Hear from our winning UMAC team

Student Spotlight - Charlotte Wood

Hear from Charlotte Wood, team leader of the Craibstone Critters all about her University Mammal Challenge experience.

Back in 2021, when I was a (not-so) fresh faced first year, was when I was first told about The University Mammal Challenge. We were told about the challenge by one of our tutors, and asked if we would like to take part in it, and well, we were like deer in headlights (pun intended). At the time we had only been at SRUC for a few weeks, and though I could tell a fox from a badger, that was about as far as my identification skills went. So, we decided to leave it for that year.

A little bit older and a little bit wiser, in 2022/2023 the Craibstone Critters entered the University Mammal Challenge. We came a respectable third, but more importantly we learnt a lot about the mammals in and around Craibstone, learnt how to read tracks and signs, made a lot of contacts, and I even got to be a guest speaker at the NESBReC annual forum!

Half of Craibstone Critters ‘24 out surveying for mammals

This year, I picked up the baton of team leader again, with Kenneth joining me from the original 2023 team and students from both the first and second year.  And this year has been a blast! Not only was it a pleasure to see first year students be so engaged and enthusiastic with the challenge, it has been a pleasure passing on knowledge we have picked up to them. Not to mention that we got to play with some awesome kit, such as the Anabat which NESBATS kindly lent us, the thermal imager which Victoria Graves took us out on a session around campus with and the camera traps which was lent to us from NESMAN, NESBReC and Victoria Graves.

Roe Deer on the thermal imager

The absolute highlight of UMAC 2024 was getting a pine marten on our camera traps. There were historic records of a pine marten on campus, but they had not been spotted since major developments had happened in the area, and our camera traps that were out in 2023 failed to spot one. It’s absolutely amazing that one has returned, and we now have a resident pine marten on campus!

Our resident pine marten, having a nose around the squirrel feeder.

Taking part in the University Mammal Challenge is not only about the competition, by getting involved you are helping out a great conservation charity and collecting valuable data, and you are learning new skills, gaining opportunities, and opening doors. Because of the hard work Ieuan has done for UMAC 24, he got a placement helping a PhD candidate with fieldwork and classifying camera trap images of mammals this summer. And because of the work I’ve done for UMAC, I am now on the committee for the North East Scotland Mammal Network and I also host mammal events at open and taster days for SRUC Aberdeen.  

For any student thinking of taking part in next years challenge, I’d highly recommend it. You will learn valuable skills in mammal tracking, survey methods etc. and these are cv worthy skills, and as the challenge runs for 5 months, it shows a level of commitment by completing it.

And for anybody unsure if they have the skills and knowledge to take part, the university mammal challenge is a perfect way to learn. If my first-year self could look at me now they would not believe how far that I have come, from a student with basic identification skills to someone who can now identify different species of bat from their calls in spectrograms!

So, take part, have fun, and you never know, you might even find a pine marten or two!

Find out more about the University Mammal Challenge here.