Hi all! I’m Dan, the new assistant warden at Woolston Eyes Nature Reserve in Warrington. I say new, but I’ve actually been here for about four months now…. Time flies when you’re having fun! So here’s a bit of a blog post to introduce myself and let you know what I have been up to.
So, about me…
I knew I wanted a career in conservation from quite early on, so I tried to get my foot in the door as soon as possible, volunteering for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust whilst at school and college. I continued to gain practical reserve management experience, and whilst studying Wildlife Biology at Manchester Metropolitan University I opted to do a placement year. This took me to Caerlaverock, the wonderful Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Here I spent 12 months on the Solway, working with the reserve team, surrounded by tens of thousands of wintering Barnacle Geese.
The reserve is managed to provide optimal grazing for Barnacle Geese – a real conservation success story, the population has increased from around 3000 birds in the 1970s to over 40,000 today.
After returning to university and completing my final year, I spent most of the summer abroad. I helped to survey the critically endangered Liben Lark in Ethiopia and continued with long-term seabird monitoring fieldwork in Iceland. This was followed by an autumn stint volunteering at Spurn Bird Observatory. I then decided it was probably time to try and get a job.
It wasn’t long until I was offered the Assistant Warden role as part of the RSPB’s Dee Estuary team, primarily working at Woolston Eyes. I was over the moon, this felt like the perfect first job in conservation for me. Getting to work on a brilliant reserve, with an interesting array of species and plenty of opportunity to learn.
The RSPB have an effective working relationship with the Woolston Eyes conservation group. The RSPB provide their expertise and resources in order to advise and help with the management of the reserve. Read Dee Estuary warden, Al's blog from 2017 about the project here.
Woolston Eyes is nestled between the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal; surrounded by Warrington and the busy M6 motorway, but this SSSI is a haven for wildlife. It is primarily made up of reedbed and scrub and is home to a number of iconic species. Perhaps most notable for being a nationally important breeding site for black-necked grebe. It is also a stronghold for willow tit, as well as a number of species of breeding wildfowl, including the internationally declining pochard.
So, what have I been up to so far…?
Me and Al put up a new electric fence around the scrape on No.3 Bed, to try and prevent the mass predation that occurred last year. Fingers crossed this works!
A view of the scrape and No.3 Bed, showing the new fence.
A new raft was built and launched on No.3 Bed. This will provide more nesting space for black-headed gulls, a vital factor in the presence of breeding black-necked grebes.
With the help of a trusty team of volunteers, we were able to re-gravel one of the islands on the loop of No.4 Bed. This will hopefully limit the vegetation growth and encourage more birds to use the island for breeding.
Being a keen birder, I have always particularly enjoyed species monitoring. So I was delighted to find out I would be coordinating a willow tit survey this year, mapping out territories for the whole of the reserve, as part of a national survey. It has been quite a success so far; a survey on No.4 being the stand out highlight, when we managed to locate 11 different territories and 18 different Willow Tits. I look forward to helping with a number of other surveys as the breeding season approaches.
Keep an eye out for my next blog in a couple of months when hopefully I'll be reporting on another successful breeding season and talking about plans for the summer and autumn habitat management work.