After a 10 year (!) hiatus, I'm happy to be bird ringing again. Thanks to @piedflynet.bsky.social for taking me on as a trainee!!!
A juvenile barn owl was not a bad starter bird....

After dodging the various crystal and witchcraft shops and homeopathic offerings of Glastonbury, we headed up to the Tor for some spectacular views over the levels. It was a time for reflecting on the huge changes that have happened to this landscape over the last two thousand or so years.

We also stopped off at Meare Fish House, the only surviving monastic fishery building in England. The lakes in early times produced large amounts of valuable fish for trading, so much so that in the 14th century Glastonbury Abbey built the house for fish-salting and drying.

This might seem like a somewhat underwhelming humpy field now, but it was once the site of Glastonbury Lake Village (avalonmarshes.org/heritage/gla...). During the excavation of this important Iron Age site, many pelican bones were discovered!

A fabulously sunny (but v. cold!) day yesterday exploring the Somerset Levels with Prof. Sam Turvey and @aukwardlucia.bsky.social. Despite the short winter day, we managed to fit in a lot of pelican and freshwater ecosystem talk and visited some important historical sites....

📢PhD opportunity: Establishing past biodiversity baselines to guide UK wetland & freshwater nature recovery.

The research will reconstruct past wetland biodiversity baselines for the Somerset Levels to understand change through time for conservation planning.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Always fun catching up with Prof. Sam Turvey, this time at WWT Slimbridge where there were oodles of waders and wildfowl about. With special guest Dr Jen Crees joining us, that meant lots of talk about historical baselines, Caribbean mammals, pelicans, & a new rodent to be described from Indonesia!

Gotta love the Holguín (Cuba 🇨🇺) airport tourist giftshop. It really does have something for everyone...🤔