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Last TFL week of the year, Dundreggan 5th to 12th November

Myself and Gordon were, once again, on duty for the last TFL week of 2011.  It’s always great to get back to Dundreggan at some point of the year to catch up with Steve (Morris, Dundreggan project manager) and the trees that I’ve been involved in planting.

This year, due to the nursery move from Plodda to Dundreggan, there were a lot of TFL grown trees to be planted, both in the nursery, and in two of the planting sites.  In total we planted over 2100 trees in the two planting sites, and numerous trees were transposed successfully to their new nursery setting.

From a personal perspective I was extremely pleased to see that some of the aspen and birch had almost reached my head height in the riparian planting area, where we added some hazel, elm, rose and the occasional Scots pine.

We spent three days working in the planting area on the North West of the estate.  From here we had a great view of the mountains of Glen Moriston, and were witness to colourful sunsets each evening.   Here too, some of the birch trees have already reached five foot and it will be interesting to see how the site looks in spring, when the trees start getting their leaves back.

Many thanks to Jill for guiding us through a number of the planting jobs, and for Abby’s help during the nursery day.  It was good to catch up with Bill and Donnie and to spend the week with a great bunch of creative volunteers.  I’m still amazed at how good Grieg’s pizza was.

Posted by  |  13 November, 2011 | Categories: TFL, Work | Leave a comment

I’m also blogging elsewhere… sort of

Recent Abernethy activities include entering data to track the young ospreys from Loch Garten, and writing some blog text to go onto the osprey blog, which can be found here

http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/lochgartenospreys/b/lochgartenospreys/archive/2011/11/09/bynack-on-the-move-again.aspx

In the last couple of weeks we’ve started heather burning, up on the moors, to create patches of flora regeneration.  We’ve also been doing the usual deadwood creation, dam building and removing some roadside regeneration (pine trees, especially, grow in thick patches alongside tracks because of the ground disturbance).

Last weekend (29th), I accompanied team pine marten (Laura and Dave) on their last visit to Mar Lodge, to pick up the hair tubes that Laura had set up there.  Here are some photos from that trip, one from one of last week’s damming days, and one from this week’s burning…

Posted by  |  3 November, 2011 | Categories: RSPB, Work | Leave a comment

Choughs on the BBC, hang on, I recognise them…

A couple of days ago Fran Miller sent me a link pointing out that some Cornish choughs had made it onto the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15357028

The link describes how four young choughs from West Penwith in Cornwall have made the journey North, up the Cornish coast, towards Newquay and Padtsow.  If you’ve kept up with previous entries you’ll know that this group contains two of the boys from the brood that I was watching in the spring.  And, even better, the picture shown on the BBC page is of Brownblue and Whitebrown, their proud parents, and the birds that I was blogging about at the time.

For some unfathomable reason, the BBC haven’t used one of my photos.

Posted by  |  26 October, 2011 | Categories: RSPB | Leave a comment

Another day out with Ron

I’ve been lucky enough to spend another day with Ron Summers again today.  This time Rachel and her friend CJ, both from St Andrews university, joined us.  Rachel is studying how trees on the reserve can provide a map of when and where fires took place at Abernethy for her final year degree paper.  Today they had a glorious chance to watch me cut wedges forth from Scots pines with a carefully wielded chainsaw.

Posted by  |  26 October, 2011 | Categories: RSPB, Work | 1 Comment

Reserve work…

Just to give you an idea of what I’m up to…  Yesterday myself, Alice, the two short-term vols (Andy and Andy), and Gregg, who’s on secondment from the RSPB Scotland office created deadwood in the morning.  This involves killing trees (generally pine) in a plantation in a variety of ways, to give space to broad leaf trees or granny pines and let light through to the forest floor.

As I have a chainsaw I ring bark trees, damage them (so they are more susceptible to being blown over), or high stump them.  The non chainsaw folk are, meanwhile, pulling trees over with a winch, or ‘totem polling’ them.  The aim is to leave the majority of the deadwood standing, as this generates invaluable woodland habitat for birds and invertebrates.  It sounds harsh, but the plantation is densely packed, and we can create a lot of deadwood by working on just a small percentage of the trees.

In the afternoon we strengthened a fence around an experimental regeneration enclosure.  I then had to rush back to the lodge to enter the Osprey satellite tracking data for the week.  The news on that front is that the two young that we’re tracking have both made a successful trip to Western Africa, and appear to be fishing and hanging around on the rivers in that part of the continent.

