About Me

My name is Amy Brocklehurst, and I am a naturalist, a keen amateur photographer, and an owl-obsessive. Wildlife has woven into every part of my daily life, from my working hours and free time spent wandering coast and countryside, to the filling of my home with any cute and quirky animal-related items such as crocodile tongs and the ever-useful ‘socktopus’.

I am currently a Practical Conservation Trainee with Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT), under the Heritage Lottery Funded scheme ‘Wildlife Skills‘. For the next year I will be based at Kingcombe in West Dorset, and will be provided with every opportunity a budding reserve warden could hope for; from ticketed chainsaw training to species identification days.

Prior to this I spent 5 months volunteering as Assistant Warden for DWT on the spectacular Brownsea Island of Poole harbour, where I saw more incredible wildlife than I could ever have hoped for, including many species of my favourite hawkmoths!

From 2010-2013 I studied a degree in BSc Hons Zoology at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, spending almost all of my free time volunteering with organisations such as the National Trust, Cornwall Wildlife Trust, The Conservation Volunteers and Surfers Against Sewage in activities such as gorse clearance and beach cleans. Then about a year after leaving, I volunteered in Northern Cyprus with my university’s Marine Turtle Research Group, helping during hatchling season to maintain an ongoing monitoring record of green and loggerhead turtle nests.

I aim to use this blog to engage you with the exciting happenings of my new traineeship, and as a fun way to document any wildlife encounters in my wider life that I hope you’ll enjoy!

(The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dorset Wildlife Trust’s positions, strategies or opinions.)

(All images are my own and are not to be used without express permission from myself, unless for the purposes of reblogging only where I am to be credited as the original author.)