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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pete Mella" data-source="post: 1305564" data-attributes="member: 47236">Of course pond-dipping, log-rolling etc is important, and also done at some of the same nature reserves that are encouraging kids in hides. But kids can be enthralled by seeing some rarer birds from hides - it's not as if all kids want to see are ducks and geese you can feed from your hand. Yes the view from a hide is largely an artificial one, but still wilder and with different species than children will see anywhere else. In my experience kids are fascinated by herons, and cormorants, and lapwings, and other birds they may often only see in this way.And no-one expects them to be "sitting in a cold hide for hours". Kids have a shorter attention span, and I'd say 15-20 minutes max is about as long as kids have. But the difference is we may see a lake of lapwings and herons and sigh and wait an hour for something interesting to show up. The kids are fascinated by the lapwings and herons THEMSELVES.The quietness you have to keep in hides is very variable - it sometimes makes me laugh that the very same birders who turn their noses up at slightly noisy kids will go on to have a loud discussions between themselves about some twitch they went on last week. Or the sort that bellow away on the way up to a hide, but expect everyone to be deathly silent inside, as if the birds are immune to your noise until you're actually in it.Some hides you need to keep very quiet in, and other you don't. Kids should be taught to be respectful of wildlife and others around them and not to shout, and not do stupid things like stick their arms out of the windows, but shouldn't be expected to be silent in most nature reserves. In most hides a discussion at a low but ordinary speaking level is not going to scare birds in any way, and at sites where it is then extra care should be taken.At the risk of repeating myself, the problem isn't kids in hides, it's unruly kids with ineffectual parents that don't care about people around them. There's plenty of patient parents with genuinely interested kids that are exactly what RSPB (for example) reserves are there for, even if they don't fit birders' images of birdwatching as a bunch of men silently staring out of tiny holes for hours on end.</blockquote>

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