Manx Wildlife Trust adult courses have returned.

Following their popularity last year, the charity will be running certificates in Wildlife Gardening and Wildlife Observing, and a Magnificent Meadows programme for 2022.

It said its ambitions for the courses were to enable people in the island to gain a stronger understanding of their island’s natural environment and to inspire and enable people to do more to help nature in their day to day lives.

The courses are open to anybody who is interested but could be particularly interesting for those embarking on a career as a naturalist or ecologist.

The Wildlife Gardening course will take place on Wednesday evenings between May 4 and August 10 at St John’s Mill, which has access to the wildlife garden constructed and planted by MWT and will be a key teaching resource.

It will cover all aspects of what you can do to encourage and support wildlife in your garden, including the different types of habitats you can provide, building wildlife homes, looking after your soil and managing for the long term.

The course will also include two field trips to visit other sites for wildlife and students will have the chance to design spaces themselves.

Meanwhile, the Wildlife Observer course will run across Saturday afternoons between May 14 and November, and will be taught at a range of natural locations in the island, including MWT nature reserves and the Nature Discovery Centre at the Ayres.

It will inform people about the biodiversity and varied habitats of the Isle of Man, help people to improve their identification skills, and encourage and enable them to join in with citizen science and MWT volunteer surveys.

The course will provide understanding and experience of a range of different field observation techniques, including the use of quadrats, transects, stream monitoring, sampling techniques for invertebrates, and include a talk by a bird ringing professional.

The Magnificent Meadows course, will be delivered on Wednesday afternoons between May 25 and October 19, based at the MWT nature reserves.

The aim of this series of events is to illustrate the challenges and rewards of managing this undervalued habitat.

You can find out more about the courses and costs on Manx Wildlife Trust’s website.