The last couple of months have been very busy and I have found myself out of the office a lot (coinciding well with some lovely weather!) and so I have crammed both into one post. For several weeks in April I was busy carrying out this year’s red squirrel surveys at six different sites in the south of Cumbria, putting out camera traps and also doing a pre-baited transect in Grizedale. There were no big surprises and most of the sites where red squirrels were present last year were found to have them again this year – the most surprising thing that happened was when it started snowing whilst I was wearing shorts! These are all finished now and the data has been submitted to Red Squirrels Northern England for collation.
Throughout April I was also busy working on the restoration potential report for the Black Beck catchment which I have been surveying since before Christmas. This is now all finished and has been sent to the Environment Agency who will use it to help them decide whether peatland restoration of that catchment would be worthwhile in alleviating flood risk in Millom. This is the first proper report I have written (if you don’t count school – which I don’t!) and I am really proud of what I have produced. I have put a copy on our coffee table for guests to read and it seems to be going down well. (Don’t worry I haven’t really.)
