Guest speaker
Today I was the guest speaker at the Mallee Aged Care, a group which meets in the local soccer club rooms every fortnight. The organiser invited me – and my wife – for lunch and after that I gave a one hour presentation, talking about Australian birds. I illustrated my talk with photos of our lovely birds. Most of the photos have been shown here on my blog over recent years.
While many in the group were hard of hearing, all said they could hear me clearly – it must be the remnants of my teacher voice at work.
All said they enjoyed the talk very much and learned so much about our birds. One lady even started taking notes on a paper napkin!
I’ve done similar talks to various group before, and the requests are becoming more frequent as word gets out. It’s something I enjoy and I not only love sharing about Australian birds, as a former teacher I love imparting knowledge about them with any who will listen. Friends and family know this and often ring or ask about something they’ve seen birds doing.
An offer too good to refuse:
I am prepared to go anywhere to talk about Australian birds. If it’s interstate just provide the air fare and I’ll be there. What the heck – I’ll even fly overseas to talk about Australian birds.
Emu, Monarto Zoo, South Australia
Talking about birds
A few minutes ago I arrived home after visiting one of our local Residential Aged Care homes. Our ladies’ fellowship group at church had arranged to hold one of their meetings in a small meeting room in the home. I was the guest speaker for the meeting.
I was asked to speak about birds and show some of my photographs of the birds of this area using a PowerPoint presentation. I was asked to keep the talk to about thirty minutes and this was to keep their attention. The old folk tend to drift into the Land of Noddy after that. With my considerable collection of photos and my tendency to rave on a little about my favourite hobby, restricting me to thirty minutes was a challenge. (Or perhaps the organiser knows me too well!)
Anyway, I managed to cull the presentation down to thirty photographs and I mentally gave myself one minute to talk about each photo. Mission accomplished: I only went over by about five minutes. In fact, it took longer to get all the old folk to the room in their wheel chairs and walking frames than it took to give the presentation.
Many of the folk thought the presentation was great with much praise for the photos. And I only heard heavy breathing coming from one person, despite the very warm room. It was a pleasing experience.
Below is one of the photos I showed this afternoon.
Updated Nov 2013.
Mallee Ringneck Parrot