Back to Work

Wow, had an amazing response to my last blog on finding two suspiciously dead badgers on a trip out. It also confirmed to me what an amazingly small world conservation is, I had a brief chat on twitter with one of the country’s premier badger campaigners who I found out later to be the step-mother of one of my dearest friends.

I’ve been back in paid employment this month for the first time since early September and it feels fantastic, again re-enforcing my belief that 5 years of hard graft volunteering was worth it in the end! I briefly mentioned what I do in my post ‘The Year it all Happened (part 2)’  but I’ll go into a tad more detail now.

I’m currently working for the RSPB and my job is surveying Ring Ouzels and their habitat in two neighbouring Peak District valleys, one valley, Crowden, where the breeding population has remained stable, and the other, Dove Stone, where the population has crashed in the last 25 years. The first thing to do once I got all my kit was to start surveying the habitat, arguably the most important element of my job. This is to see if there are any differences in vegetation and vegetation density between the two valleys.

Pic 1. A solid mass of bilberry

I have two different elements to survey, habitat structure and habitat composition. Composition involves looking at what plants are living at a set point, and structure involves looking at the height and density of the vegetation in the same set point. All my survey points are on 500 metre intervals placed in and around the respective valleys. Each survey point has 16 individual plots within it to survey so it’s pretty comprehensive.

Pic 2: Checking the density

Pic 3. A more mixed plot

It’s probably easier to demonstrate with pictures. So picture 1 demonstrates an individual plot. The metal square is called a quadrat and this particular quadrat is half a metre square in size. In picture 1 the vegetation in 100% bilberry. In picture 2 I’m checking the structure of the same plot, I have to count the white stripes on the pole, there are 9 in total, the less stripes I can see the more dense the vegetation is. In this case I saw 7 stripes out of 9 which means it is relatively dense. Picture 3 shows a more typical plot which is more varied in composition, it looks something like 25% sedge, 50% bilberry and the rest a mix of grass and moss (sorry the photo quality on the work’s phone is terrible!).

It’s pretty tough work to be honest, there’s a lot of hill walking and a lot of kit to carry. I’ve been blessed with good weather so far and I’ve been able to leave some of my waterproofs in the car to save on weight (rather foolishly some may argue!). The first week in particular reminded me how much fitness I lost over the winter, my legs ceasing to work by the end of it but I’m over the ring rust stage and am enjoying the walking.

I’ve now completed the first round (of four) of vegetation surveying and now I’m onto the good bit, the surveying for the Ring Ouzels themselves. More of which another time, but I’ll leave with a pic of the first Ouzel I saw this year (you’ll have to believe me, it is there I promise!).

Ring Ouzel at Dove Stone 22nd April 2015. Photo: Author

 

What gets my goat (moth)

I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a new blog post. Basically nothing interesting has happened since my last post. Sure spring is in the air now, although to me it hasn’t started until I hear my first singing Chiffchaff, so it is now the vague period in my mind before spring and after winter. It’s also the vague period for me in between job searching and employment. I’m going to be an RSPB employee again in just under a month but I’ve still got to look for work (that’s the government’s ‘wonderful’ Universal Credit scheme for you!). So what to write?

How about a tongue in cheek not-at-all-serious look at the things I find irritating or infuriating about wildlife conservation and volunteering? Yeah I think that’ll do, to amuse myself perhaps.. No moths involved..

OK number one: Cliques: I found this highly irritating when I was starting out doing voluntary work. There’s nothing worse than turning up on your first day as a volunteer for a new organisation or at a new site to find there are a bunch of middle-aged men who have volunteered there for decades who treat any newcomers with suspicion and like to do things a certain way thank you very much. Add to this the paid staff who treat these cliques with kid gloves and try little as possible to assimilate any new volunteer into the group.

Two: Plurals or singular? : Let me explain by paraphrasing a tweet I read yesterday. “Nice news piece on how a woodland reserve is helping willow tit.” What? Is the woodland reserve helping just one willow tit? Or many willow tits? It should read either “Nice news piece on how a woodland reserve is helping willow tits,” or “Nice piece on how a woodland reserve is helping a willow tit.” You see it all the time, especially in bird magazines “come to this nice coastal reserve to see Avocet” it might say. OK I know what it means but gods it irritates me!

