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!

Litter Pick Postponed

The Blair Atholl Community Litter Pick that was scheduled for today at 10 am has been postponed due to the weather. There's just enough snow lying on the ground to cover up the litter.

The litter pick has been moved back to next week

 Wednesday 27th March at 10am

Last year's litter pick: bright, sunny and warm... not like today!

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.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. It started in 1970 in the USA and has steadily gained force, becoming a worldwide event during the '90s though it's still not that well recognised in the UK. The idea behind the day is an attempt to "Mobilize the Earth" into doing more to celebrate and benefit the environment - if we all take one day where we think about how our actions are affecting the Earth, maybe it will be in our consciousness more often.

Here's a thought provoking Earth Day video from the US Environmental Protection Agency that has a message equally relevant for over here:

The littering issue isn't too bad here on Atholl Estaes as we're happy to see that most of our visitors seem to respect the landscape and take their rubbish away with them. That said, we do have to deal with the occasional trouble hot-spot and keep on top of things in the busier areas. But thank you to everyone who does their best to take their litter away and keep Scotland clean for everyone!

Village Litter Pick: 10am, 27th March

We will be holding a litter pick through the village of Blair Atholl this coming Tuesday, the 27th March. If you would like to come along and help clean up in the community, we will be meeting outside the Village Hall at 10am. You can stay and help out for as long or as little as you like and we will provide everyone with gloves, rubbish bags and litter pickers.

With a bit of help from a few willing hands it won't take long to have the village looking clean and neat, ready for the springtime. Any time that you can spare will be greatly appreciated, so come along and join us!

Ranger picking up leaf litter