Hi again.
It’s been a while since I last made and entry, so it’s time to make the plunge.
The last two months have been incredibly busy in BTCV Scotland’s Wildlife Counts/Citizen Science team. I came back from a nice, relaxing holiday in Orkney (NOT the Orkneys, as I was told rather sternly by a
nice farmer on Westray) and straight into a maelstrom of preparatory activity for a wide range of events in May and June.
We started the event-marathon with the opening of our Wildlife Counts Biodiversity Mentor programme. This has been/is to be the main focus of my placement with BTCV: creating and increasing biological recording networks within South West Scotland. The aim of the programme is to train up members
of the public in taxonomy and bio-recording skills, in order to set up a self-sustaining biological recording community in Glasgow, Inverclyde and Ayrshire. My first few months on the placement were pretty much taken up by recruiting and organising the workshops, with the help of the local authorities
in those areas.
Our first introductory workshops, led by my other boss, John McFarlane, were very successful and generated much enthusiasm amongst the participants. They were introduced to the concept of biological recording and its importance in the world of conservation. We then went out for an hour or
two to do some recording. Everybody enjoyed the experience and all were eager to start the taxonomy workshops provided by our rich(er) cousins, the very talented Natural Talent Apprentices.
The other workshops have all been very informative and enjoyable: Urban Biodiversity in Ardeer (led by Suzie Bairner) in which we braved horizontal rain in the fruitless search for terrestrial invertebrates
(THEY were smart enough to stay under cover); two Rocky Shores workshops (led by Ruth Crundwell) took me back to my youth of playing in (err… investigating) rockpools; and Lichens and Hymenoptera workshops (Viv Lisewski-Hobson and Cath Fiedler respectively), both of which I was unfortunately unable to attend due to an impossibly busy work schedule.
This promises to be a very exciting and useful programme, if we are able to maintain the enthusiasm of the Mentors and support them in their needs.
Interspersed with these events, I facilitated various stand-alone training courses, prepared activities for the sour staff conference (where I injured my ribs – SOBER) and helped out at small-scale public
engagement events with a range of partner organisations, including: a sawfly ID workshop, another Lichen workshop and the Glasgow’s Buzzing wildflowers and pollinators event at Kelvin Grove Park.
Another huge commitment was our stall at Edinburgh’s prestigious Gardening Scotland outdoor living show. Several THOUSAND people passed through BTCV Scotland’s corner, most pulled in by our display
microhabitats: Perspex boxes containing an amazing range of invertebrates from local parks and ponds. The apprentices and trainees did a fantastic job of enthusing guests, young and not-so-young, on these miniature wonders of the natural world and simple ways of conserving them.
Finally, there was 6 solid days of facilitating BTCV staff biodiversity training, also led by current Natural Talent Apprentices. A thoroughly enjoyable, but tiring, series of biological recording training in: Wildflower, Lichens, Terrestrial Invertebrates, Aquatic Invertebrates, Seaweeds and Seashore Molluscs. Another glowing success (although by this point, I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted).
A very productive, but incredibly tiring, two months. Now I have the time to concentrate on the trainee aspect of my traineeship, so now it’s time to go on some interesting exotic courses in deepest darkest England and see how the competition are doing…