Three: Bandwagons: As nature conservationists we should be concerned about all native wildlife, big little common or endangered. The little stuff feeds the big stuff (in general) and the common could become endangered if we carry on the way we are going (again, in general). But, as conservationists we like to have flavours of the month, all very worthy I may add. Be it whales, tigers, giant pandas, hen harriers etc. Now as I was involved with Hen Harrier conservation last year and am heavily aware of their persecution, but other raptors are also persecuted, Golden Eagles, White-tailed Eagles, Merlins etc. Kestrels are also in decline but I don’t see kestrel twibbons on twitter adorning profile pics, where’s the high profile Pearl-bordered Fritillary campaigns? Swifts are rapidly declining. I’m aware of the vagaries of money and prioritising but it is true in my mind that certain species feature prominently for a while before the next big things come along to take over the twitterspace.

Four: Blog posts that don’t go anywhere and are only there to keep the blog active in between more meaningful posts! (See here for details!)

Five: The ‘I know best’ volunteer: We all must have seen these. Volunteers (usually within the clique) who have their own set way of doing things and have the greatest ideas about what and more importantly (in their mind) what not to do. For instance a work party leader will organise a work party and the said ‘I know best vol’ wants to do it his/her way, and if they can’t do it won’t do it or will do it their way.

Six: We’re all a bit weird really. You never get any cool kids signing up to be conservation volunteers. We’re all a bit left field, all like a woolly jumper, we all have a political or green-organisation car sticker, fashion consists of free t-shirt acquired from various projects, we’re all a bit too geeky for our own good. How can we appeal to the general public and get everyone enthused about the world we inhabit when we appear to be in a specialist niche and proud of it?!

Seven: Pay. When you finish volunteering and decide to get a career in wildlife conservation you soon start to realise you get paid a relative pittance to do one of the most important jobs in the planet. I know people who have gone down the academic route, paid thousands for undergrads, masters, and even PHDs to then apply for a far less than £20k job. I know we do the job for love not money but the money sure helps to live off!

Anyway, rants over. I’ll add again that none of this is serious, I quite like high profile campaigns that grabs people’s attention and can provide a focus for wider areas if done properly. Also none of this is in a particular order, just the order in which it came into my head than down onto the keyboard.

Wading Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago I attended a talk at CAWOS, my local ornithological society (see an earlier post about my take on traditional societies) and my mind was opened, again! The talk was by Rick and Elis Simpson on the subject of wading birds (or shorebirds depending on where you live!).

Now, I’ve attended a few talks in this winter season already, one was about Derbyshire wildlife, another was about Oystercatchers, but I missed one on my specialist subject of upland Pennine wildlife (D’oh!). None of my attended talks, though very well researched and presented particularly inspired me to further action. Until now.

Ringed Plovers, Leasowe, Merseyside. Photo: Alex Cropper

Rick and Elis, to cut a long story short, decided to take a round the world trip to see as many wading birds as possible for charity. This was done initially to raise money for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) to help the fortunes of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. The focus soon changed however. They began realising that many species of wader they were seeing were in trouble and were in need of help. Again to cut the story down again they then saw that many organisations and individuals were putting in a lot of effort into reversing population declines by running low-cost conservation programs. For instance, to help protect some beach breeding waders in Australia leaflets were printed out along with some larger posters to create awareness within the beach using public. This cost less than £1000. Other projects include providing farmers with training and the means to work around breeding waders in their crop fields (for instance getting marker flags/poles to mark the nests out to avoid destroying them), and purchasing mist nets to assist local research projects, both projects that wouldn’t cost a lot of money. An idea for a charity was born – Wader Quest. A charity that helps fund small and cheap to run shorebird projects, and raises funds for wader conservation. A wonderful idea, many conservation charities spent tens of thousands of pounds/dollars on gargantuan and intensive research projects and nature reserve running costs; which is fantastic but doesn’t leave much room for the little guy. I joined the charity as a sponsor almost immediately.

A mixed wader flock at Leasowe, Merseyside (Look hard, they’re there believe me!). Photo: Alex Cropper

Now, I have a confession, my knowledge of waders is pretty poor and I prefer birds of prey and seabirds, but don’t tell anyone! But I love the idea of funding grass-roots projects – I firmly believe that if the grass roots are sorted out than the people and organisations further up the ladder will have a lot easier job ahead of them (like in the rest of life). I’d definitely urge everyone to think about joining Wader Quest as a sponsor, they’re fantastic! (And no, I don’t work for them I’m just completely inspired by them!). Now, I’m going to stop writing at start swatting up on wading birds…..

