When I was about eight I was a member of the Young Ornithologists Club*. (*An ornithologist is someone who studies birds).

This was not because I had any particular love of birds but because my junior school teacher forced the whole class to join, she never explained why. The next step in my birdwatching journey was a class trip to Martin Mere, a wetland nature reserve near Burscough which is home to thousands of birds as well as a charity which looks after them and tries to look after their habitat.

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My lasting memories of that day in the mid 80s are the wooden reception centre covered with grassed roofs (it's still there but modernised), buying a day-glow eraser to go on the end of my pencil (I no longer own a pencil case), and getting the absolute telling-off of a lifetime from a teacher when I climbed on a tall-ish wall next to a duck pond and she clearly thought I was going to fall in, drown and end her career (I still occasionally have nightmares about that roasting).

Nearly forty years later I returned to Martin Mere Wetland Centre, where I confess to learning manager Chris Whitehead that I've not been there since school and he agrees that he hears that all the time. What is it about having something amazing on your doorstep that makes us take it for granted?

Three things I learned at Martin Mere:

• Until the 1600s the Mere was three times the size of Lake Windermere when it was drained to make farmland
• According to local legend King Arthur's sword Excalibur is at the bottom of the mere
• An Eider Duck weighs nearly as much a house brick

I'm still not much of an ornithologist, despite taking to feeding the wood pigeons who live in my garden, but you don't have to be to enjoy Martin Mere. I borrowed some binoculars off my parents, put some stout shoes on, and I was away.

Martin Mere is in Lancashire, but you can drive to it in about 45 minutes from most parts of Liverpool and judging by the variety of Liverpudlian accents I heard while I was there plenty of people do. The site is split into a sort of open air zoo section of captured birds including two flocks of different types of flamingos (they've just hatched three babies not that long ago) as well as loads of different types of ducks, swans, geese and other kinds of wetland birds like coots and moorhens.

The other part is the wild section where migrating birds come as a place of safety and for food, and where the real ornithologists hang out wearing fleeces and with zoom lense cameras on tripods. The wetland habitat is protected and controlled by the staff and volunteers of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust conservation charity.

As well as a collection of hides to observe birds in their natural habitat there are 'wild walks' through the wetland of up to about an hour each, an adventure playground for the children, a decent cafe serving hot food and pretty good cakes, a large gift shop, and a reception centre with classrooms. At the moment they also have a Quentin Blake art exhibition and large LEGO sculptures of animals dotted about the reserve.

Martin Mere is just moving into its winter period which means it closes at 4.30pm so make sure to get there early if you want to take advantage of the walks. The number of signs warning people when the carpark locks make me think there have been timing issues in the past.

There were two feeding events while I was there. The first was a short talk while the trust's two otters were fed and the second at the edge of the mere where we watched from a hide as the hundreds of wild swans, geese and ducks were fed with a ten minute narration by a volunteer, telling us where they had come from and where they were going and the various types of birds that could be seen.

I would say most visitors were young families, bird watchers and older people enjoying a healthy day out in nature. Tickets for an adult begin at £15.40. There is photo of the admission price board in the gallery above.

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