Text 1: The ringing station, by Aled Morgan

An original contemporary memoir extract.

At five on Saturday morning, our community bird project met beside the marsh. I had imagined that tracking migrants would mean pointing binoculars at the sky. Instead, before sunrise, we carried folding tables, checked the small metal rings and waited beside the reed beds with our notebooks open.

The first birds arrived as thin shadows over the water. We could hear their quick calls before we could see them. When a flock dropped into the reeds, our team moved quietly along the path. We counted what we could, recorded the time and passed the information to Noor, who entered it on the project tablet.

The wind made the work difficult. It rattled the reeds and blew our pages across the boardwalk. Twice, a bird lifted away before I had finished counting. I felt useless until Noor showed me that my notes about the direction of the flock were valuable too.

By midday the sky was empty again. We had recorded fewer birds than we hoped, but the numbers joined observations from other volunteers. On the walk home, I understood that the project depended on patient attention rather than dramatic discoveries.

Text 2: The crossing point, by Marianne Okafor

An original contemporary online feature.

At the old ferry landing, the bird-watchers stood in a line facing the river. The spring migrants were expected before breakfast, but the morning offered only mist, cold hands and the occasional gull. We had come to help a local science project discover where the travelling birds paused on their journey.

Then a call passed along the line: birds above the far bank. They were small, fast and easily lost against the pale sky. I wrote down the time while Idris counted aloud and Leila watched the direction of flight. For ten breathless minutes, nobody wanted to look away. When the flock disappeared behind the trees, we compared our notes and found that each person had noticed something different.

The second visit was harder. Rain blurred the writing on my clipboard and the river wind pushed the birds low over the water. We missed the first group completely. Instead of packing up, the volunteers moved closer together under the shelter and listened for calls. A faint chorus came from the willows, and this time our records agreed.

The project did not give us a perfect morning or a complete count. It gave us a pattern: the same birds had used this stretch of river on two days. Everyone left with wet coats, cold fingers and the feeling that a small observation could become useful when added to many others.

Compare how the writers present their experiences of taking part in the bird-tracking project and the ways they communicate those experiences to the reader.

To help you organise your comparison, you could consider:

• the different jobs and difficulties faced by the volunteers
• how other people contribute to the work
• how details of sound, weather and movement make the experience clear
• how the endings show what the writers have learned

Support your comparison with relevant details from each text and identify the text discussed.