TCV Blogs

On the beach this month I found a small, brown egg. I picked it up, gave it a squeeze between my finger and thumb and was surprised to find that it was soft. It felt like a squash ball. I had a flick through my shore guide but nothing seemed to fit the description; there were […]
Continue reading Mudflat Colonies

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Time files when you’re having fun and the monthly blogs I should have been writing soared past too in all the excitment… So I have made this an EXTRA long edition to make up for the absence. To start we have to venture back in time to the start of summer ’18… The Last Safari […]
Continue reading A Belated Blog : Part I

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Spice Girls- Spice Up Your Life, has been stuck in my head all morning (which is a great way to start the week), hence this blog title, but I have actually been spidering up many people’s lives this month. A new, free spider guide For the past few months I’ve been working on making a […]
Continue reading Spider up your life!

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

At the beginning of August, I took a spur of the moment decision to go on an adventure down south for a week-long wild skills course at FSC Preston Montford. The course was being run as part of a collaborative ‘Growing Confidence’ project by FSC and Shropshire Wildlife Trust, which aims to help young people […]
Continue reading And now, for something completely different...

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Apologies for the rather late blog this time round, every time I tried to do this something else just got in the way! But hey, better late than never, right? July got off to a ‘wild’ start as I attended my first event of the month: Wild in the Woods at Auchnacraig Park – a […]
Continue reading Snails, celebrities and lots, lots more...

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Summer was slow coming but is going fast, we’re already more than half-way through! I’ve been spending it out and about doing lots of fieldwork and attending lots of courses. Most of my courses have been plant-based (or bug-food based from an entomologist point of view). Learning to identify plants is considered vital for ecologists […]
Continue reading Courses, Fieldwork and Events

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Don’t worry, I haven’t spent the month playing dungeons and dragons, I just couldn’t come up with a better title for this post. July has flown by but I’m afraid I don’t have much to report back on in terms of my traineeship. I’ve had a bit of time off to enjoy the sunshine, so […]
Continue reading Dragons, damsels and masters

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

Over the past couple of months, I’ve attended two thought provoking conferences. While I love my traineeship it’s easy to get bogged down in my daily tasks, working through samples and learning to identify my specialist group (leafhoppers and planthoppers) without considering the bigger picture. These conferences with fantastic speakers and interesting people have made […]
Continue reading The Bigger Picture

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

In June I decided to expand my horizons a little and plants seemed like the obvious first step in my voyage out of the water: I had been based in a museum botany department for five months at this point and was beginning to see the irony that I still knew next to nothing about […]
Continue reading Branching Out

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent

I’ve had a busy time over the last couple of months, and not a lot of time spent in the office- so I for one am appreciating all the dry sunny weather! At the start of May I attended a recording workshop run by my Butterfly Conservation colleague Anthony McCluskey at Pitencrief Park in Dunfermline. […]
Continue reading Not Just Moths...

This article was posted in the blog Natural Talent