Wild Scotland: spaces for nature

A brilliant short video produced by 2020 Vision that we came across and couldn't resist sharing with you. The video encourages and explores the idea that nature needs our help and we need it. The video gives a special mention to several places and projects going on across Scotland and in the Cairngorms National Park too. Make your own wee space for nature - sit back, relax and enjoy it!

Wild Scotland from 2020VISION on Vimeo.

Thanks to @CameronMcNeish for sharing!

First Cuckoo of Spring

A pleasant surprise this morning. While working in Blair Castle grounds we heard the first cuckoo of this spring. It's always lovely to hear the call of the cuckoo as it's a sign that the warmer weather is on the way.

Listening to the characteristic sound also brings a sense of awe, to think that this bird -about the same size as a pigeon- has flown all the way here to Scotland from central Africa. The call is the male bird, letting females in the area know that he has arrived and is ready to take a mate.

European Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus)
Image: Locoguapa

Cuckoos are brood parasites, a term that means rather than rearing their own chicks they lay an egg in the unattended nest of another bird, pushing out one of that birds own eggs in the process. The bird whose nest it is then unwittingly raises the cuckoo chick as it's own, unaware of the swap. The young cuckoo usually pushes it's foster brothers and sisters out of the nest, meaning it is the sole recipient of it's surrogate parents attentions. Cuckoos in Scotland usually lay their eggs in the nests of birds such as Meadow Pipits, Dunnocks, and Reed Warblers. The health of the population of Scottish and British cuckoo populations is therefore closely linked to those of these birds. The dramatic decline of cuckoos in recent years has largely been due to a reduction in their egg-hosts' populations decreasing, caused mainly by habitat loss and fragmentation.

The cuckoo has a breast patterning that mimics the coloration of the peregrine falcon and keeps potential competitors and predators at bay. This is the grey and white banding that you can see clearly in the picture above. It is though that this patterning also helps them to successfully parasitise the nests of other birds, fooling them into thinking that they are going to be attacked and eaten, and so they flee the nest leaving the female cuckoo free to lay her egg. Something which she can do in under 10 seconds!

Black Grouse Lekking

Dawn was a bit hazy and dull this morning but it looks like today may be nice again. Until the rain arrives, at least. I was up early to survey some Black Grouse lek sites for the Perthshire study group and managed to get some camera-phone footage of  the activity. The quality isn't amazing but you can see how easy it is to do a bit of amateur 'digiscoping' without needing too much technical kit. The initial results are below - no sound though: the grouse were a bit too far away to pick anything up!

When I get a chance I will try and get some more footage and photos up. If you'd like to get closer or have a try yourself, why not check out Atholl Estates' Black Grouse Land Rover Tours that will take you out to the action.

Snow Melt Adds To Heavy Rainfall

The weather has been very wet here since the early hours of Sunday morning. Heavy rainfall combined with milder temperatures has meant that much of the snow from the higher ground has been melting, swelling the rivers and burns and making them run in high spate. You can see from the picture and video below just what a difference this can make

A tranquil view of Gilbert's Bridge in Glen Tilt on a 'normal' day.
The river is relatively calm. in this picture

The video above was taken from the top of Gilbert's Bridge on Sunday morning. 

The river was in heavy spate and flowing very fast!

Bats in the Daytime: Part II

A quick update following on from the previous post:

It turns out that someone did get a photograph of the bat that we saw enjoying a spot of daytime flying, it just took a bit of time finding the bat in the picture as it came out so small and blurry due to the speed at which it was flying. With a little bit of digital 'magic' you can see how the bat's features emerge from the initial blurred photo. Although perhaps still not good enough to make a decisive identification of the species, it being a Pipistrelle is still a pretty safe bet. Thanks to my Dad for passing on the photo (and double checking for bats in the first place!).

Click on the images for a larger view

Close-up crop of  the original photo. A bit blurry but you can easily see
the 'bat' shape. (click on the pictures to enlarge) Image: E.Gilhooley

 

'Tweaked' version of the original. Still blurred but the wing
outline is much clearer. Image: E.Gilhooley

Black and white version of the image, zoomed in and sharpened up . The overall shape is clear and
even facial features begin to emerge. Not bad from a slightly blurry original photo. Image: E.Gilhooley

Bats in the Daytime

Bat sightings aren't all that unusual in the grounds of Blair Castle; there are plenty of good roosting places in all the old stonework and lots of trees and undergrowth harboring insects to feed on. More unexpected, was spotting a bat flitting about near St. Bride's Kirk at midday on Monday. Bats being nocturnal by habit, it was fairly unusual to see one happily going about the business of catching itself a good meal.

Common Pipistrelle bat. Image: CC Giles San Martin.

