Allan
Bantick OBE welcomes you to the Cairngorm Wildlife Diary for 2019
Most of the badger sightings
mentioned here were made at the Strathspey Badger Hide. If you would like to
go, click here for booking
details.
Locations of sensitive nests and
dens are kept deliberately vague for obvious reasons. If you have a bona fide
reason for more detail please let me know.
The diary will usually be updated
daily. For comments on wider issues follow @AllanBoat on Twitter or Allan
Bantick on Facebook .
1st
to 9th Jan
Mostly spent preparing for our trip to Cambodia and Laos 10 to 26 Jan.
Managed to keep up with the bird feeders and make arrangements for while we are
away. Various behind the scenes issues with cats and badgers but that's
just routine.
10th
to 26th Jan
Long, amazing trip to Indo China taking in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and back to
Vietnam. Car to Edinburgh, flew to Heathrow, flew to Hanoi, flew to Phnom
Penh (Cambodia), by road to Battambang, by road to Siem Reap, flew to Pakse
(Laos) flew to Luang Prabang, flew to Hanoi, flew to Heathrow, flew to
Edinburgh and finally home by car. The journey home took about 30 hours,
after which I felt a bit like this:
Aaaaaaghhh!!
Not
to worry - nothing that a week's sleep can't fix. I took lots of pictures
and video clips so over the next two weeks I put together a short movie - and
here it is:
Mon
28th to Thurs 31st Jan
Over the next few days I dealt with empty bird feeders, a backlog of emails
(mostly badgers and wildcats) and checked the trail cameras. The
capercaillie and the golf club pine marten nestbox cams drew a blank but the
feeder cam near the golf club pine marten nestbox was visited by a pine marten
so there's hope it'll find the box eventually. I also visited the badger
hide where all was well except that the pine marten feeder was empty so I dealt
with that and left some peanuts for the badgers too. Still
knackered though, and even after several days of rest and early nights I was
still falling asleep almost every time I sat down. Getting
old! BBC Winter Watch was live on tv from Tues to Fri inclusive;
good stuff as usual and it was nice to have Scottish Wildcat Action given
positive coverage.
February
Fri
1st to Sun 10th Feb
On Friday I went by train to Hessilhead for a meeting of the Advisors, Trustees
and Staff of Scottish Badgers. An excellent day with lots of great
plans for the coming year and beyond. I then spent most of the
weekend working on the film already mentioned above; I really enjoyed the
process and could cheerfully get into film-making. Having put the film on
Facebook and YouTube I then linked to it from Twitter and by email to friends
and family. There has been some encouraging feedback so far. I
checked the cameras at the golf club but there was not much activity to
report. This was probably at least partly due to having set the cameras
to low sensitivity, which is recommended for cold weather, but that advice may
not be all that clever for our situation. Anyhow, they are now set to
high sensitivity and if that fills the cards and empties the batteries it's
better than missing some good action. Lots of action at our woodland
feeders through the week requiring the topping up of all the feeders. On
Tuesday I spent most of the day getting to grips with BTO's new Online
Demography system, dubbed DemOn for short. By tea time the
nestboxes in Deshar Wood, Milton Loch and our garden had all been entered into
the system, leaving just those at the badger hide and the golf club to be
done. Bad weather over the next few days thwarted any attempt to finish
the job so it'll probably have to be the weekend. Nevertheless
there were a couple of notable sightings on Weds and Thurs: a pair of house
sparrows were checking out the starling box as a possible nest site and in the
woods there were a lot of capercaillie droppings on what we call the caper
track. On Friday we were visited by Rowan Aitchieson who is following in
his parents' footsteps (John and Mary-Lou) as a film cameraman. Rowan's
underwater kelp footage was recently featured in BBC WinterWatch and he is also
working for the OneShow in various ways. After a chat, I took Rowan
into our woods and left him there cheerfully filming crested tits in the rain.
On Saturday the plan was to finalise the nest box set up at the golf club but
it did not go well because I did not take all the required tools. We
managed to improvise to some extent but further work would be required.
