Well, it’s my last day of work experience here at Fairburn Ings, and I’ve had a fantastic time over the last two weeks. During my time here, I got valuable experience in just about all aspects of work around the reserve, from working with the reserve team maintaining the site, to being in the office writing things for the Fairburn Ings blog, just like the one you’re reading now!
I wasn’t really expecting it, but on my first day I was thrown straight in at the deep end, as I was introduced to ragwort digging, in which a group of four of us had to clear ragwort from the field which can be seen from Pickup hide. This plant has to be taken out of fields which are used for cattle grazing as it can be poisonous to them if eaten. After a couple of hours of that, myself and another work experience student were relieved of this duty and had the chance to count how many young birds there were on Village Bay, which we found much less arduous than our earlier task.
Most mornings throughout my first week I found myself ragwort digging at various places on the reserve, which over time I grew used to, but on Wednesday I was able to experience work in the visitor centre shop. My tasks were to help arrange the stock and to keep the shop tidy. But, the Friday of the first week was arguably the most enjoyable day of my time at Fairburn thanks to a number of reasons; On Thursday night we put a moth trap outside to get an idea of which moths can be found on the reserve. So on Friday morning, we attempted to identify as many moths as we could from the huge amount in the trap, which with my knowledge of moths, meant that there were more than a few which we classified as ‘uncertain’. I then wrote a piece for the Fairburn Ings blog about Yorkshire Day and the celebrations that will be held here later in the month.
During the second week, the lack of decent weather limited what I could do outdoors, so I spent much of my time inside helping out in the shop, assisting the customers who came to shelter from the rain. The day that suffered the worst of the weather while I was here was Wednesday, and despite such a promising start, we suddenly found ourselves drenched, which wasn’t surprising since we somehow managed to avoid every other threatening-looking cloud that came our way. In the afternoon everyone was restricted to working indoors, where we were re-arranging the shop so that it is ready for the summer holidays now that the field teachers are taking a well deserved break.
On my final day I somehow managed to get away without doing any difficult outdoor work, as we walked around the reserve litter picking, while in the afternoon I wrote this piece summarising my time here at Fairburn Ings on work experience, which I fully enjoyed.