Hello! My name is Gwen and I’m the upland invertebrates apprentice in the lovely Highlands of Scotland.
I’m based with the RSPB at Corrimony and the surrounding area and I’ve certainly got a little bit fitter during the last few weeks – I thought it would be fine as I spent a lot of time outdoors before this apprenticeship, but going up mountain and down glen doing vegetation surveys with all the bits and bobs you need to take out with you is tiring work. Putting my transects through some really tight contour lines on a map can’t have helped, particularly when I’m prone to chasing moths halfway up a slope, but hey, I’ll do anything for a lovely Northern Spinach. Using heather to pull yourself up is key – the roots are super strong. Another thing that has made me fit is rain, for two reasons – first of all, I realized early on that if I crossed a river then it rained later on in the day, that river would be like Moses crossing the Red Sea, but in reverse. Therefore, if it starts raining you really have to run for it. I have also discovered that midges actually seem to strike during the rain, when it’s cooler. I think it’s got nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with them knowing it’s rather difficult to manoeuvre on wet ground with a wet midge net on, and that they can get a good laugh at me falling over twice as frequently as I already do (that’s about once every five minutes, statistics fans). Overall though, I’ve been in the office or on holiday the last couple of weeks and I’m really missing some of the most beautiful places I’ve been to. I feel like they are my secret – but the photo below gives you an idea of where I’ve been.
My navigation skills have certainly improved in the last few weeks, as have my upland plant ID skills and my ability to shout ‘Moth!’ or ‘Dragonfly!’ or ‘Tipulid!’ (also known as daddy long legs) while running after said creature over steep crags has slowly leached into my personal life, and makes my friends think I’m a tiny bit insane. I’ve been collecting as much invert data as possible while doing the vegetation surveys as invertebrates are very under-recorded in the Highlands, so hopefully that will be of some use to the Highland Biological Recording Group. The best things I’ve seen so far are white faced darters, (beautiful dragonflies pretty much confined to the Highlands of Scotland), golden ringed drangonflies ovipositing (huge black and yellow insects laying eggs), a great yellow bumble bee (a chunky fella pretty much confined to machair), clouded buff (a yellow moth that looks like it’s wearing lipstick) and Urocerus gigas, a huge wood wasp that can drill through wood! That beats all the otters, golden eagles and red deer I’ve seen. Special mention goes to the two badgers I nearly stepped on in the middle of the day, who promptly went grumpily shuffling off, possibly muttering their consternation like Badger in Wind in the Willows.
I have also helped out with a couple of Bioblitzes and attended the Scottish Biodiversity Conference which have been great fun and a fantastic opportunity to meet other apprentices past and present. I don’t think there is any other job else that would let me do fieldwork, office work, attend conferences, collect biological records, attend a 4×4 driving course, help with community events and spend a day surveying hemiptera with an expert. That’s just the first few weeks, so I’m excited about what’s coming up – a myriapods (centipede/millipede) course, highland ant surveys, and (very scarily) a chainsaw course. I’ll also be going to Edinburgh for a month in a couple of weeks to find out about museum curation, invertebrate ID and hopefully catch up with some RSPB/BTCV people down south. Exciting stuff!
Suas Leis a’ Ghàidhlig! Mar sin leibh an dràsda.
Gwen