It’s been a difficult few weeks on Uist. The work dries up very quickly after the survey season and so I’m left with mostly computer related work to do. It’s not as fun as any of the outdoors stuff but it must be done. All part of the experience but it does take a lot of mental toughness to sit in your own living room and batter through some work.
Since the last blog entry I have found out that unfortunately I will not be receiving the assistant warden position that is becoming available on the islands. It’s through my hard work over the previous 13 months that the position is being created so I can take a lot of heart but unfortunately there’s an RSPB staff member being made redundant elsewhere and rules being rules he has to be offered the post before the interview stage. He chose to take it and although he won’t know about me or my desire for that job it’s been a bitter pill to swallow.
There’s an old Scottish saying I think applies here “What’s for you, won’t go by you” and I take a lot on board from the feedback I have received from BTCV, the RSPB and from members of the local nature group Curracag.
I was asked to organise a talk for Curracag on my time here and I thought nothing of it until a few days before when I really started to panic about the content. I’ve never been one for formality and I know that comes across in my blogs as well as in everyday conversation with me so I didn’t know what to make of the talk but I felt it went very well and was attended well considering ¾ of the group seemed to be off the island. I told some of the fantastic stories of my time here, I spoke a bit about my past and my desires for my future career.
It was on the last slide however that I’ll admit I got a little bit choked up. There was a picture that I felt summed up my time here very well. It was of Amy Burns, a fellow apprentice and RSPB worker, and I posing with the Balranald sign in front of the cottage. I was saying how I hoped everyone would welcome the new guy in the same manner that they accepted me and I was thanking everyone under the sun when I could feel a little tear welling up. It’s the first time I’ve really thought about leaving. I’ve put positive spins on it and I’ve accepted that there’s nothing anyone can do but I’ve never really thought about how I’ll feel come November and I’m no longer an apprentice. I’ve applied for jobs but they feel a million years away from being available and it’s a terrible time to be looking for work. In fact in the last week I’ve had two rejections, one of the posts I considered myself perfect for had over 80 applicants so it’s going to be trench warfare to get my next position.
I have been in early discussion with the people out here about staying and doing some SRDPs for a couple of a months, it’d probably take me up until Christmas, maybe into January. It’d certainly make sense to take it but it’s 99% indoors computer work and not the direction I’d like my career to take.
However I’m sticking the positive head on and I’ve seen some amazing things, including a few days ago letting a manx shearwater go. It had turned up in a garden and although the RSPB are not the ones who deal with these situations, people do phone us up so I went and picked up this poor bird and it didn’t even struggle. Not a good sign. Anyway they are mostly active at night so I put the wee guy in a box and kept him in until dusk and then put him outside at the end of the pier.
I checked a few hours later and all he had done was curl up in the corner. I’m an animal lover so I was fretting about what to do but when I checked in the morning he was gone, hopefully catching up with the other migrating birds.
22 days of apprenticing left! Scary stuff!
Kieren Jones
Kieren.Jones@rspb.org.uk
