Why Wetlands competition winner announced!
With dozens of entries of fantastic art, poetry, collages and more, we're thrilled to announce the winner of our why wetlands competition.
Throughout the summer, we introduced a competition for visitors to get involved in that encouraged them to really take in their surroundings and be inspired by nature and our wetlands during their time here.
We were staggered by the creativity and effort by each and every one of you that entered and the reasons given for why wetlands are important and why you love visiting us has been really has been wonderful to read about!
After a couple of weeks of deliberating (believe us, we were torn!) our winning entry has been decided as Thomas Reid who is 10 years old!
Not only did Thomas give us a really lovely, textured pencil drawing of a very seasonally relevant lapwing, he also included the scientific name ‘vanellus vanellus’ for ‘northern lapwing’ along with a gender male symbol which is commonly used by our team for our record keeping. This alone is fantastic and shows he has really been inspired by the species, taking the time to learn about what he has seen and display it on his entry.
As part of the competition criteria alongside creative entries, we also asked for visitors to send a reason for loving wetlands and why they enjoy visiting WWT Washington. Thomas gave a great explanation and has clearly taken a lot away from his visit:
“The reason I come to the Washington is to learn about and see all the amazing animals, especially the birds. It is great to learn about the different calls and characteristics that they have. I even bought two posters to remind me of all the fantastic wildlife I saw there. I drew this picture of a lapwing because I saw a brilliant view of lots of them standing out in the marshy water from one of the hides, and it is one of my favourite birds.”
Mentioning the calls and characteristics that different birds have, and describing them stood on marshy water from one of our hides is great and it’s clear he enjoys being surrounded by nature.
We hope this competition has really encouraged people to take in more of their surrounds while visiting places like ourselves. Nature is an incredibly powerful tool to help with all manner of stresses and strains of everyday life, and by absorbing more of it, especially at this time of uncertainty, is well worth doing!
A huge congratulations to Thomas who has won a £100 gift voucher to spend in our gift shop!
