Becky took part in our Summer of Nature Recovery 8-week traineeship last summer, and in this blog she reflects on how the hands on learning during the plant and bird identification sessions enabled her to gain confidence and practical skills for observing and recognising wildlife.
As we moved into weeks five & six of the course, we had the opportunity to take a closer look at nature, developing our observational and ID skills.
This began with looking at plants, which at the outset seemed like a massive area but once we learnt about the key characteristics of the five main plant families (carrot, daisy, pea, rose and deadnettle/mint), we were able to start recognising which flowering plants sat in which family, and use books on wildflower keys to guide us in identifying individual species.
We had a lovely balance of “classroom” (aka tables out in the woodland) learning and being out in the fields gathering plants to bring back and examine – for example, how many petals / sepals does the flower have, are the leaves compound / simple / pinnate / cordate, are the flowers zygomorphic or radially symmetrical, what shape is the cross section of the stem, are either the flowers or leaves in whorls around the stem, are there any seed pods or fruits. A lot of the terminology was alien to us at the beginning, but two days later it was our new language!
Our other main area of focus was bird ID, which again seemed like a huge challenge, but rather than learning about individual species we focussed on how to record the key characteristics of birds spotted out in the wild, using an annotated sketch in order to be able to later identify them using a Bird Guide – what shape is it, what size, what does it remind you of (robin? blackbird? duck?), what colours / markings can you see, can you hear its call/song?
Despite my questionable drawings, over the course of the two days I had some success in identifying which families birds came from and built my confidence in feeling able to do this in the wild in the future. The two days were separated by a field trip to the South Devon Coast, where we saw some birds that we hadn’t seen at the farm, including a couple of unusual ones – a Northern Wheatear and a Dartford Warbler. Watching the grey seals basking on the rocks was also a highlight that day!
As well as these in-depth sessions, we got a closer look at nature in other ways, e.g. butterfly monitoring; foraging for fungi and wild plants, making nettle pesto for lunch; and learning how to effectively set up wildlife cameras in the woods – we were delighted to see roe deer, a fox, owls and… lots of grey squirrels!
Whilst I can’t identify every plant and bird off the top of my head (can anyone?!), this two weeks of learning has given me the skills and confidence to observe and identify key features that will enable me to use books / internet / other resources to work out what it is I saw. These are valuable skills not only for a potential future career in nature recovery, but also for my own enjoyment when out on walks in the countryside.
✍ Becky Cooper, Summer of Nature Recovery 2024 trainee
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