The Odd Life of Sarah: Birds of Prey

Sunday, 15 June 2014

A Season of Surveys

Well, it has been a long, LONG time since I last posted anything! I've been keeping very busy up here in my new job in Perthshire (although I guess it's not that new any more, since I'm more than halfway through my contract!), but it feels like only a few weeks since I started! How the time does fly. This role is pretty much a bird surveying role, which often seems to involve lots of early starts and late finishes, as the birds that I'm surveying (and pretty much all birds, in fact) are most active at dawn and dusk. So I've been up with the dawn and asleep after dark, working some strange hours, with a bit of a break in the middle! I'm definitely enjoying it though and I've seen some beautiful birds and amazing sights! Unfortunately my camera's been playing up a bit (think I've dropped it a few too many times) so I've not taken as many photos as I would have liked, but here's a bit of an insight into the wide variety of survey work that I've been doing for the past few months, with a few photos here and there.

From the day I arrived I've been thrown into fieldwork, checking out sites, calling landowners for permission to survey on their land, and counting nesting birds! The first birds on the list were Black Grouse. Not quite so well known as the Red Grouse (also known as the Famous Grouse), which are shot regularly on sporting estates. Black Grouse are also classed as gamebirds and have an open season for shooting, although it is illegal to shoot them in the breeding season. However, as Black Grouse are declining in numbers across the country, very few estates actually shoot these birds. In early spring, the males (or cocks) gather in groups (called leks) to do a little dance and attract in the females (or hens), and this is how we survey them. The RSPB works closely with the Perthshire Black Grouse Study Group to survey as many Black Grouse leks as possible each year. These surveys involve a pre-dawn start, arriving at the lek site before sunrise to count the number of displaying males. But despite the early starts, these were definitely my favourite surveys, it was so amazing to see these birds in all their dancing action! I love it when they wiggle their little white powder-puff tails!

Searching the hills for lekking Black Grouse

4 lekking male Black Grouse, taken through a telescope in the rain so not the best quality photo!

As part of this role I've been given a licence by SNH (the environmental government organisation in Scotland), which allows me to monitor breeding raptors. Most birds of prey are Schedule 1 species, which means they have the highest level of legal protection and a licence is required to go anywhere near these birds in the breeding season. You may have heard about the struggle that Hen Harriers face in the UK due to illegal persecution, but other raptors are persecuted as well, including Peregrines, Buzzards, Red Kites and more, often by sporting estates, which want to stop these birds from taking the Pheasant/Grouse chicks on their estate so that they can raise lots of adult birds for the shoot. But not all estates are like this. Many sporting estates are happy to have these raptors on their land as it shows that they have a healthy ecosystem. The Langholm Moor Demonstration Project has shown that raptors can live and breed successfully on shooting estates without having a negative impact on grouse shoots, so it is possible for the two to work in harmony. The RSPB work closely with raptor friendly estates, and part of my role involves surveying raptors and monitoring any nests that I find to see how well they are doing. I've also been checking out lots of potential nesting sites for Peregrines, as part of a national survey organised by the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) this year. Hen Harriers and Peregrines are beautiful, amazing birds and I'm very lucky to be monitoring these and other birds of prey.

Sitting above the low-lying clouds, surveying for Hen Harriers and other raptors

Visiting some beautiful places looking for nesting Peregrines

The other big surveys that I do are lowland wader surveys. This involves walking through lowland farmland areas and recording any breeding waders that I see or hear, especially displaying birds, as well as any nests, eggs or chicks that I find. These surveys have to be carried out within 3 hours of dawn or dusk, so more early starts, but I do love my job so it's worth it! Especially when I find eggs or chicks! And there have been quite a few chicks around this year! I'm looking at 5 wader species; Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Curlew, Redshank, and Snipe, and surveying the breeding success of these species.

Beautiful sunset after surveying waders

One of my wader survey sites

Lapwing nest

Curlew nest

Lapwing chick!

I'm also surveying Black-throated Divers, and I'll be surveying a few other species in the coming months, so I've still got a way to go yet but I'm loving every minute of it! I've even managed to have a bit of a social life! It's much easier to go shopping or go out on the town when there's an actual town nearby! But more on that later...

