This Blog is brought to you by the letter ‘B’!!!
Well then, coming up on 3 months into the apprenticeship already and it has absolutely flown by. Days filled with training courses, workshops & site visits. Not to mention my relentless quest to get as much community involvement in my projects as possible.
The training courses I have attended so far have been great for my development within this sector of work, from ‘community engagement’, ‘developing and supporting volunteers’ right through to ‘badger survey techniques’ and a Bumblebee ID workshop. The latter being particular useful; for the Glasgow’s Buzzing Project.
The project at Fallin Bing (Fallin Bing; From Coalfield to Brownfield) is now gathering pace and dates have been set for the visits. Visit 1 will be a nice Bug-walk around the bing lead by Buglife’ s own Suzie Bairner (a former TCV apprentice herself), pointing out the wide array of invertebrates to be found on this former industrial site which now holds a great mosaic of habitats for insects and other wildlife alike. Visit 2 is all about wildflower planting, creating and enhancing wildflower meadows is a great way to attract those all important pollinator species like the humble bumblebee (I promise I didn’t mean for that to rhyme) and all those extrovertly colour butterflies and Day-flying moths. Visit 3 will lean towards scrub removal. A chance to get your hands dirty and use some graft and guile to enhance the site, but if you get tired we have the Stirling TCV working group to give us a helping hand.
A huge thanks must go out to Linda from Fallin library who has let us put up an exhibit on the library storyboard, and has been great in passing on information regarding the project to the local community as well as allowing me to trawl through the abundance of old photos the library has been given by local people. It has certainly made for a more captivating exhibit.
Story-Board Exhibit at Fallin Library
Glasgow’s Buzzing is also simmering away nicely with 4 Schools getting involved on 4 different sites as well as the community groups; The Hidden Gardens, Woodlands Community Gardens, CHIP (Children’s inclusion partnership) & TCV’s Easterhouse Green Gym Group, looking to get involved. We will be going on Bug-walks, wildflower planting and creating habitat for wee bugs and beasties throughout the spring/summer months, and hopefully we will get some bio-recording done for the ladybird survey.
Bee Bank for solitary Bees (excellent pollinators) at Hogganfield Park
(c) Suzanne Bairner
The enhancement of existing meadows has also begun, with the areas at Pollok Country Park, Bellahouston Park and Hogganfield park all being marked up & mapped out for work to start.
If you would like to get involved with the project in Fallin, or if you are from that area and you have a story to tell visit http://fallinbing.blogspot.co.uk or contact myself at Paul.Gunn@buglife.org.uk for more information.
If you would like to get involved in the Ladybird survey, you can submit records of any ladybirds you find to http://www.ladybird-survey.org/bbc/ladybird.php , or if you have trouble identifying a given ladybird, send us an image at scotland@buglife.org.uk and we will try and ID it for you.
For Glasgow’s Buzzing, you can contact me at the above email address for details of all walks and events or failing that just keep your eyes-peeled for an enthusiastic ginger lad with a sweep net running round a park near you