Hello there! If you read our blog posts regularly and have been wondering where I have been for the last couple of weeks, hopefully, this blog post will give you an insight into what I have been up to:
The first thing to make you aware of is that I have now been in continuous employment with the RSPB for over seven years (I started at RSPB Lakenheath Fen on 13 October 2008 to be precise.) As a thank you to it’s employees, the RSPB offers sabbaticals to members of staff who have worked for the RSPB for over seven continuous years. The rules are fairly simple; you are entitled to up to four weeks of sabbatical leave to work on a project of your choice. The only two rules are as follows: firstly, it has to be with the RSPB or a Bird Life International partner. Secondly, it has to benefit conservation in some way, shape or form.
I have chosen to come to RSPB Bempton Cliffs, in East Yorkshire for my sabbatical. If you are not familiar with this fantastic reserve it is a seabird colony that is home to large numbers of birds like gannets, puffins and guillemots in the summer months. However, as I gaze out of the window of the visitor centre at the moment, the starts of the winter months here are a wintering flock of around 150 tree sparrows, a very obliging pair of barn owls and the chance to see exciting marine mammals such as grey seals and harbour porpoises offshore.
Instead of doing my sabbatical in one hit, I have split into two placements. I have just completed my first two weeks and I am returning for my second two weeks in mid- June, during the reserve’s busiest time of the year. I will focus on the first part of my sabbatical for the rest of this blog post:
My main focus of part one of my sabbatical was to create an interactive presentation for the large touch screen computer in the visitor centre. This was an ideal project for me, as it meant that I learnt a lot about the reserve in a relatively short space of time.
In order to provide me with some inspiration for putting the presentation together, I was first sent to RSPB Leighton Moss in Lancashire, where they have already been using touch screen computers to good effect to enhance the visitor experience at the reserve. This was like a trip down memory lane for me, as I regularly visited this wonderful reserve while I was studying at the University of Central Lancashire in nearby Preston. While I was there, I learnt a lot about the touch screen computers and also got a chance to reacquaint myself with the reserve as I had not visited the reserve for around six years.
On my return to RSPB Bempton Cliffs, with the help of a very comprehensive brief from the reserve team there, I started putting the presentation together. I quickly discovered that this was a very big job and realised why this was chosen as a sabbatical project as opposed to something that is part of somebodies’ work programme!
Slowly but surely, the presentation came together and after consultation with various members of the team, several more sections were added. Before we knew it, the presentation was 150 slides long! After various tweaks and a rather major formatting issue was resolved, I finally finished the presentation at around 11am on Friday morning. Hooray! I look forward to seeing the presentation being used on the visitor centre’s large touch screen computer when I return for round two of my sabbatical in mid-June. I would like to thank the teams at RSPB Bempton Cliffs and RSPB Leighton Moss for having me and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the north.
I will leave you with a couple of pictures that I took at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, I hope you like them:
Image credit: David White
I will return with some recent sightings from back here at RSPB Lakenheath Fen on Wednesday so until then, have a good week!