P.S. Happy Father's day to a wonderful dad!

Saturday, 3 March 2012

A Rich Man's Career

Hello all, sorry that I haven’t updated this blog in over a month; I’ve been mega busy with sending in job applications and even going to the occasional interview! Not that it’s helped, as I still don’t have a job lined up for the summer, and it’s getting a bit late in the season now for any new jobs to be advertised as most jobs start at the end of March or beginning of April, but I’m still vaguely hopeful that something will come along and save the day! The problem is, every time I go to an interview, there’s somebody there with more experience than me, and they end up getting the job. But it’s just so hard to get more practical experience unless you can afford to volunteer for 6-12 months or buy all of the training that you need. Sometimes I wish that conservation wasn’t a rich man’s career, but there’s not much that I can do to change that! I have 2 options if I don’t manage to get anything paid:

1. I get a random job (e.g. go back to work at Hemel hospital) and volunteer on the weekends, which would get me a bit of experience as well as some money. However, I probably won’t get enough experience to make a difference for my job prospects and the work is unreliable, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to get a job in a different sector.

2. I save up as much money as I can in this last month working for the National Trust on Holy Island, and use that money to do some residential volunteering on one of the RSPB nature reserves. I’ll gain loads of great experience but I’ll have to sign on so that I have enough money to buy food, and I’ll still have to find a job when that finishes.

What do I do?? Any opinions anyone? I’d love to hear other people’s view on this, so contact me if you have any advice, or if you want to offer me a job!!

Anyway, moving on... For those of you that don’t know, Jason is currently in Israel! He’s gone over there with the guys that he works with on Fair Isle to catch and ring loads of birds so that they can all get their ‘C’ permits, which means that Jason will be able to ring birds unsupervised (as long as he’s ringed that species before under the supervision of someone with a higher level of permit). At the moment we both have ‘Restricted C’ permits, which allow us to ring seabirds and their young unsupervised, but we are both working towards gaining a full ‘C’. Let’s hope that wherever I end up, I’ll be able to do some bird ringing! Jason should be back from his trip soon, so I’ll let you all know how it went, although I imagine it will have been pretty amazing!

Meanwhile, I’m stuck on Holy Island! I could easily walk across the causeway (at low tide of course), but where do I go from there? Berwick-Upon-Tweed is our closest town but that’s about 8 miles from the end of the causeway. So, I’m stuck. But I don’t really mind, it gives me a chance to explore the island on my own for a bit and see lots of pretty little birds. Although, I actually did get off the island earlier this week for an interview up in Inverness, and managed to see all of the people that I’d been missing, which was really lovely. Now just need to come back to Hertfordshire and see everyone there that I’m missing! Looks like I’m going to be coming back at the end of this job anyway, so I’ll see you all then!

We might be volunteering up at the Castle soon, as they need some more volunteers to help them out. We’ve been to visit a few places in the nearby area as well. We went to Chain Bridge Honey Farm, which is just up the road and makes some really tasty honey, so we ended up buying quite a lot! We’ve also been to visit the Barn at Beal, which is just at the end of the causeway and hosts a lovely selection of birds of prey. It wasn’t properly open when we visited, but they still let us come in, showed us all of the lovely birds that they have there, and even let us hold a couple of owls! They should be properly open now, with falconry displays and everything, so we’ll probably pop back in again soon. I was thinking of asking them if they need any more volunteers as well! We’ve been down to Alnwick a couple of times now and even visited Wallington, another National Trust property, which was a good day out. We didn’t go into the house, just looked around the grounds, but saw some lovely birds and enjoyed it all the same. I’ve been making a few cakes (thanks to Becky!), and been doing lots of reading as well, thanks for the book Nana, I finished it last week and really enjoyed it! Hope you and Grandpa are well; hopefully I’ll get the chance to come and visit you guys soon!

Other than that, there’s not a lot going on to be honest! Going for wanders, looking at lovely birds, applying for jobs, that’s my life at the moment! I've managed to add a few photos, those of you on Facebook may have already seen them, but I hope you'll enjoy them anyway! I will update again soon, hopefully with the news that I’ve got a job. Wish me luck!