What drew first attention to the bat, immediately marking it apart from a bird, was its flight. Not smooth like a bird's, but jerky and halting, almost as if it were leap-frogging through the air and lunging from one wing-beat to the next, changing direction quickly to keep up with its prey. Not having a camera to hand, there is no photo to show, and bats can be tricky to identify visually, but the most likely suspect is a pipistrelle, one of the UK's most common chiropteran ('hand-winged') mammals. There are two species of pipistrelle commonly found in the UK, the common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus, our likely suspect) and the soprano pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pygmaeus). Both are around the same size, their bodies are about 4 cm long, very small indeed as you can see in the picture above. They are so similar that until the 1990's they were thought to be the same species and can often only be accurately distinguished from each other by their call, inaudible to the human ear without a bat detector which can pick up their very high frequency sounds.

It may be highly unusual but it isn't unheard of, for bats to come out in the daytime. Usually they sleep in the day and come out to hunt at night, making great use of their fantastically accurate echolocation skills to hone in on insects and snap them up in mid-flight. The main reason for their nocturnal habit is avoidance of predators but it also means that there are fewer competitors for the same food sources at night. The bat we saw had most likely woken early from hibernation, roused by the milder weather of the last two days and a hungry appetite to satiate. There were definitely a few insects buzzing about, making the best of the warm (early spring?) sunshine, or at least the ones that weren't being snapped up...

• You can find pictures and videos of Pipistrelle and other bats (and more nature besides) at ARKive.org.
• The Bat Conservation Trust have a wealth of information about bats and ways to find out more or get involved with conserving these charismatic creatures. They also have a very useful section on dealing with bats in your house.

Bumbling along or toiling away?

Bumblebees  are associated with warm weather and long sunny days. Even if it hasn't been as warm as we might like, now that we're in the midst of what is passing for summer there should be plenty of bumblebees about for you to discover in your gardens or when out for a walk in the countryside.

Bumblebees feed on and collect the nectar from flowers and take it back to their hives where is is used to feed their young or stored. Bumblebees are much more open to food shortage than honeybees however, as they only store a few days worth of nectar at a time.Because they visit many different flower species, bumblebees are hugely important to our ecosystems as pollinators. As well as helping wildflowers to reproduce it has been estimated that the pollination 'services' of bumblebees are worth something like £400 million each year to the UK agricultural economy. So it would seem that visiting flowers all day is pretty hard work!

Heath Bumblebee (Bombus jonellus) feeding on a thistle flower

Of the 24 species of UK bumblebee only 8 are commonly found throughout the UK, in almost all habitats where there are flowering plants.. The rest are much less common or even very rare; the Great yellow bumblebee (Bombus distinguendus) is only found in a few places along the north coast of Scotland. Numbers of bumblebees have declines severely throughout the UK since the mid 1940's and two species have actually become extinct in the UK. The decline of the bumblebee is largely due to changing agricultural practices such as increasing field sizes and intensive planting of single crop species (monoculture). This has led to a 97% reduction in flower-rich grasslands from 1930's levels and removed large portions of bumblebees' preferred habitat.

Recently the Bumblebee Conservation Trust teamed up with the RSPB and other partners to reintroduce the Short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) at the RSPB's Dungeness reserve on the south coast of england. It is hoped that by working closely with local farmers and other landowners to help provide plenty of suitable, flower-species rich habitat in marginal agricultural land, the reintroduction of the bee will be a success.

If you'd like to find out more about bumblebees and how to identify them you can visit the Bumblebee Conservation Trust's website. There you will also find information and links to surveys that members of the public can get involved with, such as "BeeWatch" - an ambitious project that allows you to upload your photos of bumblebees and get help to identify them. This has already helped to discover new populations of bumblebees. The more people that are involved the more information the project will be able to gather!

Closer to home you can also help by planting "bee friendly" flowers in your garden so that you are helping to provide a variety of plants suitable for different species of bumblebee. Other simple ways to help could involve making an overwintering shelter or "bee house" for bees to take refuge in and hibernate over the cold winter months. This BBC Breathing Spaces webpage has some really good ideas to get you started thinking about homes for different bee species and there's a link to a make for a really good one for bumblebee's at the bottom of the page!

Small Cow-wheat is Special

Small cow-wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum) grows on at least 2 sites on Atholl Estates. This is pretty good going as it's only found in 18 sites in the whole of Britain, most of which are in Scotland. Now is the perfect time to see it as it's flowering, and relatively easy to distinguish from its common cousin - common cow-wheat (Melampyrum pratense). It likes to grow in areas that are somewhat damp and shady, and also steals some nutrients from other nearby plants - it is a hemi-parasite. Its seeds are dispersed by ants, in fact, ants assisted with some conservation work here to spread out the range of one patch of cow-wheat, by taking the seeds further than they had been put by humans.

Removing bracken from a small cow-wheat site

Small cow-wheat flower

The seeds of the small cow-wheat are dispersed by ants. Where this doesn't happen, the flower doesn't spread to new areas and simply becomes very concentrated in one small locality. This is happening here to some extent and so, in conjunction with the National Park, we are trying to help the flower's future success by dispersing some seeds, and also keeping back invasive plants such as bracken and horsetail.

