The Kestrel Has Landed!!

With the variety of wildlife at Glamis there is rarely a day that passes without an opportunity to see something that brightens up your day. So when I was informed of the Kestrel nest in one of the Castle turrets I thought "this is too good an opportunity to miss!"

Sure enough after watching for just 10mins I saw a Kestrel appear from the turret. This nest has been used for about 10 years and has successfully produced chicks in the past. I took the opportunity to go up to the roof and have a glance in the nest from a distance with my bino's and look what I saw.

There are 4 chicks in the nest and look to be in good health. Its difficult to know exactly what age the chicks are other than they must be older than 14days as the mother broods them constantly for about the first two weeks.

I decided to set up a camera trap to see if I could get some footage of the parents feeding the chicks and if you follow the link below you can see what I got! Needless to say I was very excited with what I captured.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGTAbxN_nw&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

To try and limit any disturbance I have now removed the cameras and wont visit again until nearer fledging time to try and film the chicks taking their first flight in the world so keep checking back with me and feel free to comment!

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.

  (The team getting small mammal traps ready)

                 (Traps ready to go!)

          (Sadly nothing fancied a night in our cosy traps)

   (I love seeing the Buzzards soaring above me!)

Oystercatcher Saga Part II/III

So....as you will have read on my previous post, our resident Oystercatchers at the Castle had laid 3 eggs in a nest right in front of the castle restaurant! I roped this area of and put up some signage with information about Oystercatchers.

On Tuesday of last week (18th June) the first of these eggs hatched and the next day the last two hatched. Obviously my first instinct was delight at the sight of the 3 chicks and the brooding female. Then the realisation that the mortality rate in this species is relatively high for chicks and the likely hood is that only 1 would survive.

On the Thursday we had a beautiful sunny day and the castle was busy with tourists, needless to say the cute little chicks stole the show and demanded a lot of attention from the public. The problems began when the chicks started walking about on the pebbles, falling over and getting stuck on their backs. This resulted in members of the public stepping over the ropes and turning the chicks back onto their feet. This may not sound like a bad thing, however the female was getting more and more agitated and when another member of staff informed that tourists where feeding the birds pudding from the restaurant I decided to take some time on guard duty.

                                                   (Youngsters ready to see the world)


I increased the area that was roped off and put up further signage asking the public not to feed or touch the birds. As I watched the chicks got themselves into difficult situations, then sorted themselves out, then got into difficulties again. The main issue here was not that the chicks fell on their backs as this is likely to happen in the wild anyway, the problem was tourists with children watching these cute little birds struggle and some naive members of the public asking how I could be so cruel.

Well simply the answer is that its not cruel but natural. It is probable in the wild that only 1 chick would survive and nearby there are Jackdaws with broods to feed, Kestrels, Stoats, Weasels etc all with young at this time of year. The harsh reality is that these Oystercatcher chicks die but they feed a species in a higher trophic level and natures plan continues. However this is not the easiest concept to explain to excited tourists and parents that don't particularly want their children to see a Jackdaw come and rip a cute ball of fluff to shreds.

The decision of how to handle the situation was made a little easier as the smallest of the chicks began to struggle more and more and appeared to be rejected by the female. Although I was comfortable with a chick dying during the night and being food for another animal, I felt a little unsure about allowing it to die and remain lying out in the open in front of the public for hours. Therefor I decided to call the SSPCA, they arrived within 20mins and took the chick away where it will be reared in a special facility and released back in to the wild.

After all this it felt good knowing that the situation had been resolved....or so I though.....


OYSTERCATCHER SAGA PART III

The next morning I arrived at work and one of the cleaners came to find me with the second small chick in her hands. The chick had been found on its own at a door far away from its mother and sibling. It was in a very bad state so I got some hay and put it in a small box in a quiet, warm room, then back on the phone to the SSPCA who again came out and took the chick away. They were however less optimistic about this chicks chances. Unfortunately we will never know if the chicks make it as the they are now at a facility with many other birds and impossible to keep track of. I am happy to report that last we saw the first born chick look very healthy and is happily following its parents around the estate. So I guess a happy ending was had....so far!  

                                     (Oystercatcher chick waiting to be picked up by SSPCA)

Oystercatcher Confusion!

A couple of weeks ago at Glamis our resident Oystercatchers laid 3 eggs into a nest next to the Castle. The only issue being that this nest happens to be directly under an outdoor table at the restaurant!

Here is a little information about Oystercatcher

•The conservation status of the Oystercatcher is Least Concern.

• It is a migratory species which breeds mainly in northern Europe. In winter the birds can be found in southern Europe and North Africa. (However birds found in the UK and Ireland tend to remain year round).

• Due to its large population and easily identifiable behaviour, Oystercatchers are an important indicator for the Health of an ecosystem.

•  Each breeding pair will lay

 2-4 eggs with an incubation

 period of approximately 4 weeks

As you can see below the parents have been incubating the eggs and if they are going to hatch I would expect it to be in the next 2 weeks. The only concern is that because of the disturbance of visitors at the castle, the incubation period has been pretty interrupted. Although I guess its better than the car park which is where they laid them last year!

I will keep everyone updated on the situation. 

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/