tell if the birds are healthy. If they started showing up overweight or underweight then we would want to know why. I think it’s very important that we continue this research work because it benefits the birds.
Every year is different. What happens in one year, doesn’t happen the next.
The duckery is called the WG Harvey Duckery. Mr Harvey was born in my hometown of Bury in Lancashire and his family had a tannery there.
They used to take the skin from animals and convert it into material.
He left a lot of money to Martin Mere – he left us a legacy.
Without people like that and generous donations from funders like Postcode Animal Trust, a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.
You don’t realise that people are members for totally different reasons.
One day, I was in the playground with my grandchildren on a lovely afternoon and sat next to me were two young ladies with small children.
A flock of whooper swans flew over our heads and this lady said to me: ‘Where are they going?’ I told her they were heading for the Mere. Turned out that they were members who lived in Southport and they had never been around the grounds, never seen the Mere. The only reason they were members was because the playground was safe and there was a nice café and shop. They’d been members for over two years. I suggested that they walk around the reserve and see the birds. The next time I saw her she said she had taken my advice. No-one would believe me.
When the kids flew the nest, we sat down and decided that we need to do something together. We took up hillwalking and bought binoculars. We started seeing birds and wondering what was what.
It was ballroom or birds, and we chose birds.
I used to love seeing the list of birds with the observers marked against them.
We had a code and ours was DEW – Dave and Estelle Walsh.
They used to put a question mark beside our sightings as we were beginners. Eventually that question mark disappeared.
I could give you a boot-full of funny stories.
I was in the Swan Link hide at one point thought to be the largest hide in Europe – and someone asked how the swans got here.
One lady replied that we herd them all into a giant aircraft and fly them over from Iceland!
People will say: ‘I have a silly question’ but I always tell them there’s no such thing.
I’ll always try to answer. Kids ask some of the best and most profound questions. They’re our future.
Last year we had a young lad called Jack. He started as a volunteer when he was 16. His real interest was the wild side of the reserve.
My wife started mentoring him and he spent all winter with her. He’s now at Bangor University studying conservation. He’ll be another Kane!