Today, myself, Gregg and the two Andy’s accompanied Bob (one of the wardens) to Craigmore wood, another part of the reserve, where we checked the fence and removed rogue Norway spruce from the site.  We also checked fences near Mondhuie and Lyngarrie.

From left to right, Alice, Gregg and the two Andys.

Posted by  |  25 October, 2011 | Categories: RSPB, Work | Leave a comment

Mar Lodge with team Pine Marten

Laura Kubasiewicz and David Bavin are currently staying at Forest lodge while they research the habits of local pine martens for Laura’s PhD.  Having collected data from Abernethy they are now collecting hair tube (a tube that the pine marten climbs up to get bait and in the process leaves hair on a strategically positioned sticky pad) and scat samples from Mar Lodge.  I was lucky enough to tag along with Laura and Dave for the day to see Mar Lodge and get a bit more experience in collecting samples (with blue sterile gloves on)

Mar Lodge is a massive estate owned by the National Trust.  At first sight it seems idyllic, with beautiful fast flowing burns and stately granny pines mixed with the odd colourful larch.  However, a little more thought and I realised that all is not so well on the estate.  There are a good number of snags (standing dead trees, in this case scots pines, likely to have died in the last 50 years), and some fallen dead wood, and there appears to be very little significantly sized regeneration.  Having said that, it appears that the National Trust Scotland (NTS) are on the case.  They have recently opened up their management plan for consultation and the reduction in deer numbers over the last 5 years has started to lead to significant changes in the ground flora, and an increase in seedlings.

As for the pine martens, we found lots of scat and some hair in one of Laura’s hair tubes.  Pine martens have quite big territories, but Laura can find out how big by genetically testing the hair from the hair tubes.  This allows her to determine individuals and their gender.

Posted by  |  23 October, 2011 | Categories: Travels | Leave a comment

Trees for Life week at Plodda Lodge and Glen Affric, 15th – 22nd Oct

I’ve just finished Focalising the last ever TFL week at Plodda Lodge.  Over the last two years Plodda has become my favourite TFL accommodation.  For me it has a very intimate feel with a communal eating area and a single bunk room.  It’s funny, I can remember avoiding it during my early volunteer weeks, because I was put off by the idea of a single bunk room, but due to some last minute changes to the work week schedule in early 2009 I was asked to go there for my first week as a Focaliser.  I was joined on the week by some good friends, from TFL and some I knew outside of the organisation, and I can remember lying in the bunk room one night, listening to everyone breathing/shuffling/talking in their sleep (a couple of them seemingly talking nonsense to each other!), and thinking that I felt an incredible feeling of well-being in amongst them.

During this week we carried out non-native tree weeding on three of the days, removed a few hundred metres of fencing on a wet day at Kerrow wood, and spent a day in the nursery.  One of the weeding sites was alongside Loch Affric, which is in a fantastic, rugged setting.  On our last day there we took the opportunity to visit the Athnamulloch bothy, a place that TFL have used for work weeks in the past.

Special thanks to Mick, my co-focaliser, and to Gordon and Julie for their support during the week.  In some ways this was the most interesting week I’ve spent with TFL, and I’m grateful that I was able to share it with such a considerate group of people.

I look forward to catching up with the trees from the nursery in a couple of weeks at Dundreggan.  Here are some photos from the week.  Not many nature ones I’m afraid, as it’s pretty hard to tell if I’m taking a decent picture without an lcd screen or viewfinder on my disabled camera.  The ones of Plodda falls and from the hills up near Loch an Eang are taken on our day off.

Posted by  |  22 October, 2011 | Categories: TFL | Leave a comment

The dam builders

Ross has kindly given me two projects to look after while I’m here at RSPB Abernethy.  One is to manage the roadside regeneration on one of the woodland tracks (Mondhuie), and the other is to build a series of dams to block some drainage ditches.  The ditches were dug shortly after world war two when trees were in short supply and much of the land was being used to produce a timber crop.  Now the RSPB are restoring the area, near Loch Garton, to it’s original bog wood habitat, to help the many species that live there.

It just so happens that dam building is a good team sport.  One person gets to put on a large pair of waders and stand in the ditch while the others dig turf, saw up some wood for the structure, stand in the plastic lining, and generally help pack the dam with peat and turf.  It’s also great to be able to see the results as the water level rises behind the dam.

Posted by  |  12 October, 2011 | Categories: RSPB, Work | 1 Comment