We did manage to check the cameras and top up the feeder - no pine martens on
the cameras this time but plenty of red squirrels and, to our great surprise
and pleasure, a tawny owl! On Sunday I met Andy Paton, great
wildlife champion, at the Grant Arms Hotel for a blether and to solve all the
world's wildlife problems. From there I went back and finished the
nestbox job properly at the golf club and repaired the access gate.
On the way home I went to the badger hide and got fresh map references and
other information for all the nest boxes. In the evening I settled down
and finished entering all the details for all the 2019 nest boxes into BTO's
DemOn system; a total of 40 boxes. I'm now quite looking forward to
applying any new nests to the new system.
Mon
11th to Sun 17th Feb
On Monday I travelled to Edinburgh for a hand-over meeting with Dr Andrew
Kitchener of the National Museums of Scotland who will be taking over the Chair
of Scottish Wildcat Action Steering Group from me next week. Andrew
will make a fantastic Chair and I wish him and the rest of the team all the
best for the future; I will maintain a keen interest in how the project
progresses. On Tuesday it cut up the remaining pieces of a Pere David's
antler that I acquired some years age for our squirrels (the calcium is good
for them) and then sent out feelers for getting some more, hopefully from the
Highland Wildlife Park. I've tried using roe deer antlers but the
squirrels have shown no interest in it; it may be too hard for
them. Anyway, in the afternoon we had guests so we all went out
into the woods for a walk while out there I screwed a piece of the Pere Davids
antler to the tree alongside a new piece of roe antler that I had split to
reveal the inner material - we'll see how that works. On Wednesday
I found pine marten droppings in Boat woods on the discrete path half way
between the bottom of the sock route and Bobby's shortcut. On
Thursday Bea and I went to the SWT Members evening in Inverness where SWT
Council Member Tim Duffy told us about his marathon cycle ride around all of
SWT's 120 Wildlife Reserves. Friday was an admin day with a meeting
at SNH HQ in the morning followed by a succession of emails and phone calls,
both sent and received, in preparation for next week's SWA Steering Group
meeting; my final meeting as Chair. The weekend was mostly spent on golf
and domestic matters but it was very noticeable how much drumming the
woodpeckers were doing on Saturday morning. It had actually started about
a week ago and but I had forgotten to mention it here.
Mon
18th to Sun 24th Feb
I spent much of Monday on the phone; altogether probably more than an hour,
speaking to people about wildcats ahead of my final Steering Group meeting on
Wednesday. There's so much to do as we move ahead with the plan. On
Tuesday the woodpeckers were in full force in the woods, hammering out their
messages. On Wednesday I attended my final meeting as Chair of Scottish
Wildcat Action. It has been a huge privilege to Chair this effort to save
the Scottish Wildcat from extinction and a pleasure to work with the Steering
Group both collectively and as individuals. I wish my successor, Dr
Andrew Kitchener, and the project all the very best for the future and will
follow progress with great interest. On Friday I went to the hide and sat
outside for a while but no badgers - it was only 4.30pm so probably too
early. Later that evening I learned that a female beaver from SWT's Loch
of the Lowes had been shot and had died from infection. I was as upset as
everybody else and had a rant on Twitter about lack of legal protection, which
turned out to be a bit premature as next morning Roseanna Cunningham announced
that beavers would received full legal protection with effect from 1st
May. As you can imagine this went down very well with all
conservationists, although some quite rightly said that announcing this two
months ahead of time gave those rotten eggs in the Tayside farming community
time to kill as many beavers as they could before the ban kicked in.
Early on Saturday the dogs treed a cat that at first glance looked very like a
wildcat with a fat, banded tail, until you spotted its collar and bell -
clearly a moggie with some wild genes left over from ancestral wildcat
encounters in the past. Here it is:
After
that I played golf at Nethy and at the sixth hole I diverted to check the
camera pointing at the new pine marten nestbox - no pine marten yet. On
Sunday I checked the Acorn camera for the first time this month at the site
where we are hoping to snap a capercaillie; no luck yet.