Here’s their website: http://www.waderquest.org/

Sphagnum and Surveys

Bit of deja-vu again this time. As, yet again, I’ve been up on Saddleworth Moor restoring blanket bog with the guys from RSPB Dove Stone. This time was slightly different, it was still spreading sphagnum to areas which are currently sphagnum-free zones, but this time it was the actual plant I was planting rather than chucking beads around.

The areas targeted this week were areas previously restored about five years ago by the local water authority. These areas have seen gullies blocked by heather bales and stone dams to create soaking wet areas. The only element missing from these areas are sphagnum, hence planting sphagnum plants rather than beads.

The task itself is relatively easy, first remove the lump of sphagnum from its sack, then break the frozen solid lump of plant matter up with a spade (!), then get a fist size lump, make a hole with your heal in a damp area and place the lump of sphagnum in said hole. And repeat.

Pretty enjoyable, although the weather over the last month has made the ground ultra frozen places so damp areas were at a premium.

The real plant in the hand!

Task two this week was to begin a Dipper Cinclus cinclus survey, again for the guys at RSPB Dove Stone (I think you can gather I do most of my volunteering there!). My survey patch was Crowden Little Brook, a small fast moving stream which begins on the moors and ends in the Longdendale Valley.

Ideal Dipper country (tho none on this particular stretch!)

The terrain was pretty tough, tussocky grass and numerous crossings of a fast moving stream made for a difficult walk. This is ideal Dipper territory, but not ideal human territory! Two Dippers were seen by me and my colleague (both of which were early on, before the terrain got difficult!)

I said surveys in the title, not survey, as I’ve done two this week. I’ve just got back from surveying a part of The Roaches for the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. This is a four part survey  so I shall report in this in the coming weeks.

Back on the bog

The team arriving at the site, a bit on the cold side today!

On Wedenesday it was back with the RSPB on Saddleworth Moor spreading more sphagnum seeds onto potentially boggy areas.  I’m not going to repeat what I wrote a couple of weeks ago as the task was just the same, I’ll go into a tad more detail tho maybe.

The weather was a lot nicer than last time, the snow was on the ground forming mini glaciers rather than falling horizontally across my face! By and large the moor was good to start spreading again. The sun was out, the birds were singing to write a cliche! (specifically Meadow Pipits Anthus pratensis were singing, Red Grouse Lapogus lapogus scotica were calling and a Snipe Gallinago gallinago flew over).

It was a lot more noticeable this time (mainly due to a lack of snow blowing into my eyes at 40mph!) that the areas we were spreading the sphagnum bead were largely devoid of sustaining vegetation, there was just a mono-culture-like spread of grass and the odd clump of heather. The areas of bare ground were more noticeable too; the bare ground up here is a very dark brown, almost black, soil and it dries very quickly, some areas I walked across had the consistency of cheap instant coffee granules. Well managed moorlands act as a brilliant carbon capture store and the dark soil is an indicator of this, so the eroding soil is a direct visual example of carbon escaping into the air. The addition of the sphagnum will help to stop the erosion and restart a carbon capture process (sphagnum is the major component of peat, a large source of carbon).

The sphapgnum beads in my hand, they have the consistency of silica. (Photo by me)

In other news, I did a recce of a site for a Woodcock survey I will be doing in May. The rather eerie Alderley Edge (near the Wizard pub!). More on this in May…

This time last year

This week, due to the balmy British weather(!), the weekly volunteering session was cancelled. Unfortunately at Dove Stone we couldn’t get up to the moor as the snow had drifted across the access road. The sphagnum in the buckets were frozen solid too. So I was at a bit of a loss as to what to post this week.

My mind has been drifting to this time last year when the weather was a lot warmer. In fact the weather was unseasonably warm ironically, so much so that I could start butterfly surveying.

Last year I was assigned a butterfly transect walk at RSPB Dove Stone (specifically the shore of Yeoman’s Hay and Dove Stone reservoirs) which ran from April 1 to September 30, but if the conditions were favourable I could start early.

So armed with a clip board, a compass, an anemometer, a butterfly net and a butterfly ID book I began my survey. The conditions needed to be specific, temperature above 13°C (preferably above 17°C), not too windy, and not too cloudy. The first survey was a bit light on numbers, only four butterflies seen (two commas Polygonia c-album, a small tortoiseshell Aglais urticae, and a peacock Inachis io), but it was a great first step for me in the field of butterfly surveying having never done it before.

By the time the end of September came I was practically an expert (yer right!) in butterfly surveying, and my knowledge of the insects went from nothing at all virtually to pretty decent in six months.

Small Copper, taken by me at the end of August 2012

Hopefully the weather will improve, and next week’s post should be more relevant!