I have recently been busy helping to form a community group in Ravenswood, Cumbernauld. The group is made up of local people interested in their local green space, Ravenswood Local Nature Reserve. This area has an orchid meadow, woodland and ponds and is great for wildlife such as bats, deer, frogs, kestrels and dragonflies.
Meetings have been held to discuss how to encourage local people to discover the wildlife at the reserve and use it more often. One of the ways this may be achieved is through citizen science. This is getting people outside, discovering, learning about and recording wildlife, such as birds, plants, bugs and mammals. It is an exciting way to get people interested in the nature that is around them and we hope to involve schools and local groups in this project. The Ravenswood community group will be linked to the Seafar and Ravenswood Community Council.
On a frosty morning last week I took a P6 class from St Mary’s Primary school in Cumbernauld out to Ravenswood LNR for a nature walk. They enjoyed identifying tree buds, doing some map reading and looking for birds and we saw a skein of geese flying overhead.
I have been helping Froglife to create ponds at one of their sites in Cumbernauld called St Maurice’s. Here two ponds were dug by volunteers from the National Trust for Scotland in September. We then worked with a contractor to dig a bigger pond at the site. When digging ponds, they should have shallow sides as the most diverse part of a pond is the shallow margins.
In December, with Helen Simmons, my fellow Natural Communities trainee, we ran a workshop at the SNH Citizen Science Sharing Good Practice event in Battleby. This was to share ideas about how to engage different people in citizen science. Everyone can get involved in citizen science and it is a great way to learn about nature whilst contributing to our greater knowledge of wildlife around the country.
I have done a huge range of things this year, from digging ponds and surveying newts to running events for the public, doing door to door surveys and holding community meetings. I have gained experience in community engagement and learned about pond creation, amphibians and reptiles. I would like to thank the Heritage Lottery Fund, TCV and Froglife for this fantastic opportunity. It has been a great experience which I have really enjoyed.