I love my job, it’s official! Since my last blog I’ve been incredibly busy and enjoying every minute. I’ve completed seven training courses, helped BTCV Scotland and volunteers with practical habitat work, played in the woods with nursery school children, met lots of lovely people, and started working on some exciting projects.
So what am I up to this week? Scottish Natural Heritage is funding a “Simple Pleasures” 
walks leaflet to promote one of the routes across the proposed Seven Lochs Wetland Park. To research this I walked the route with Glasgow City Council’s Countryside Rangers, checking the paths and links to communities, taking photographs, and jotting down features to highlight in the leaflet, such as “Look out for the big log – can you walk along it?”
I’m also working on forming a volunteer group to carry out butterfly surveys at Hogganfield LNR, which is at the western end of the proposed park. It’ll be a valuable experience for me, and is the perfect way to build a contact base to help promote the plans for the Wetland Park and encourage people to get involved with the project. The data collected will be sent to Butterfly Conservation and Glasgow City Council’s Conservation Dept (which includes Natural Communities trainee Helen Simmons!). They’ve done loads of work to improve the site for insects so it’ll be interesting to see which butterflies are attracted to the enhanced areas. This week I’ve had a really positive response to my adverts for volunteers. I’m looking forward to training them at Hogganfield, which is in my opinion Scotland’s best urban wildlife site.
The other week I was on a training course with Helen, learning about water voles! You’d be 
surprised by how many of them live in Glasgow. They can be found in several parks, school grounds, and even in people’s gardens! Some of the Glaswegian population are choosing to live away from water and might be a different, upland species. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see a water vole, but there were lots of tantalising clues.
I’ve also been discovering Forestry Commission Scotland’s Branching Out programme. They held a seminar last month and I went along, keen to discover more about the 
activities they run and to meet people delivering similar projects. Branching Out is a referral based service, providing a 12 week programme of activities for mental health patients. The activities range from practical habitat work, bushcraft, environmental art, tai chi, walks and lots more. During the seminar we had the chance to experience two of these activities, and I chose story-telling and willow weaving. Do you like the willow fish I made? It’s meant to be a mackerel! This year a Branching Out programme is being delivered by North Lanarkshire Council (a key partner for the Seven Lochs Wetland Park) so I’m hoping to get some hands on experience and perhaps improve my willow weaving skills!
My most daunting piece of work so far is preparing to facilitate a community engagement workshop for the Wetland Park. I’ve invited delivery organisations, individuals, biodiversity experts, neighbourhood coordinators – to name a few! So far 18 people have confirmed they’re coming, so I’m very glad I went on a Facilitation Skills course last week! The main 
aim of the workshop is to find out what community engagement work is happening in and around the proposed park and to identity ways in which we can work together. This should help me discover how I can provide them with support and build upon the good work already happening. A further aim is incorporate their work and best practice into the Communications and Engagement Strategy for the Wetland Park – which hopefully I’ll have time to write before the end of my placement!
Each week I’m developing new skills and building upon my previous experience. It’s hard not to feel over-excited when I think about the projects happening over the coming months. Thank you very much to both Heritage Lottery Fund and BTCV Scotland, for without you I wouldn’t be here experiencing this wonderful opportunity.
