At the beginning of the month I attended a BTO bird ID course at Castlehead FSC centre in Grange, led by Steve Piotrowski. We had a great weekend and learned lots from our early morning walks and visits to Leighton Moss, Foulshaw Moss and Humphrey Head. I saw my first water rail and also saw several species that I had only previously seen on my trip to Estonia and it was lovely to be with someone so knowledgeable to answer all our questions and show us things we may otherwise have missed. The key thing I learned was that I need to improve my knowledge of songs and calls so that I can identify more species when I can’t see them, so I’m trying to use my tapes whenever I’m in the car (yes that does mean my car is so old I don’t have a CD player). I have also started using BirdTrack, the BTO’s recording app, to record my species lists when I have been out and about for a day and it’s a great way of focusing more carefully on what you are seeing and how many. I would definitely recommend spending a weekend on an FSC or BTO course if you are keen to improve your skills in a certain area as my confidence has certainly grown as a result.

I’ve been spending quite a lot of my time working on my upland wetland project in the Black Beck catchment, formulating my survey methodology and producing the resources I will need to carry out the survey. I will be out towards the end of October carrying out the field surveys and I’m looking forward to practising my botany again and making sure I haven’t forgotten it all. I am really enjoying having the independence to make decisions on the method I’m going to use, and I’m looking forward to working on the report afterwards. I was also out doing some wetland monitoring last week with Simon at Foulshaw Moss, and the highlight was seeing a baby adder and what we presumed was its mother basking in the sun! There was a large proportion of sphagnum mosses covering most of the areas we walked across which is a great sign the bog is recovering well.