Mon
25th to Thurs 28th Feb
On Monday I set up the Aggressor camera on the pine marten feeder at the badger
hide, then stayed from 1715 to 1800 to see if any badgers were about; no
luck. On Tuesday I started a production line for seven nest boxes for
Abernethy Golf Club. On Wednesday I finished the nest box job and while I
was doing that Roseanna Cunningham was at the Highland Wildlife Park,
accompanied by my successor Andrew Kitchener and the team, launching the IUCN
report on the state of the wildcat in Scotland. At the time of writing
this diary there has only been minimal coverage in the Press and I'm not sure
if that's a good thing or bad. Later I popped back to the hide to check
the camera; no pine martens but to my annoyance I had mixed up the SD cards
which would take a few cycles to sort out. Over the next few days. I
stayed at the hide again and this time got lucky; a rather muddy badger came
out at 1745. On Thursday myself, Eddie Palmer and Ellie Stirling
met the new CE of Scottish Environment Link at the Link office in Perth to
brief her on the work of Scottish Badgers and its relationship with Link.
A most useful session for both sides.
Fri
1st to Sun 3rd March.
On Friday I switched cards in the Acorn camera (no wildlife recorded) as a
first step in sorting out the SD card tangle, then attended an all day meeting
at the Boat of Garten Community Hall to launch the Cairngorms National Park
Forest Strategy and the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan. Excellent day all
round with lots of interesting speakers and a useful workshop session.
During the day it was good to renew relations with old friends and
ex-colleagues and also to pick up some new contacts, some of whom will help our
plans for BogWiG over the coming months. Of particular benefit will be a
fresh relationship with RSPB at Abernethy and a renewed commitment from the BSW
saw mill. On Saturday I swapped cards at the badger hide camera;
the next step in sorting out the SD card hiatus. It was good to note that
it had recorded a visit by a pine marten at 2324 on Thursday. In theory
the badger watching season has now begun, although we're very light on bookings
at the moment. Sunday was supposed to be the day we fixed up the final
seven nestboxes at Abernethy Golf Club but bad weather put a stop to that.
Mon
4th to Sun 10th March
On Monday, in better weather, we were able to do the nest box job at the golf
club and then upload the details to the BTO DemOn site. On Tuesday I
inspected the Pere David antler at the Angle feeder to find it had clearly been
chewed by the red squirrels, with curly bits of material sticking out where the
squirrels' teeth had scraped it. Later I checked the feeder and camera at
the golf club - still no sign of the pine marten having found the nest
box. Wednesday was a foul day but I took the dogs into the woods
anyway, to be confronted by a herd of cattle near where the capercaillie lek
each spring. This is at least the third time in three weeks this has
happened (13 Feb, 17 Feb and today). I phoned the farm to alert them on the
first two occasions, to be told they would deal with it, and sure enough the
fence was repaired after a fashion, but today's calls were unanswered and
judging from the hammering sounds coming from the woods I expect they were all
in there mending the fence again. Given reports every year of dog walkers being
killed by cattle and the level of dog walking that goes on in that wood, there
is a dangerous situation developing here. I gave some thought to whether
or not I should alert the Estate and others. Eventually I got through to
the farm to be told they were not out repairing fences and did not know the
cattle were in the woods. They phoned back later to say the herd were all
back at the farm and I then got a bit of attitude from them so I left it at that
and emailed the estate with all the details; dates, times etc. The estate
got back thanking me and said they'd take it up with the tenant. At the
same time I alerted the estate to motorcycles being driven in the woods again
and I offered to set up a camera which they were pleased to accept, along with
an appropriate public notice. Thursday was a golf day but on Friday we
were visited by John and Shirley Martin; keen environmentalists and
manufacturers of pine marten den boxes including the one at the golf
course. We took them to the golf club and showed them where our box was
and they strongly approved and offered advice on what foods we might use to
tempt the martens with, raisins and eggs being strong candidates. We
showed them around and discussed some of our ideas for greening up the course
and they were kind enough to contribute ideas of their own. To top it all
we even discovered lots of frog spawn in the pond at the 2nd hole.
