Uni field trips: Devon

In March 2012 (my second year of uni) we took a week long trip to Watermouth Bay in Ilfracombe, North Devon. The trip was part of our Practical Biology module and was designed to teach us lots of different surveying techniques on a variety of flora and fauna on location. It was a great "hands on" experience not only to learn field skills but also to try them out for ourselves, I always find this a more effective way of learning rather than just taking everything out of a book.

We stayed in log cabins with 7/8 people per cabin, since our class was so big it meant we basically took over the site for the week. Despite this the owners of the site were very accommodating and clearly have a really good relationship with the uni. Plus having all our uni friends together in one cabin was very entertaining and made for some fun evenings.

Everyone had decided on the activities which we wanted to do before hand so everything was well organised and timetabled for us. I chose to go bat detecting, bird surveying, badger watching, surveying a rocky shore, sampling invertebrates in a nearby stream, radio tracking and plotting rabbit warrens in sand dunes using GPS devices.

 As well as individual activities each group of students had a research project which we carried out whilst on the trip. While most group completed their studies over 1/2 days, we chose to base our project around small mammal trapping which involved setting traps every evening and getting up a the crack of dawn to check the traps and log any mammals we found. Although it was hard work, learning how to set traps and how to handle small mammals was extremely useful and we even got the chance to teach other students about this as a group of people were interested in our project and wanted to learn more about the techniques we used. Here are some pictures of some of the mammals we caught. 

We also aimed to get up early enough to catch the sunrise as it came over the hills.

The trip ended in several tests; one which was about identification of various species from pictures, sounds and samples and another on technical aspects of the survey methods which we had learnt. It was a great trip where we learnt a lot of useful practical field techniques and got to spend some quality time with our friends and lecturers away from the academic environment and in the beautiful countryside of Devon.