One of our small cow-wheat sites is very easy to visit up Glen Tilt, and we hope to have some interpretation on site soon.

Small cow-wheat is one of the species involved with the Cairngorms Rare Plant project, which aims to deliver urgently needed action for four threatened plants of high conservation importance in the Cairngorms National Park. www.cairngormsrareplants.org.uk/

We also got the priveleged but very sad close-up of a male pine marten today. It had been hit on the road near the House of Bruar but was still in very good condition. The canine teeth and claws are particularly impressive so close up. We have many pine martens living in the woods here, but being nocturnal and shy, they are rarely seen. We will use this one for educational purposes.

Out with the old and in with the new

The recent warm weather of last week seems like a distant memory with the current cold snap. It was a chilly  -7°C this morning and the damp air made it feel even colder. But the day brightened up a little this afternoon and there are still see plenty of signs of spring on show - it's all about change at this time of year! 


The red deer stag in the deer park at the castle has recently lost his antlers. He will be without them for a while although it won't be too long before they start growing again, to be ready for the rut in autumn.

Discarded Red Deer antler (© David Perez)

Red deer (Cervus elaphus) digesting their lunch. But which one is the stag?
Answer: he's the larger, lighter coloured one with stubby 'nobbles' on his head

The sheep are lambing and there are little lambs starting to run about, worrying their mothers as they play and explore.

April lambs exploring

Also happening this spring: the pony trekking center at the castle is open again for riding. If you're interested in having a go then look on the website but remember that you will need to book in advance. We had a go recently and think it's good fun!


BBC Springwatch (the modern-day herald of spring?) won't be on until May but there are plenty of signs to look out for in the month between now and then! See what you can spot for yourself if you come up to the castle for a visit, or in your own garden and surrounding countryside. You can comment below to let us know what you've seen!

Timid Tigers?

It's been a little while since we promised an update on the wildcat cameras. Although the trail cameras been out for almost two weeks, we still haven't managed to capture even a glimpse of a Highland Tiger or even of any other wildlife so far.

Wildcat (Felis silvestris) image: Michael Gäbler

On the face of it this is a little disappointing as the cameras both appear to be working correctly and the bait that is used to attract in the cats, and which you might assume to be equally as effective towards other animals, remains relatively untouched. However, always looking for a positive, we can at least speculate as to what the absence of any wildlife appearing in front of the cams does tell us. We were hoping to look for cats in suitable habitats within previously unsurveyed locations so we can assume that either: 1) the locations we have the cameras at are beyond any local wildcats' current range; or 2) the mild winter has been beneficial for the wildcats' food supply and they have not needed to move to the edges of their range to seek additional sustenance; or lastly 3) any wildcats that do use the habitat near these locations just haven't been out there, or at least past our cameras in the last few weeks.

Of course, the above is all really just reasoned speculation. The only thing we know 100% for sure is that we have not recorded any pictures of any cats. However it is also important to celebrate the benefits of finding negatives - we all like to see exciting pictures of wildlife in its native habitat but in this case the absence of pictures can be just as significant, giving us information about where wildcats are not to be found and helping us decide where to relocate the camera traps to for a better chance of finding one. Put together, information about presence and absence can contribute to the larger picture of mapping out the range of the wildcat as a species, not just spotting individuals.

So our next move will be to reposition the camera traps. This time a little closer to where we know there have been sightings. If at first you don't succeed...

In the meantime, have a look at the update on the Highland Tiger blog where you can see the results of a more successful camera trapping session.

Waiting for Wildcats

We very recently received some camera traps from the Highland Tiger project, aimed at conserving wildcats within the Cairngorms. They hope that we can use the cameras to capture photographs of wildcats in locations that have not been studied before. They are particularly interested to see if any cats we do find are individuals that have already been found elsewhere.

Camera trap set up across a trail, poised to capture some wildcat action!

Camera traps are a very useful tool for the conservation of a species like the wildcat. They can be used to record the distinctive markings of different individuals and then to begin to establish information about the territory of the animals. They also allow for capturing natural behaviour when no one is around to disturb it.


The wildcat has been identified by Scottish Natural Heritage as one of the most important species currently threatened by both man-made and natural environmental pressures and has been a protected species since 1988. They are the only remaining member of the cat family native to Britain but the most serious threat to their future is from mating with domestic cats and creating fertile ‘hybrid’ offspring. These hybrid cats are damaging because they weaken the wildcat populations and make it less likely for two ‘pure’ wildcats to breed and have ‘true’ wildcat offspring.

If you think that you’ve seen a wildcat yourself or want to be sure of how to identify them, check here to make sure you know what to look for. If it is a wildcat don’t forget to report it to the project so they can get as much information as possible about these elusive animals.

We’ve put the camera traps out today and are hoping they will capture some photographs of wildcats over the weekend. We’ll let you know the results here! In the meantime, why not check out the Highland Tiger YouTube channel or visit their facebook page.