This will be a fun day of practical earthworm identification at the Field Studies Council’s Preston Montford Field centre.
It is not a formal course, but instruction is available for those not familiar with the process of identifying earthworms. There will be plenty of more experienced people on hand to help out those who are new to it. The workshop is entirely classroom based.
This Sunday workshop follows a practical day of earthworm sampling the day before at Shropshire Wildlife Trust’s Pontesford and Earl’s Hill reserves. The field day is entirely outdoors. Over the course of the Sunday workshop we will identify earthworms collected the previous day.
You don’t have to attend the Saturday field session in order to book onto the workshop. And you don’t have to book onto the workshop to attend the Saturday field session!
There is a booking fee for the Sunday workshop of £5.00. If you wish to book please visit the FSC website. If you wish to attend the field day (for which there is no booking fee), just send us an email to admin@tombio.uk to say you are coming.
Earthworm identification – to the level required for most scientific records – requires that earthworms be collected, killed and preserved. So only come along to the field session and/or workshop if you are comfortable with that.
Keiron Brown works for the Bat Conservation Trust but has a (not so secret) passion for earthworms! He is the Recording Officer for the Earthworm Society of Britain (ESB), one of the leading earthworm recorders in the UK, and an experienced earthworm identification trainer.
Dr Charlie Bell joined the FSC in Feb 2015 to work on the delivery phase of the Tomorrow’s Biodiversity project. Charlie combines her part time role on the Tom.bio project with working as one half of the national Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) Secretariat, based out of Shropshire Wildlife Trust. She is an active earthworm recorder in Shropshire.
Dr Rich Burkmar is an ecologist looking after the FSC’s Tomorrow’s Biodiversity project. He is an active earthworm recorder in Shropshire.