LBC stand at Festival of Sea in Grimsby - Saturday June 22

Our stand could scarcely have been busier. . .

It seemed like the hundreds who visited all had an anecdote to share about birds or a question to ask.

One woman from Holton-le-Clay described  her complicated (and hazardous) efforts to remove a swarm of bees from a swift nest box under the eaves of her house.

Another wondered if the 'enchantingly beautiful' song of  an impossible-to-locate bird in her Cleethorpes garden might have been that of a nightingale.

One wanted to know why goldfinches no longer visited his garden - another why, by contrast, the same species had begun visiting her garden.

One visitor sought tips on how to banish wood pigeons (!) and another protested about the population explosion of geese on Cleethorpes boating lake (a total of 594 of three species as of 5pm on June 27).

Another visitor speculated on what factors might have brought a rare sand plover to Rimac in 2002. 

And one woman was reluctant to be dissuaded that two ‘brownish’ birds flying in and out of a  hedgerow were  unlikely to be housemartins. What field guide had prompted her to reach that eccentric feat of identification?

One man , who had moved to Grimsby area from outside Edinburgh, revealed that the only times he had seen great crested grebe and heron had been in Cleethorpes country park 

The event proved to be a great opportunity to fly the flag for the Lincolnshire Bird Club and to highlight  the variety of birdlife in the Grimsby area and beyond.

Pictured: Longstanding committee member Bill Sterling chats to one of the hundreds who visited the LBC stand in the course of six hours on Saturday afternoon.

The Lincolnshire Bird Club will have a stand at the Festival of the Sea at the Riverhead in Grimsby on Saturday (11am - 5pm).

Everyone is welcome to the stand - especially any club member willing to help distribute literature or to chat about birds to interested member of the public - or even to  lead a short birding walk  to the dockside  or the River Freshney.

The site is between the Fishing Heritage Centre and Sainsburys which has a large car park.

Also, does anyone have a poster of sea birds and/or of shore birds that we could borrow to display  our stand? This is because the festival organisers are encouraging a maritime flavour.

(If anyone has a stuffed great auk we could borrow, even better!)