John also told me about his latest trail camera, a Browning Defender 850
that you can monitor with your smartphone - I bought the latest version online
that evening! On Saturday I retrieved the Bushnell camera from the badger
hide because that's the one we would use to monitor the woods for
motorcycles. The card showed lots of badger activity but only one visit
by a pine marten. There were also lots of false triggers due to the
camera shaking in the wind; the bracket I was using on which to mount the
camera is clearly not good enough. On the way home from the hide there
was a dead male badger on the B970 road near Mullingarroch Farm at NH95021864;
I reported it to Scottish Badgers online. Later we set up the Aggressor
trail cam at the Angle junction to pick up any motor cycle activity and also
put up a sign to say what we were doing, as requested by the estate.
Mon
11th to Sun 17th March
On Monday I travelled to Edinburgh for the farewell party for Johnny Hughes,
SWT's CEO, who has been lured away to work for UNEP (I think). Lots
of the great and good were at the party so it was a splendid chance to network,
as these events always are. I stayed overnight at a cheap hotel and
travelled home by bus next day. On arriving home I learned that at the
ECCLR meeting in Scottish Parliament that morning the Scottish Tories had
announced that they would attempt to block the proposed legal protection for
beavers which is due to come into effect on 1st May. Lots of
exchanges on social media that evening with a strong sense of outrage at this
new attack on wildlife and environment from the usual quarter. Hopefully
the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens (you never know with Labour) will be strong enough
to see this threat off. Wednesday began with peanut feeder duties in our
woods and continued at the golf club where I added sultanas and an egg to the
pine marten feeder as recommended by expert John Martin last week. In the
office I completed an article for Scottish Badgers Newsletter entitled
"The Political Badger" outlining our advocacy and engagement work
with decision makers, including through our membership of Scottish Environment
Link. Checked two cameras, one at the golf club and one in the woods,
neither of which had recorded anything of interest. Spent two hours
on Friday updating the script for my talk "Birds and Mammals of the
Cairngorms". Next step is to refresh some of the pictures and
insert some videos. Later my new trail camera arrived, the Browning
Defender 940 which you can monitor and adjust using a tablet or
smartphone. Sadly I failed to get it to communicate with my smartphone,
but next morning Heather suggested I try using her iPad and it worked
flawlessly; it turns out that the OS of my smartphone is too
old. On Sunday I retrieved the Acorn camera from its location
in the woods where, after months of patience, it has spectacularly failed to
capture capercaillie. Roe deer, lost dogs, lost blokes yes - capers no,
so I'll find a better use for it.
Mon
18th to Sun 25th March
On Monday I met with Pete Cairns to talk wildlife, rewilding and all things
natural. Later, I phoned various activists to do with lynx, wildcats and
badgers; there is such a lot to think about, especially in figuring out which
actual courses of practical action to take rather than continuing with endless
surveys and analyticals and meetings and politics on and on and on for
moths. On a practical note, I swapped over two of the trail cameras to
better place them according to their abilities or lack of them.
Lots of videos on the motor-cycle monitor cam including walkers (most of them with
dogs) a few cyclists and runners, a couple of roe deer and a fox. No
motorcycles were recorded but at 1038 on Sunday there were no tracks in the
snow but the next video at 1103 showed two sets of tracks of what looked like
motor cycle tyres so it looks as if they were going too fast to trigger the
camera, which is one of the reasons I winter to try a different camera. Tuesday
started with an attempt to set up the new Browning Trail Cam at the golf
club. The effort did not start well but I eventually got the thing
working properly despite its rather poor and inconvenient locking method; I
reckon I can mod it in my shed to good effect. While I was there I
checked the other camera (nothing worth noting) and refilled the feeder, which
was totally empty: no peanuts, no sultanas and no egg to be found so the pine
marten has definitely been to call. Hopefully the new camera will pick up
on its next visit. On Tuesday afternoon I took part in a telecon (it was
supposed to be a video call but some of the participants had techy problems) to
do with organising Link's summer parliament reception. The topic this
year is Citizen Science. Later I checked the motor-cycle cam (no
luck) and then took some peanuts round to the couple who look after Milton
Loch. We decided that the work on our new osprey nest at the loch will
now have to wait until after the herons have finished their breeding season
which is already under way. In the meantime we can get our osprey
nest plans properly finalised and costed. Wednesday was mostly
about setting up and baiting the trail cams in the woods, at the golf club and
at the badger hide. In the evening I went briefly to the badger hide
where one badger emerged just after 6pm. Some good news; the Scottish
Tory attempt to scupper protection for beavers was itself scuppered in the
Scottish Parliament yesterday so the protection kicks in as planned on the 1st
May. On Friday Bea and I and the dogs did the first check of the
crested tit nestboxes. As expected, there was not much activity yet
except that box 18 had been used as a roost.. Also, the recent herd of
cattle marauding through the woods had swiped one of the boxes off its tree and
tllted two others. Easily fixed. On the way home we checked the
motor cycle cam; none recorded yet. On Twitter, Ben Goldsmith posted a
link to a very good article about beavers that he had written for The
Spectator. He asked that we all share the link as widely as
possible. On Sunday I checked the badger hide camera; the pine marten had
been several times in the past few days and took the egg away at its second
visit. There were motor cycles on the moor again, sadly. Hopefully
the estate will get a grip of this quite soon.
