When I was about eight I was a member of the Young Ornithologists Club*. (*An ornithologist is someone who studies birds).
This was not because I had any particular love of birds but because my junior school teacher forced the whole class to join, she never explained why. The next step in my birdwatching journey was a class trip to Martin Mere, a wetland nature reserve near Burscough which is home to thousands of birds as well as a charity which looks after them and tries to look after their habitat.
READ MORE: Get a free National Trust pass worth up to £50 for your family day out this autumn
My lasting memories of that day in the mid 80s are the wooden reception centre covered with grassed roofs (it's still there but modernised), buying a day-glow eraser to go on the end of my pencil (I no longer own a pencil case), and getting the absolute telling-off of a lifetime from a teacher when I climbed on a tall-ish wall next to a duck pond and she clearly thought I was going to fall in, drown and end her career (I still occasionally have nightmares about that roasting).
Nearly forty years later I returned to Martin Mere Wetland Centre, where I confess to learning manager Chris Whitehead that I've not been there since school and he agrees that he hears that all the time. What is it about having something amazing on your doorstep that makes us take it for granted?
Three things I learned at Martin Mere:
I'm still not much of an ornithologist, despite taking to feeding the wood pigeons who
Read on liverpoolecho.co.uk