Early career ecologists - making progress in winter

Winter, hibernation season for ecologists? Not quite, but it's definitely the time to slow down, write reports, catch up on admin. and take back some of those extra hours we all work during the summer. But what if you're an early career ecologist, who either doesn't have a full-time job yet or whose seasonal role has now ended. How best can you best fill the winter months? Hopefully you've managed to earn enough in the summer to keep you going, but how best to prepare yourself for the next season?

I suspect you'll be spending an inordinate amount of time hunting the job sites, sending out CVs, crafting cover letters (a truly satanic task, if ever there was one) and praying that you'll get the job you know you deserve. Whoah! Stop that negative thought NOW - you DO deserve it. Winter is also peak the peak season for depression. 

Earlier in the year I posted some suggestions for ways to enhance your field skills and improve you chances in the job market (Field skills for early career ecologists and Early career ecologists and hamster-powered scootering). So what can you do to enhance your employability when the weather is wet and grubby and all the interesting wildlife is hibernating (I'm a bat specialist, so that may be a slightly biased view)? 

Here's a thought - how are your bryophyte ID skills? Many moons ago I recall standing, huddled together in the rain with a group of fellow-sufferers whilst Nick Hodgetts bounded enthusiastically around an embankment, showing us different bryophyte species (Nick's a brilliant tutor by the way, and I can recommend the courses he leads). The fact is that bryophytes are often at their best when wet and some species are especially useful for habitat indication. I wrote a post about a few commoner bryophytes a few years back (Right-diddly-wotsit-squirrelly) Since then the British Bryological Society have completed their superlative field guide and I'm happy to say it's very user-friendly and a great addition to your christmas list.

A former member of my survey team got his first break into what has subsequently been a successful career in professional ecology, when he turned up to an interview and was handed a bag full of plant material and asked what he could ID from it. The first thing he noticed was Polytrichum commune - a large and striking moorland moss which, as luck would have it, I'd pointed out to him during an especially boring transect the evening before. Lucky or what? So don't neglect bryophytes! They have a charm all their own.

If you're a member of your local bat group now is the time to start asking about hibernation surveys. Be persistent and make sure they know how keen you are, because for many underground sites numbers need to be limited, to minimise disturbance. Data from these surveys feeds into the critically important National bat monitoring programme and, after having to shelve surveys last winter due to Covid it's really important to gather data this winter (though there's a new risk assessment process). You do, of course, need to accompany someone with an appropriate bat license and not just for legal reasons - underground sites are dangerous. There's more about bat hibernation surveys here: The great hibernaculum hunt and here: The great hibernaculum hunt revisited.

How are your GIS skills? When the weather is miserable, why not delve into QGIS, the free open-access GIS system which has become ever more popular over the past few years? GIS is a core skill for a lot of ecology work and if you're new to QGIS there are many free resources to help you work your way into QGIS. Take a look at The QGIS project.

Finally, winter weather isn't all bad news and there is nothing like freshly fallen snow for finding and identifying animal tracks - another very useful field skill. There are quite a few guides available, but my favourite is Preben Bang and Preben Dahlstrom's book, which has been in print since forever - I remember borrowing an early edition from the library when I was a teenager in the 1970s (the late 1970s, just to be clear!). Don't be put off by the Ray Mears celebrity gimmick on the current edition, it's a really good field guide and well worth hinting to Santa about.

One final thought - when you get that interview and you're sat there, suited and booted and quivering slightly with fear tell them about all the stuff you've done. Maybe it's a British thing, but far too many interviewees assume anything they've done probably isn't good enough and keep quiet about it unless there's a formal certificate or diploma. Take confidence in what you can achieve on your own and in what you have achieved. To prove my point, have a read of Ash Ronaldson's guest blog - Paid bat surveying is an actual, real thing - Ash's first season. Ash has just accepted a full-time job as an Assistant Ecologist. See?

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Seasonal field ecologists - the future of ecology

Part of our 2016 team at a training event. This group includes three future PhDs, four future consultant ecologists, four who went on to work with conservation NGOs and one who now works in wildlife rehabilitation.

In 2010 our company (David Dodds Associates Ltd) first began recruiting and training our specialist team of seasonal field ecologists who usually work with us for between two and four seasons. We tend to recruit early-career ecologists, undergraduate and postgraduate students or recent graduates and this gives a dual benefit. We can train them to carry out bat surveys to our specific standards and methods and we are also able to shape the future of professional ecology and equip some of the next generation of professional ecologists with a sound knowledge of bat conservation and ecology. To date 124 people have worked with us and many are now working in consultancies, SNCOs, NGOs etc in the UK and abroad, giving me a great deal of personal satisfaction, watching their careers progress.

We aim to maximise the benefit to our team of working with us, as this helps build a committed and enthusiastic team:

1. We provide our seasonal field ecologists with full training at the start of their career and commit to ensuring that, when they leave us they have as sound and as broad a knowledge of bat conservation as possible and we do this in several ways:
2. Every survey is treated as a training opportunity, with the site discussed beforehand, in terms of bat suitability, habitat etc.
3. Each seasonal field ecologist has one-to-one time with the lead ecologist during virtually every survey, to discuss the survey and results and broader questions of bat ecology and conservation.
4. We aim to provide additional training and resources, beyond that required for the specific work of the field ecologists, giving them opportunities to get involved in winter hibernation surveys, bat box checks and so on.
5. More experienced members of our team are given the opportunity to train for bat licenses in-house, if they wish.
6. We run a long-term project at Whitmuir organic farm, near Penicuik, where members of the team have the opportunity to get involved in advanced bat survey techniques such as harp-trapping, use of acoustic lures, radio-tracking etc.

We try to foster a team spirit amongst our field ecologists and reward success. We have lively (and often irreverent) private social media groups on Whatsapp and Facebook, we host an annual all-expenses dinner for the team and most importantly there is our ‘donut policy’. This states that, at urban surveys, surveys with low bat activity or ones with potentially irritating interactions with the public, donuts are provided at the end as a morale-raiser (on occasions pain au chocolat are substituted at dawn).

A post-survey donut feeding frenzy after a sunset survey in a rough urban area.

I always remind team members that they are intelligent, capable people. Just because they are at an early stage of their careers doesn't mean they can't have a good idea or spot a weakness in what we do. In fact, coming to it with fresh eyes means they are more likely to do so and we've adopted numerous suggestions and enhancements over the years. This approach of constant improvement ensures we keep reviewing and improving what we do and encourages all of our team to feel valued.

Wherever possible all promoted positions within our company are recruited either from within the current team of seasonal field ecologists or from previous team members, helping to show our commitment to them, as well as ensuring we promote people we already know to be competent. A great example of this is Charlotte Meyer-Wilson, who started with us whilst studying her MSc and was promoted to full-time Assistant Ecologist when she graduated. At the end of that season she moved on, working as a consultant with two other consultancies, before returning to us as a fully-fledged consultant ecologist and licensed bat specialist.

Charlotte Meyer-Wilson, surveying a Brown Long-eared bat roost near Edinburgh

I find that this approach gives us a highly committed and enthusiastic team of field ecologists, who enjoy their work and are dedicated to doing it well. I firmly believe that this is essential to the consistent delivery of good professional standards of survey work. Just as importantly, we can all enjoy our work.

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