FINDING interesting things in a river and racing ducks proved to be highlights for the families who attended the inaugural nature explorer event at Gilbert White’s Field Study Centre in Selborne.

Around 30 families attended both days during the school half-term holidays and they were led on a wildlife adventure by education and learning manager Louise Brown when their first task was to find “interesting things in the river”.

As the groups lined the banks of the stream by Church Meadows, among their finds was a large amount of freshwater shrimp, along with slugs and beetles and, a little more worrying, a leech, of which Ms Brown said: “Thank goodness we only found one, but it is very rare to find one. Any more and there would have been pandemonium as leeches attract themselves to the body and cling on.”

Each group got the chance to make bird feeders and study the wildlife around the church meadows.

It is the first time Gilbert White’s Field Study Centre has held a nature explorer event and it proved successful, according to the organisers. As did the sleepover they held that weekend when clay model making and the study of owls and bats and cooking round the campfire were on offer before bedding down in tents in the barn.

On December 12, the village centre is running a Christmas craft morning from 10am to noon and at 2.30pm there is a performance of The Snow Queen in the barn, with a performance of a Christmas carol at 7.30pm.