Well, what do you know, it is now June and I am halfway through my traineeship! I cannot believe it. I have managed to do so much through my traineeship so far and I am extremely grateful to Froglife for the opportunities they provide.
I might have said previously but the Come Forth for Wildlife team are also working on another project in Scotland at the moment – Fife Living Waters, based in Cowdenbeath, funded by the Scottish Power Foundation. This is a one-year project with various events and activities to run! It is great being able to be involved with two Froglife projects, seeing how each of them run and the difference between a project that has just begun and a project that is almost in its final year! This month I went along to a few school sessions with Mirran in Cowdenbeath – this was fun, and the pupils learnt all about frog and toad lifecycles!
In May Rosie and I also ran a Virtual Reality Exhibition at Alloa’s First Friday Market, where we got to use the VR headsets for the first time since before covid-19! This went really well, and many members of public enjoyed stepping into the eyes of a toad and learning all about Wildlife Tunnels. I also joined Rosie on a couple of Wildlife Gardening Workshops with Bridge of Allan Beavers where we created hibernacula, did some Haperzome crafts and some river dipping. I also ran my own Wildlife Gardening Workshop at Tullibody Community Garden!
This month I also ran my 3 volunteer sessions at Kinneil LNR as part of my Habitat Project. I got several volunteers including some of the TCV trainees. We created a small pond next to the other ponds on site. This has helped to create a steppingstone habitat for the local amphibians giving them a variety of ponds to use. The next part of my Habitat Project is to run 2 more sessions, but this time at Kinneil Estate in Bo’ness. I have planned these for August and am planning to do some pond enhancement works on our original ponds.
In May we also had a couple of Pond Doctor Host events. These are the same as Pond Doctors except there are a couple of activities which run alongside the stall. James and I ran two of these at the Falkirk Science Festival at The Helix and Muiravonside Country Park. We created hibernacula and did pond dipping at The Helix and pond dipping and a crafts activity of painting pebbles at Muiravonside Country Park. We got several people at all the different sessions at the Pond Doctor Host, and everyone filled out a Come Forth for Wildlife postcard to commit to doing something in their garden which was great.
My public engagement module is going well and I have started to plan and organise some volunteer sessions for August onwards!