Welcome To The Team!

There are two new faces at Foxglove this week as we are joined by two graduates from Teesside University. It has been a pleasure to welcome Alex and Carla to the Foxglove team and they will be working at the reserve fulltime for the next three months.

Alex will be involved in the day to day running of the reserve as Assistant Reserve Manager and has already carried out a huge variety of tasks from assisting with ringing Meadow Pipits, clearing reeds from the lakeside to burning unwanted gorse on the wetland! Carla has a different role and is working on a research project, she is currently studying the bird ringing data to learn more about the survival and migratory behaviour of Willow Warblers. 10, 047 of these birds have been caught and processed at the reserve over the last twenty-eight years so there is plenty of data to analyse! Carla has already discovered that over 6, 000 of these were new birds and that over 3, 000 of them have returned to breed here at least once since they were first ringed. One of the birds returned for eight consecutive years! In between hours spent indoors  number crunching Carla has joined in with the regular volunteers to get a bit of fresh air, well at least that's the theory!

We hope that their time at Foxglove will be a fun and worthwhile experience to enhance their CVs.