Animal Antics!

As promised I have a couple of videos of animal foraging behavior taken while sampling at the Glamis Castle Estate. Sadly Blogger wont let me upload them for some reason so I have added them to youtube. Just click the links below and you can see a Greater Spotted Woodpecker looking for food and a cheeky Red Squirrel trying to sneak up on his friend!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJpQK5YhBJo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQP96XEd9U

I will also upload a video of a Songthrush foraging onve it has uploaded. Hope you all enjoy.

Oh...today I had a visit from a Stoat in the nature trail so thats another species to add to the growing list of what can be seen in the Glamis Castle Nature Trail. Next time I see him i'll do my best to snap a photo!

Biodiversity Survey Begins...!

As part of the conservation project I felt it was important to find out what species called Glamis its home. My main concerns were birds and small mammals because these are the species that are at the top of various trophic levels on the estate. This means that if there is a healthy variety and population of these species it is a good sign that lower trophic levels on the estate are in good condition. Simply put, if we have good biodiversity it is likely we have good insect populations and a good variety of plant and tree species. If we survey and find that species are missing that could or should be found in certain habitats, we can attempt to improve the habitat to encourage an increase in species diversity.

This would be a huge job for one person so I decided that to achieve this with limited costs and in a relatively short time period I would get the help of some volunteers. The plan is to survey over 4 weekends and record the most complete species list we can. This will help to shape plans to develop the habitats. The volunteers that helped this weekend were graduates with backgrounds in wildlife biology, conservation and environmental science. Thier details will be added to the volunteers page of this blog.

 The Nature Trail

The nature trail is the first habitat I am looking to develop in the estate. The main goals are to provide an excellent habitat for bird and small mammal species, allow the public to enjoy these species from the new hide areas.

Small Mammal Trapping

I contacted Dr Jason Gilchrist at Edinburgh Napier University and he very kindly lent me 30 Sherman traps. These are commonly used by scientists to sample small mammals. The traps can be seen in the pictures below, they are the rectangular metal containers.

The photos directly below shows the team getting ready to go out and collect the traps.

We added bedding and bait to the traps and set them out on Friday night. There was excitement on Saturday morning despite the 7am start. Only one of the traps had been tripped and you can see what we found in the picture below.

After this we conducted some bird surveys and the full species list with pictures will be added to the wildlife blog page as soon as some of the shyer birds stick around long enough to be snapped!

On Saturday evening we set the traps out again and went home for a well earned rest!

On Sunday morning we had 3 traps tripped with 2 juvenile wood mice and 1 adult female wood mouse.

After lunch the team and I took a walk along the River Dean that runs through the estate. We made a couple of exciting discoveries.

The pictures above are the tell tale signs of beavers present on the river. The beavers fell trees for damming waterways and storing for food.

The photo above is the foot print of an Otter. You can tell it is an Otter as the pad is surrounded by 5 toes, unlike a dog or fox that has 4.

We saw a lot more birds and I will update the blog with pictures during the week.

I will also add a couple of short videos of 2 bird species showing some of their typical foraging behavior!

Hedgehog help!

We had quite an eventful day at Glamis toady. I noticed a Hedgehog out on the grass along one of the walks in the grounds. At first I though this was a prime opportunity to snap a quick photo for the Estates species list. However when I grabbed my camera and came back to take a picture I noticed the wee soul wasn't looking to good.

As you can see in the picture below little Henry is missing an eye and his nose has a bash. I contacted Wormit Hedgehogs, a local rescue centre for hedgehogs and took him there after work today. The man at the rescue place thinks he will be ok but I will keep you all updated!

The picture above is little Henry all cuddles up in a blanket arriving at Wormit Hedgehogs.

Have a look at the rescue centre website through the link below.

http://wormithedgehogs.co.uk/

Glen Doll Ranger Service

Yesterday Jenny and I took a trip up to the Glen Doll Ranger station (in the pouring rain this seemed as good a job as any on a Friday afternoon) to speak with a ranger about our project. We were met by one of the rangers, Neil Lowther and he couldn't have been more helpful! He has expressed an interest in coming to the site and giving us some advice on how we could increase the biodiversity in the area.

Establishing links with organizations such as the Angus council ranger service is a vital part of the project we are undertaking at Glamis. We hope to further links with many groups with similar interests over the coming months....

The Work Begins....

Well I think the first post on this blog should really bring everyone up to date with what there currently is in the areas we are developing and what has happened so far with the project.

The Nature Trail

The Glamis Castle Nature Trail is relatively under sold in terms of making the public aware of what plants and animals make their home in it. There is no signage present on the location and the entrances and paths through the area are not particularly well marked. The frustrating thing about this is that it is a very beautiful area with a lot of potential. The Nature trail is the first area we are looking to develop at Glamis.

Below you will be able to see how each area looked at the start of the week and what we have managed to do so far this week.

The pictures above show the hide area at the start of the week (left) and at the end of the week (right). We have removed the fallen branch from the feeder tree (right of photo) and excavated the old tree stump directly in front of the hide building. This old stump will form the base for a new bird table, also in this area on completion we will have an increase number of fruit bearing trees, squirrel feeders for the resident red squirrels and some more plant life to increase insect activity.

The pictures above show the discreet path that is being constructed into the back of the hide. The top picture shows what the area was like before and the bottom shows how much we have cleared over Thursday and Friday this week. In the bottom picture you can just make out the top of the hide building on the left of the photo.

As you can see we are making progress already. The difficulty is splitting time between grounds work and conservation work. I am hoping to get about 2 days a week to work on the conservation side of things however some weeks this wont be possible due to work needing to be done to the aesthetics of the castle grounds.

I hope that some people out there find an interest in this project and feel free to comment or contact me with any questions about what we are trying to achieve here.

The work goes on....