Mon
25th to Sun 31st March
Checked the Acorn camera at the junction in the woods for motor cycle activity
over the weekend; nothing to report. Had a meeting at Milton Loch with
the tree surgeon Alban about building an osprey nest platform on a tree in the
inner loch. Looks like we have a plan. Tuesday I checked the golf club
cameras; just red squirrels on the cards. I removed the new camera
and in the afternoon rejigged its fixing arrangement for a more stable
set-up. In the evening i took two ladies to the badger hide. The
camera revealed the pine marten had been there on Saturday and Sunday but not
Monday. Surprisingly it had not take the egg so I left it in the feeder
and added more raisins and some custard creams, as recommended by pine marten
guru John Martin. We had a badger out in the open within ten minutes and
not much later there were six, then seven in view. This was the first
official badger watch of the season and I would have expected the badgers to
have been very nervous but that simply was not the case - it's as if the
badgers have just picked up where they left off 4 months ago. They did
not even mind when we opened a window and left it open for the whole two hours
while we conversed in barely half subdued voices, not even in whispers.
Extraordinary. Wednesday was a long day trip to Edinburgh including
a meeting of the Wildlife Sub Group of Scottish Environment Link on which I
represent Scottish Badgers.. All interesting stuff, quite technical in
parts but worth the journey. Thursday involved a bit of golf but was
mostly to do with trail cameras, especially the new Browning at the Golf
Club. Still cannot get it to talk to my Huawei phone but otherwise it's
working OK despite being somewhat awkward to manage with a very poor fixing
bracket, a clumsy locking arrangement and no threaded tripod mounting
socket. Never mind - an hour in my workshop modifying its case
sorted most of that out. Friday was a long and interesting day. It
began with my being presented by Scottish Wildcat Action with the image of a
wildcat climbing a tree carved into a slab of stone. What a kind and
extraordinary gesture. We'll find an appropriate and prominent place to
display it in our garden. Next was lunch with Charlie Moores who works
for Lush and writes blogs and records podcast featuring personalities involved
in wildlife conservation; today was my turn in the hot seat. After lunch
we headed to the badger hide for some peace to do the actually recording.
That took much of the afternoon so Charlie and I then had to dash back to the
village for a quick bite before meeting again to take a group to the hide to
watch badgers. It was a super evening with as many as 9 badgers in view
at one point. We did not see any pine martens but the trail camera at the
hide showed they had visited every night this week, but always much later than
we would be prepared to stay in the hide. Charlie was good enough to blog
about the experience before he went to bed.
