Before you know it, another survey season is suddenly here! As Castle Hill Ecology is entering its third year I thought it was a good time to have a company logo designed. Daniel Gould, a freelance graphic designer based in Cambridge, has done an amazing job in creating a design for me that encompasses the story behind the name with the work that I do.

In other news, the last few months have been spent catching up on odd jobs, concentrating on CPD, and gaining a few new qualifications and licences – I am now a qualified Emergency First Aider at Work and am registered to use the Class 4 bat licence from Natural England to enable me to use harp traps and acoustic lures. I’m hoping a project comes in this summer where I might be able to catch and hand ID some bats as part of survey effort.

 

The last week of February was mostly spent high up in various trees at Bridgwater College in Somerset. The purpose of the week? To become professionally qualified in tree climbing using ropes and performing aerial rescues. I loved it!

Over a period of four days, myself and three other attendees learned about ropes, knots, climbing systems, health and safety, legislation in regards to equipment and working at heights, emergency procedures, actually climbing trees, rescuing people from up in a tree, and doing branch walks, as well as climbing and rescuing from a ‘pole’ using spikes.

It was a very intensive and physically demanding week but we had a wonderful instructor who was very patient and had a good sense of humour. And after a long assessment time on the Saturday, we all came away with a pass. Yay!

The reason for gaining this qualification is so that I along with a second qualified surveyor can climb trees to inspect features that may have potential to support roosting bats, and to climb and inspect trees before any tree works or felling.

And the views from the canopy were lovely too.

 

Up until autumn 2015 I carried out ecological supervision works on construction sites without a CSCS card – I attended site safety inductions, was supervised on site by a registered and competent person, and the works were carried out with no further ado.

However, for a new infrastructure project that I will hopefully be working on during 2016, we were required to be CSCS card registered. I and two other ecologists attended a one day ROLO health and safety course and completed the CSCS health, safety, and environment test for managers and professionals, and duly passed.

As members of CIEEM, our cards are a professionally qualified persons card; grey if you are a full member of CIEEM and a red graduate if you are associate or lower, which is the one I now have. As I will be applying for full CIEEM membership at the end of this year I will then be able to apply for the grey professionally qualified persons card.