Every spring and early summer we receive a flow of emails and CVs from students and recent graduates, looking for ways to get a foothold in professional ecology. We have around 30 seasonal field ecologists working with us, but for everyone we hire, another half a dozen are disappointed. By early summer we see the more desperate emails, offering to work for nothing, just for the experience.
This year, after a long period when Covid meant the only opportunities were on-line workshops (some of which were desperately insubstantial), I suspect that the demand will be even greater than ever. If you can afford to attend some of the better courses available (Field studies council, Batability etc) so much the good, but what if, loaded down with student debt or with a limited income, you simply can't afford that?
Here are my three suggestions for some self-directed, low-cost ways you can build up useful field skills this summer and make yourself attractive to potential employers.
1. Get your hands on a botanical field guide. Borrow it, steal it, but preferably buy it. Top of the list is the Francis Rose Wild Flower key. This is the most-used botanical key and balances ease of use (and pictures) with a professional standard of identification. Don't expect to pick it up and just use it - you'll need to spend some time studying how it's laid out. It includes plenty of advice on how to use it and an excellent glossary of terms. You'll also need a x10 hand-lens, often sold on eBay as a 'jeweller's loupe' for not a lot of money.
Next get on your bike (or bus, car, scooter, souped-up wheelie-bin, or whatever is your transport of choice) and start visiting nature reserves, river-banks, woodlands, hedgerows etc - as wide a range of habitats as you can. At each site, aim to spend several hours simply trying to identify all the plants you find. Initially, this will frustrate you, but keep at it and you will gradually build up a knowledge of common wild flowers - an essential skill for any ecologist.
It's a good idea to carry a hard-backed notebook and write a site species list on every visit. The species you find will, of course, change through the season, so keep going back. If you write out both the scientific name and common name for each species, each time you see it you will start to fix the scientific names in your head. It's also worth recording three or four bullet-points about each species, recording the key reasons you're able to identify it - this will force you to think critically about identification characteristics.
Just as importantly, record everything you can't identify. Take photographs. Work out why you can't identify it - what's the blockage. Then when you get home you can search for the answer - there are lots of on-line resources to plunder!
2. Get a bat detector and learn to use it. A simple Magenta heterodyne machine will cost around £80, but if you can borrow one, so much the better. Don't think that you have to have a professional grade machine to learn the skills - you don't.
The National bat monitoring programme has lots of free resources and workshops to help you learn basic bat call ID skills. Get into the habit of going out in the evening in as many places as possible (be aware of your personal safety!) and finding out what bat species are about. What are they doing? Are there feeding buzzes or social calls? What visual behaviour is apparent? Consider everything you hear or see critically.
Apart from being enjoyable, being able to identify bat calls easily and rapidly is a core skill for anyone applying for work with an ecological consultancy. You can further develop these skills (and impress potential employers) by taking part in the National bat monitoring programme - doing field or waterway surveys near where you live and contributing to our understanding of bat population change. What are you waiting for?
3. Get a good bird guide (there are loads) and a pair of binoculars (good ones if possible, but a cheapie pair from Aldi is better than nothing). As with botany, get out and about, visiting different habitats and trying to identify everything you see. Keep notes on what you identify and niggle away at what you can't, trying to iron out those blockages.
There are many on-line resources and social media specialist groups, which can be a great help. Experts who don't have time to devote lots of time to helping you are often happy to spend a couple of minutes on Facebook or Twitter, correcting your identification or pointing you in the right direction when you can't separate two 'little brown birds' or all sedges look the same.
I could go on, but of course this approach works with almost any species group. I've just started moth-trapping and this is precisely how I'm learning (slowly!) to identify some of the many hundreds of moth species.
Back in the 1980s a Tory minister was ridiculed for suggesting some of the 3 million unemployed 'get on their bikes and look for work'. Ill-conceived though that comment was, making your own opportunities often works. As an employer, I can tell you I will pay more attention to an applicant who tells me they bought some field guides, ransacked the internet and tried to build their skills than one who learned their skills on a course. The latter will have learned some valuable field skills, but the former has also displayed resourcefulness and energy - qualities all employers value.
So, if the help you need isn't available, don't despair. Have confidence in yourself and get on your bike (or souped-up wheelie-bin) and have a go. Take a friend (forcibly if necessary - it'll do them good). You'll be amazed what you learn and in a few months you'll be a lot more employable. And don't forget to submit all those valuable records you've made to your local biological record centre.
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