Hello, my name is Freya and I spent my week of work experience with Surrey Wildlife Trust,  I am interested in taking up a career in the environmental area when I am older. In this blog, I will be talking about what I did on each day as well as a certain endangered species, skylarks.

On Monday, I travelled to Eashing Fields. In the morning myself and other volunteers cut down trees, this was to allow the growth of other plants and allow more room for animals to nest. In the afternoon, we went for a small walk around Eashing Fields, and we spotted many birds, including: skylarks and red kites. It was quite a special moment.

On Tuesday, I travelled all the way to Nower Wood. This is the education centre of Surrey Wildlife Trust. A local primary school arrived, and I spent my day doing pond dipping with different groups of children. They had a lot of fun as some of them have never seen certain animals from the pond before. We saw some incredible creatures, for example: greater water boatmen and baby newts. As well as that, we experienced a greater water boatman eating a lesser water boatman, it took 6 bites! They were very fascinating.

On Wednesday, I went to Newdigate Brickworks. There is a non-native species growing out of control over there and it was invading the growth of other native plant species. Myself and other volunteers got to work for the whole day on removing this pesky plant, it was called Himalayan Balsam. As well as that, there were a LOT of bugs everywhere. 

Finally, on Thursday, I was transferring record card data onto a spreadsheet. These record cards have been collected over 50 years, the earliest one I submitted was in 1949! Overall, I completed 80 record cards. I had to write the species, the Latin name, when and who found it and where it was found. I had lots of fun learning the new Latin names for each animal.

During my work experience, I found skylarks very interesting. Skylarks are a small brown bird and have a wingspan of 30-36cm. They can weigh up to 42g and have an average lifespan of 2 years. The bird is brown and has a small crest with a white underside of the tail.  Skylark’s song is fast, complex and there can be between 160 to over 460 syllables in the song. The song is usually sung by the male, this is to attract the females and so they can nest. Skylarks lay 3 to 4 eggs and the chicks become independent after 2 weeks.

By Freya