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SOG attend Carlton Marsh event In June SOG were invited to a surveying/recording event at the Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve at Carlton Marshes. Guides were to take members of the public around the reserve showing the wildlife present and talking about surveying and recording techniques with an emphasis on the new online recording system iRecord. Phil Brown and I went representing SOG to do the bird guiding.
wildlife and finally Martin Sanford from SBRC talked about the uses of iRecord, where people can submit records, include photos that help identification and where data can be shared. The SBRC, based at Ipswich Museum, is the repository for all nature and wildlife recorded data and allows an easy way to submit records online. At the reserve centre some laptops had been set up so that after the sessions people could see how the system works and submit their own records from the day. There were a variety of areas the public could sign up for, with morning and afternoon sessions. Along with birds, were plants, butterflies, freshwater invertebrates, coastal plants at nearby Pakefield and dragonflies and damselflies, led by SOG President Steve Piotrowski. The new scrape
The event was a collaboration between the Suffolk Biological Records Centre (SBRC), Suffolk Biodiversity Partnership, Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Suffolk Naturalists’ Society (SNS), Suffolk Butterfly Conservation and Suffolk Ornithologists’ Group with Touching the Tide (TtT) (which is a Heritage Lottery funded Landscape Partnership Scheme) that sponsored the day. Touching The Tide is a three-year project that explores the changing Suffolk coast and helps people make choices about its future. The day started with introductions from Kate Osborne, project leader of TtT who gave an overview of the project, Matt Gooch, warden of Carlton Marshes talked of the ongoing work and expansion at the site and the best areas to go for the different forms of
Phil and I took groups of seven and eight, covering more of the reserve as we wanted to view the new scrape in the far north corner. On the morning walk we did note a few warblers such as Blackcap, Whitethroat and, luckily, a very showy family of Cetti’s Warbler. T H E H AR R I ER – A ut um n 2 0 1 4
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