Glamis Castle Conservation Project 2013: Biodiverstiy Survey Draws To A Close

Since the last post about biodiversity surveying my team and I have done another 2 weekends of surveying at Glamis. This resulted in me working 21 days in a row and exhausted by the end, but it was more than worth it! Although when the team arrived back to start surveying it wasn't looking to good. The weather was pouring with rain and the darkness was closing in by the time we were ready to set our mammal traps for the first night. As you can see below we decided to bait the traps in doors before heading out.

Unfortunately we caught nothing over the entire weekend in our mammal traps although we saw plenty Roe Deer and a few Red Squirrels. There are various reasons for this which will be outlined in the final report.

The next day the rain stopped and we set out sampling the habitat. From the pictures you can see that the forest is a plantation of pine trees with very little diversity in the undergrowth. This means that very little makes its home in this area but the animals that do are quite spectacular!

I spent a great deal of the day being squawked at by beautiful Buzzards and watched as they flew in the sky with Osprey. It turned out to be a pretty good weekend.

The next weekend saw the team find a Green Woodpecker and Sparrow Hawk. Below are some pictures of what we recorded but a more detailed account will be presented in the report. This will include a full species list.

Lastly I have to thank all the volunteers who made this survey possible: Amanda Ophoff, Daniel Ophoff, Laurelin Van der Molen, Petr Jahn , Christian Christodoulou-Davies and Kerry Lindsell. Without you guys none of it would have been possible and now we have a better understanding of what species call Glamis its home and how we can protect these habitats in future.