Hi everyone, just a quick update while my internet's working (not working well enough to upload photos at the moment though). So I've been volunteering at Blacktoft Sands RSPB reserve in East Yorkshire for about 5 months now and I'm coming up to the end of my time here, but I've enjoyed every minute of it! I've gained a lot of experience in carrying out practical reserve maintenance and habitat management work, which should really haelp me to get a permanent job at some point in the future.
So what exactly have I been doing? Well, the main part of the habitat management work here at Blacktoft is that reed cutting. Every year the team here have to cut large areas of the reedbed to keep it at it's best for birds an wildlife. Reedbed specialists like Bearded Tits like to have a variety of different ages of reed - thick, tall, older stands of reed for nesting in, and open, shorter, younger areas of reed where they can easily catch insects for food. Cutting sections of reedbed is also good for the Bitterns that nest here in the summer, as they like to have short, wet areas and open pools where they can fish, as well as taller, thicker stands to nest in. It's also good for insects as we create 'edge' habitat which invertebrates love to hang around in, as do fish, increasing the biodiversity of the site. Cutting the reed creates a 'mosaic' of different micro-habitats within this habitat so dominated by one species, with a benefit to the birds and wildlife that make their homes here. 'But surely that's unnatural, cutting big holes in the habitat' - Well, yes and no. While it's true that we use machinery to cut these plots within the reedbed, this is a task that would have been completed by cattle, horses and other herbivores before humans came along, but it's impractical to have huge herds of ponies, deer, goats etc roaming across the reserve, so we have to use machinery to create the same effect. We do have 4 Konik ponies here, doing a great job of creating edge habitat around the lagoons and pathways through the reedbed, but it's a big job for four ponies so we have to help them out a bit. Click here to read more about the reed cutting and why we do it at Blacktoft.
'What do you do with all the cut reed? You can't eat it like ponies do!' No, we can't, so we have to figure out something else to do with it. At the moment, that's burning it. We heap it into big piles and burn it all away. Pretty inefficient really. However, the Blacktoft team are working to figure out something better that we can do with it - we can compress it into blocks and use it as fuel. This is a very ambitious project and one that promises a great solution to this problem with the cut reed, and would prevent us from burning in the reedbed, generate some income for the charity, and make the whole process carbon neutral! And they're having a lot of success! It's looking like this will be a real solution in the very near future, so watch this space! Please click here to read more about this project on the reserve blog!
In addition to this, we've been doing a lot of fencing work (especially after the flood in December ripped half of them down!), cleaning and repairing nest boxes for the coming season, installing electric fences, felling trees, clearing vegetation, maintaining the hides and paths, and much much more! And there's more reed cutting and some coppicing lined up for the coming month, so there's always plenty to do! I'm really enjoying my placement here (despite the lack of income) and I feel like I've learned a lot about practical conservation work, as well as seeing a lot of new birds, and it will be a shame to leave. Unfortunately though, I can't afford to be volunteering forever so I'm back on the jobs market once more! I've had a few interviews and been close to getting a couple of jobs, but no success yet. I'm still applying though, there's a lot of jobs coming up this year, so I've still got some hope! Wish me luck!
