Yesterday, around 25 locals and visitors – adults and children – went on a walk to some of La Societe’s reserves on the west coast.
‘We feel the reserves are the jewel in Guernsey’s crown and we want more people to have access to them,’ La Societe Guernesiaise nature section secretary Lesley Bourgaize said.
‘There’s been quite a bit of success in seeing insects along the walk because of the warm weather and we’re hoping to see lots more birds at the Colin Best Nature Reserve and Clare Mare Reserve Hide.’
As well as providing information about the insects, plants and birds seen, members of the nature section told walkers what they should look out for if they walked in those areas at a different time in the year.
There were also butterfly nets, magnifying glasses and insect collection pots which the children could use along the way.
‘This is the first walk we have done like this for quite some time, we just wanted to see if it would be popular and it has been so we would like to do more of these in the future,’ Mrs Bourgaize said.
She hoped people would take away a greater interest in what they saw on the walk and hoped to encourage them to join La Societe, revisit some of the reserves and go out on their own to look at nature again.
Enjoying the informative walk were two tourists from Germany, Elke Kohler and Silke Nonnenmann, who were on their fifth visit to the island.
‘We like to get out and see the Guernsey nature. It’s different to just watching it fly past from a bus or car,’ Mrs Kohler said.
‘It’s nice to be able to learn more about what we see and we’ve been trying to translate the names [of bugs and plants] back into German.’
Mrs Nonnenmann said: ‘We sometimes do walks like this in Germany, but it’s so interesting here, we’ve seen some birds and plants similar to back home but others we’ve never even heard of before.’
. La Societe Guernesiaise nature section has two events coming up: A bat walk at Saumarez Park on 16 August and bird ringing at the reserve at Pleinmont on 1 September.
For more information visit La Societe’s website, www.societe.org.gg.
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