With Covid restrictions lifting and teachers eager to bring back normality to their classes, this year was the busiest so far since Suffolk Owl Sanctuary hired a dedicated Education Officer. Susan has thoroughly enjoyed working with Bethany, Dolly, Izzy, Jade and the rest of the team to bring fun learning sessions and activities to a wider audience this year.
The year started with a visit by Susan and Dolly to our friends at The Hive to deliver a session for a local SEN school who were looking for places to locate nestboxes. They delivered a fun session around the campfire talking about the different owls in the area and what each species needs, then explored the site and helped them choose suitable locations for their home made boxes.
“Our student like practical challenges, so being told what makes a good Owl box location by type of Owl meant they could work as a team to scout out good locations”
Pellet Detectives remains the most popular session
We then welcomed several local Schools for visits to the Sanctuary, where they enjoyed Guided Walks to learn more about our birds (who were unable to fly due to local Avian Influenza cases). Jess and Jade helped answer questions from Suffolk New College students, who visited to learn more about enclosure design as part of their course. We also delivered a Virtual Session to a group of high school children, remotely supervising their Pellet Detectives session and going into some details about Adaptations.
”All was very good and informative. Nicely spaced out activities and displays” - Suffolk New College
”Everyone found the Pellet Detectives fascinating! Susan was fantastic and we all had a wonderful day! Thank you! - Bealings School
Nick receiving a donation from the Stowmarket Lions
During half term, we attended the West Suffolk Home Education Fair in Bury St Edmunds and after the break we ran a Science Week workshop at Thurston Library. We were invited to talk to Stowmarket Lions and Keeper Nick was able to step in due to illness and delivered a presentation about our work. We welcomed a few primary schools for visits during this time, as well as organising a fun day learning more about our work for the ZEST group, young people supported by St Elizabeth Hospice, and the Tribase Home Education Group who returned to become Pellet Detectives once again.
“Overall presentation was very good and the speaker was very engaging. Evening enjoyed by all members of our group.” - Stowmarket Lions
Our stall all set up and ready to go at the Otley Campus Spring Fair
Over the Easter holidays, we attended our first large event of the year at Suffolk New College Otley Campus Spring Fair. The day was a huge success with over 1000 visitors in attendance. We laid out some Pellet Detectives trays as well as some other biofacts for visitors to learn more about. The Pellets were a big hit, with some families staying for well over half an hour to rummage through and find the bones. It was very pleasing to see families from this event visiting the Sanctuary over the Easter holidays.
The calm before the schools arrived at the Suffolk Schools Farm and Country Fair
After Easter, we had a number of schools visit us, delivered a few talks to local community groups and had an overseas Virtual Session to a school in Guernsey. At the end of April, Susan and Dolly attended our biggest event of the year, the Suffolk Schools Farm and Country Fair. This event hasn’t run since 2019 so neither knew quite what to expect. What followed was an intense day trying to engage the 3500 KS2 level students who attended. We had Pellet Detectives and Food Chain bracelets as activities, and our stall was swamped for most of the day. We handed out VIP passes to all the supervising teachers to hand out to their pupils, and had a good return rate on these over the summer holidays.
May and June were the busiest months for our Education Team. Between them, they worked with 15 different groups and attended 2 events.
“From a teacher point of view, it was brilliant to be on a trip that was organised so well. Each part of the day was well planned and it meant I could also enjoy the day alongside the children without having to worry about where we were going next or trying to find our way round.” - Morland C of E Primary School Robin Class
“The children really enjoyed walking around the sanctuary looking at all of the birds. They enjoyed learning new facts. All the children are very excited to visit the sanctuary again and have been talking about it every day since our visit.” Morland C of E Primary School Owl Class
Our involvement with the St Elizabeth Hospice Big Hoot Trail in Ipswich led to us being asked to attend the launch event in Christchurch Park, with volunteers Jan, Sophie and Jenny manning a stall at our Big Hoot, Owl See You In My Dreams, in the town centre. As a result of this, we welcomed Botesdale Brownies, Debenham Guides and Stowmarket Brownies to the Sanctuary so that they could complete their Big Hoot badges, and both Susan and Bethany were presented with a badge of their own.
“I liked seeing all the different types of Barn Owl & learning about them; I didn’t realise there was more than one type!” - Guide Alice
Susan attended Gainsborough Library over the summer holidays to run some Pellet Detectives sessions for their kids club.
Over the summer holidays, we welcomed the Royal Owners Club and SWAGS for guided walks around the Sanctuary. We ran fun learning sessions at Newmarket and Gainsborough libraries, as well as supporting Get Suffolk Reading with several local events around Stowmarket and Debenham.
“All of the children (and most of the parents) enjoyed dissecting the Owl Pellets!” - Gainsborough Library
Fairstead House from Newmarket visited us on a cold but sunny day in November
The autumn saw us attend our third large event of the year at Helmingham Hall. Volunteer Sarah helped Susan with a joint stall for Suffolk Owl Sanctuary and Suffolk Prickles Hedgehog Rescue, helping to raise awareness and funds for these two charities. We also attended a second Home Education Fair and delivered two talks to community groups in the region. We had a few groups visit us on site, but a number of schools requested outreach visits this term. These had unfortunately dropped off since we adopted new guidelines about not transporting birds off site in the interests of their welfare, as recommended by Avian experts. Izzy delivered a morning of learning for students from Suffolk New College and answered their questions about careers in animal care and how we run our Raptor Hospital.
”Susan was very efficient, spoke well and a good evening was had by all” - Levington Gardening Club
The last visit of the year was to Lakenheath Elementary School, where we delivered two sessions on Adaptations and one on History of Falconry. It was great to engage with the group of American students and staff at the school and teach them some of the commonly used terms that are derived from Falconry.
“The kids loved learning about Falconry and the different terminology, comparing US to UK English. The whole experience was brilliant!” - Lakenheath Elementary School
In addition to our booked groups, Susan and Bethany, supported by our other staff, have delivered courses and sessions for Home Educating families on site throughout the year.
Homework for the Home Education group has resulted in some very creative pieces this year.
Bethany has particularly enjoyed leading most of the Pellet Detectives sessions this year, and witnessing the “eww” turning into excitement as they start discovering what the Owls have been eating.
Dolly has enjoyed introducing some of our flying team to guests during our popular experiences and courses, teaching them all about the birds and inspiring a passion for nature.
Susan has enjoyed attending events in the community, raising awareness about our work and having meaningful conversations with members of the public about Owl conservation, monitoring and rescue.
Although overall the number of bookings was down compared to 2021, our involvement with some large events meant that we engaged with over twice as many people in 2022! As schools returned to “normal” learning again, we’ve seen an increase in in-person bookings. Our Virtual bookings are still going to be available for groups who can’t visit us in person, and offer good value for money for those struggling with costs. We knew that our decision to stop taking birds offsite (for their health and welfare) would impact on our outreach programme, so this has been developed to include more interactive elements which appear to have gone down well with the bookings received so far.
We are already taking bookings for the first half of 2023, which bodes well for the future. There are some new developments happening on site which will help enhance the visit for schools, and the team will be introducing some exciting new learning sessions and materials for in person sessions after Easter.