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!