What’s been happening in the south of the island?

Firstly, welcome to new summer volunteer Kate who arrived today.  I’ll let her introduce herself:

“Hi, my name’s Kate Mennie and I am here on Mull for the summer working alongside Emily as the volunteer assistant ranger.  I have worked in childcare for the last 7 years in my home town in Aberdeenshire.  More recently I have been doing forest school and achieved my level 3 certificate in 2015.  I have a keen interest in the outdoors and its wildlife and I hope to pursue this as a career and look forward to working on Mull and Iona for the next 3 months.  I have been to Mull on holiday and I really look forward to exploring it more and meeting new people.”

Iona nature club have been investigating butterflies, watching green-veined whites and peacocks fluttering around the gardens, making feeders with sugary water, and turning themselves into butterfly-inspired artworks as you can see below!

The local Iona Community family group for Mull and Iona enjoyed working out how many trees would absorb each person’s lifetime carbon footprint so far, on a visit to Tiroran Community Forest.

I managed to squeeze in a journey to Edinburgh to attend the Connections with Nature conference run by Learning for Sustainability Scotland.  Plenty of new inspiration and useful networking if a rather long journey after a busy day – but at least I was able to enjoy this lovely Trossachs sunset on the way!

As part of a programme session for guests at Iona Abbey we enjoyed a fascinating tour of current archaeological work taking place on the island, reopening trenches first dug in the 1950s and using new techniques not available then to study what’s been found.

Just a wee flavour of what we’ve been up to…hot chocolate anyone?

Emily