Hi my name’s Hannah and I’m the new Freshwater Invertebrate Apprentice, working with WWT and RSPB, predominantly based at the WWT headquarters at Slimbridge (Gloucestershire!). I started my apprenticeship 11 weeks ago, so I it’s definitely time for my first blog, before I forget too much!
Although I’m the Freshwater Invertebrate Apprentice, the project I’m involved with is actually looking at research into the declining numbers of Common Scoter breeding in the Scottish Highlands. We’re looking at invertebrate food availability for Scoters in lochs that Scoters still use to breed on and lochs they used to breed on but have now abandoned, to see if food availability may be influencing declining numbers. The RSPB team based at Forsinard began sampling invertebrates last year and collected around 2,000 samples, which I found in the lab waiting for me when I arrived to begin work at Slimbridge in April.
My first few weeks were spent at Slimbridge getting to know everyone and finding my way around, I’ve been made really welcome, everybody is very friendly and helpful. Apart from finding my feet, I also spent a lot of my time in the lab trying to sort the samples into some kind of order and get a basic idea of what inverts were being found using the different sampling methods.
I came up to Stirling for the Freshwater Invertebrate course at the end of April and met all the other apprentices and staff from BTCV and Buglife, it was brilliant to meet everyone and hear all about the other apprenticeships. Kieren has already talked about the course so I won’t go on about it, but will just say thanks to Craig and John etc it really was a great course!
From Stirling I then travelled on to Forsinard, which was a 6 hour train journey and the furthest north I’d ever been! I joined the RSPB sampling team for two weeks carrying out invert sampling at some very remote Lochs. It was a great experience and really helped me gain a much better understanding of the project. I got to meet Iain the Peatland Apprentice and it was good to hear about his experiences of working with the RSPB at Forsinard. I also had the opportunity to get involved with Scoter watches, one day I was watching 10 Scoters on one Loch (apparently this accounts for about 20% of the Scottish breeding population!), it was very interesting and really helped me understand why so little is known about the feeding habits of this diving duck. Apart from Scoter related activities I also had the opportunity to get involved with other RSPB work, including raptor watches and helping to lead a group of school children on a pond dipping day. The photo should show Chris (a RSPB volunteer), me and Iain starting out on a trek to a Scoter loch!
I’ve been back in Slimbridge for a few weeks now and have been continuing to go through last year invert samples. I’m also preparing to go to Iceland on Friday to see more Scoters and be involved with invert sampling going on over there. I’m massively excited and will take lots of pictures to fill my next blog with!