Week 6 - FSC Millport

This week I conducted another WeBs Survey, helped out with my first primary school group and helped with aquarium feeds.

On Tuesday Rosie and I went out in the morning at High tide and carried out the WeBs survey that we do once a month. Its crazy to think the last time I did it was a month ago! In the afternoon Rosie, Luke and I did an aquarium feed where we filleted a Mackrel to feed to the various organisms in the aquarium. We also had Cinolla training which is a new online system the FSC are moving too for bookings, communicating with guests and coordinating booking calendar and education rota. I have also been posting our weekly staff profiles on the FSC Millport Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fscmillport/?hl=en



On Wednesday Alex asked me to take on the task of tidying and sorting the Robertson Museum we have on site. I had to identify two peices of scientific equipment without labels and then create information cards to display along side them. One is a Vintage Gnome Beta II Enlarger and the other was a seismograph. I had to find a place for various signs, put them up and make captions for them. I remade a seaglass poster into a seaglass jar, sorted and moved tables around to make the space better used as well as make other information posters and a sign for the aquarium door reminding people to be quiet when entering. I also had my 1 month review meeting which went well. Rosie and I also made Sushi which was yum.














On Thursday and Friday I was helping out and assisting with Abbey Primary School with Rhona and Jack. On Thursday we took them rock climbing, orienteering and bushcraft (firelighting) in the afternoon. In the evening we did a session called what wanders at night, which includes bat detectors, motion sensor camera traps and putting out mammal traps. In the morning we checked all the mammal traps, unfortunately the students didn't catch any small mammals, we think it was because of all the wet weather.  After checking the traps on Friday morning we went to the Rockyshore for a Bioblitz. It was really fun to get out on the Rockyshore again and to talk to the pupils about what they were finding. We got them to find as many different organisms as they could to put in their buckets and then helped them identify them with ID Guides before returning them to the rockpools after discussing their adaptations. We also managed to see Kylie the Common Dolphin that tends to siwm around the Red Buoy in front of the centre! The other placement students have been here 7 months now and hadn't seen her before but Jack kept saying she's always there! I hadn't seen her yet but as we were getting the school to cross the road we saw her dorsal fin breach the water! It was amazing, my first wild dolphin! I was very excited! We also saw a seal swimming by, it was a good day for wildlife.

The School left around Mid-day and in the afternoon we had to clean up the classroom and clean and put away used equipment. Because I worked an evening on Thursday it meant I got a short on Friday so finished at 15:30pm instead of 17:00.















My Friend Maisie from home came to visit on Friday. She came over to the island after lunch, I took her for a tour around the centre and she helped Rosie and I feed the aquarium before helping Rhona and I tidy the classroom. at 15:30 we went back to the house before heading over to Largs at 17:00. We went to the Pub and met Rhona, Michael, Luke and Jenny for some dinner which was really nice. We then headed back over to the Island with Luke and Maisie and watched films for the rest of the evening.

On Saturday Maisie and I had a chilled morning, after lunch we went for a walk from the flat up towards the golf club and then down to Fintray Bay before walking along the coast then back up towards the golf club and then down into Millport and then back around the bay to the flat again. We got quite soaked! But we had a really fun time anyway and the views despite the weather were really lovely.














On Sunday we went for a walk to the highest peak on Cumbrae in much nicer conditions! The walk up was pretty tiring but the views were amazing. It was very windy at the top though! We then did the inner circuit walk before the Farland point walk and walked down to the centre to try and see Kylie the resident common dolphin but to no success.



















On Monday Maisie and I went for a fish and chips lunch, I tried a Pizza crunch which was a deep fried Pizza! I was very intruiged aha and it was pretty good but I think I prefer normal Pizza. I waved Maisie off on her train at around 1pm before returning to the Island.




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