The most significant thing to happen during March was that I finally managed to finish off my mire surveys of the Black Beck catchment after bad weather slowed me down before Christmas. It is a huge relief to have all of the data collected and it now means I can get on with writing the report although I will miss being out on the fells so much. Report writing is something I’ve never done before but is a very useful skill to have in nature conservation. I managed to time the last few days so that I had some lovely weather and felt really proud when I recorded my last point! The report needs to be finished and sent to the Environment Agency in a few months and it will be interesting to see what the outcome is.

Another thing I managed to get completed this month was my college qualification. I have now finished my Level 3 diploma in Environmental Conservation and it just needs to be externally verified. It was an even bigger relief to get this finished as it involved quite a lot of written work!

I attended another careers fair midway through the month, this time at Furness College in Barrow. The fair was open to anyone who was interested in attending so I met all sorts of people and really enjoyed chatting to them. Hopefully I have raised a bit of awareness about the nature conservation sector and also about the work of Cumbria Wildlife Trust. I hope to see some of the people I chatted to volunteering for us soon! It also became clear that a lot of young people don’t really know what wildlife conservation is or what Wildlife Trusts do as many of them assumed we were involved with animal welfare and rescue – another reason why I think we should learn about conservation in schools!

Last week I went down to Suffolk to FSC Flatford Mill to do a bird ID course. It was an absolutely fantastic week and I learnt so much as well as seeing lots of birds for the first time – my 2016 list has benefitted no end! Every day we went for a walk before breakfast, spent the day at various nature reserves and birding sites and then had talks in the evening after dinner. I feel that my birdsong ID has really come on and hopefully if I keep practising will soon be able to do most common birds. My favourite site was Minsmere where I saw my first bittern, lots of bearded tits and stone curlew but I had a first at almost every site we visited. On the final day we had a ringing demonstration before breakfast and I was so excited to get to hold some of the birds before letting them go again - as you can see in the photo of me enthusiastically squeezing a blue tit above! I really enjoyed the ringing and am going to look out for places to get involved with it locally, and hopefully at university too. I tried to keep a list of every bird we saw in the week and it came out at over 90 species! It was a great experience and I would really recommend residential courses with the Field Studies Council to anyone wanting to learn more about a particular interest they have.

I have lots of red squirrel surveys lined up for April so look out for the photos from those in next month’s post – last year there were some very amusing ones!

Kate

About the Author: Kate Cartmel-Done was Apprentice Conservation Officer with Cumbria Wildlife trust from 2014 to September 2016