Hit the ground running

Starting off a new job can always be a bit nerve racking, especially in my case as I had never met my future colleagues before (I did my interview over skype a weird experience which I highly recommmend) and I wasn't entirely sure what my role entailed. Fortunately the staff in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnerhip turned out to be sound I was given a warm welcome. The first couple of days were pretty much devoted to admin and orientation. Lesley my supervisor took me through some of the things I would be doing over the few weeks. It turned out I could have a lot of input into what I learned over the coming months so I could get the most out of the traineeship. Aside from the work shadowing and project work I would be doing with the AONB Partnership staff unit, I also had a fund to spend on any training courses in the UK I would like to attend such as botany, bird I.D etc.

Sunset in Weardale

For my first solo field assignment I travelled to Cowshill in Weardale to check whether a route listed in the AONB Partnerships birdwatching guide required any updating. It was great to get out in the field after two days in the office, it also me gave me the opportunity to see some of the wading birds that the area is famous for, including Lapwing, Redshank, Curlew and Oystercatcher. The abundance of these birds is very high in the AONB as a result of predator control on the moors managed for grouse shooting. The route I surveyed turned out to be fine and it was also a valuable opportunity to become reacquainted with my map reading and navigational skills. Which is a nice way of say I got a bit lost in the fog.

On Wednesday my housemate Alistair and I participated in a Riverfly training event in Low Barns Nature reserve hosted by Ceri Gibson and Lizzie Willows from the Tyne and Wear Rivers Trusts respectively and Rebecca O’Connell from the Environment Agency. Riverfly monitoring is a simplified type of biological monitoring which allows river users to quickly assess the condition of rivers and streams. In a nutshell if the surveyed river had a low diversity and abundance of indicator mayflies and stonefly larva then the river would be likely to polluted and vice versa. These invertebrates are sampled from the riverbed using a technique known as kick sampling and collected using fine meshed nets for I.D and counting. This is something I am familiar with since I did a lot of this sampling during my undergraduate degree so I had a bit of a head start over the other trainees and thankfully the midges stayed away. At the end of the training we were given local rivers to survey and I was assigned to monitor a small tributary of the River Wear called Waskerley Beck outside of Wolsingham.

Low Force Waterfall In Teesdale

On Saturday I took part in an AONB Partnership event entitled “Haytime, Tea and Tales” led by interpreter Neil Diment. Neil led a group of us on a pleasant walk from Bowlees through some hay meadows and across the River Tees and talked about the history of mining and agriculture of Teesdale. We finished up with tea and nibbles in Low Way Farm in Holwick, where the owner Karen talked about traditional farming methods in the hay methods and positive and negative aspects of modern agricultural methods. On the way back I spotted Holwick Scar, a local rock climbing crag which recently had restrictions lifted from it by Natural England. I filed it in the memory bank as a place I’d like to climb should I find a climbing partner in the region.  

Holwick Scar

Hay Meadow in Upper Teesdale