“Over my time with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust I have decided to do my dissertation on a project that will help with the conservation work of curlew”
BANGOR FIELD TRIP TO ANGLESEY
“May kicked off with a farmland field trip with second year students from Bangor University School of Natural Sciences. Taking place at Fferam Farm in Paradwys, which is one of the four farms involved in a project funded by AONB Sustainable Development Fund and focusses on enhancing biodiversity via sustainable farming practices.”
“The project and trip were led by Logan Crimp, Agriculture and Conservation Officer, who gave a tour of the farm explaining, the supplementary feeders, monitoring techniques, the technology involved and ran activities focusing on species ID.”
“Laura Hough, a project officer from Mentor Mon also attended in the morning, giving a speech on the purpose of voles in a farmland setting, covering the leaky dams, restoration of the mill pond, management of vegetation around ponds, and the predation management of American Mink.”
“It was great to be able to see the students’ asking questions and learning about the various aspects to the farm and how there is a lot more ecology going on in a farm then what they first thought, because even a hedge is never just a hedge.”
CURLEW FENCING
“As the curlew season goes on, more nests are found by Katie Appleby and the Curlew Connections team. They all need monitoring and protection from predation, therefore one of the things the team do to help, is to erect a 20m x 20m electric fencing around the nest. Katie and James Warrington, Project Officer, set up a fake nest with a fake curlew and ran me through the process allowing me to understand the routine and technicalities behind it as well as running through it myself without disturbing any birds. It is a time sensitive job which they have now nailed, so by having a fake scenario set up meant I could get the practice in without the pressure and time sensitivity.”
SCHOOL VISIT
“On Thursday the 8th of May, I joined Katie Appleby, Curlew Connections Project Officer, in a visit to a small school in Powys. I watched her give a talk to two separate groups of kids about what curlew are and how they are important. I then helped her with several activities afterwards such as ‘eating like a curlew’ where the kids had to use chopsticks to imitate the beak of a curlew and dig through boxes of sand or dirt to find fake bugs and worms, as well as teaching them how to use binoculars and scopes to find the fake ‘curlew nest’ within their field.”
“It’s really motivating to see how interested the future generation are about the birds and how eager they are to learn. They listened well and had many interesting questions.”
CURLEW SEARCHING
“To aid in the curlew conservation work I was given several maps to monitor. I would first find suitable public access areas to park, so that I could then walk the public right of way paths through fields around each of the maps to search for curlew or curlew nests. I set out early in the morning with lunch, my binoculars, a scope, first aid kit and Satellite GPS tracker, to walk the route I had planned and making sure to follow the countryside code as I checked fields for signs of curlew as well as listening out for any curlew calls along the way. During the surveys I also kept my eye out for signs of predators, other disturbances and other suitable habitats for the birds, that way if there was to be a report in an area then I could narrow down where they are likely to be. Anything I spotted I recorded using an Epicollect form set up by Katie to keep track of all the volunteers notes and recordings.”
DISSERTATION DATA COLLECTION
“Over my time so far with the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust I have decided to do my dissertation on a project that will help with the conservation work of curlew. I have chosen to research into what the main factor of disturbance is to breeding curlew within Montgomeryshire. Previously there is not much information within Montgomeryshire other than the previous work done by the Curlew Connections project and I believe that my dissertation will help identify key factors and second already identified disturbances.”
“At the end of May I have been going to pre-identified curlew nest sites and monitoring the pairs for set periods of time, recording the disturbances seen so that when I can return to university I can complete the write up. My data collection will continue into June as hopefully more pairs are found.”