Mon
1st to Sun 7th April
On Monday Bea and I put together the pallet frame for the first of the planned
Bug Hotels at Abernethy Golf Club. It'll take a few weeks to finish the
job properly. I spoke at length with Scottish Wildlife Trust and Scotland
Big Picture about ambitious plans for the future. As of 1st May our
beavers will have proper legal protection so it will be time to move on with
other ideas. On Tuesday at the golf club our bug hotel plans took another
step forward. Also at the golf club, footage on the pine marten feeder
camera revealed we are being visited by at least two different pine martens,
one fully fit but too stupid to work out how to open the feeder and the other
one smart enough to do so but equipped with only one eye! In the evening
I took 3 people to the badger hide in awful weather. Undeterred, six
badgers came out to amuse us. There was no pine marten but the camera had
recorded them at the feeder every night in the past week, usually quite late in
the evening. On Wednesday Dr Emma Sheehy gave a presentation to the North
Scotland Group of the Scottish Wildlife Trust in Inverness. It attracted
the biggest audience any of us could remember and excited much debate.
Linda Rosborough, Chair of SWT Council, then addressed the meeting with an
update on activities of the Trust at national level before the final item of
the evening, the AGM. Thursday was a foul day and I think I slept
most of it, then on Friday first thing I met James Shooter at the golf club
where he used his drone to take aerial photos of the course ahead of an article
soon to appear in the Scotland Big Picture eMagazine. Later I
prepared some wooden planks which will be ripped lengthwise to plug the gaps in
the roof of our bug hotel at the golf club. Saturday was a golfing
day. On Sunday the dogs and I found fox dung near Loch Vaa and pine
marten poo on the secret path in Boat Woods. In the late morning I
finished the wood work on the roof of the new bug hotel at the golf club and in
the evening I took a family of 4 to the hide where we had 7 badgers. The
camera failed to reveal when the pine marten took the egg out of the feeder two
days ago (the egg was there at 7pm but gone in the next video at 6am next
morning) so I guess the batteries may need to be changed; failing to take
night-time shots is sometimes a clue to weak batteries.
Mon
8th to Sun 14th April
On Monday and Tuesday the work on the golf club bug hotel continued, then on
Tuesday evening I took four youngish people to the hide where we saw at least 5
badgers. The trail cameras that are monitoring pine marten feeders
are revealing that they do not always take the egg when one is supplied in the
feeder, they just eat peanuts and possibly raisins. An exchange of emails
with Browning of America has concluded I think that my Huawei smartphone is
simply not suitable to work with the Browning camera; it was the same story
with the Phantom drone so that's probably that. Not to worry, my wife's
iPad works with the Browning no problem. Wednesday started with a
decision to alter the dogs' walking routine to summer mode wherein we avoid the
core capercaillie area most of the time but if we do go in there the dogs are
on their leads. As if to join in the same spirit of springtime, two blue
tits began nest building in our starling nest box; they're in for a nasty shock
if starlings turn up. In the evening Bea and the dogs collected all sorts
of loose detritus (pine cones, twigs, dry grass) from the forest to go in one
of the layers of the bug hotel when I've fitted the mesh flooring for that
section. Later I exchanged emails with the local saw mill BSW who have
promised to let us have as much wood as we need free of charge for local
wildlife projects. They will be a great help to us when we build
the new osprey platform and some new goldeneye duck nest boxes at Milton
Loch. Thursday was a busy day. We began with a crested tit
nest box check. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, there are no nests to
report. On the way round we found one box had been tampered with (not for
the first time) and another which may have had a burrowing attempt. We'll
see next time. We also managed to refix the box that had been knocked off
its tree by a herd of escaped cattle. Bea took notes of all this and at
the same time collected detritus from around the woods for our bug hotel at the
golf club. On the way home we checked the Acorn camera that's monitoring
illicit vehicle access in the woods; nothing untoward this time. After
lunch Bea went to the golf club and finished off one layer of the bug hotel
while I checked the nest boxes and cameras at the badger hide. No goldeneye
nesting attempts yet but we did have a pine marten on camera on two of the last
three nights but always very late in the evening. Some good news:
BSW sawmill delivered a heap of wood with which we will make goldeneye nest
boxes for Milton Loch. BSW have been very supportive of our wildlife work
and we are all very grateful to them. On Saturday I attended The Aubrey
Manning OBE Memorial Service in the McEwan Hall at the University of Edinburgh
along with what looked like at least 200 other people. It was a
fabulous celebration of the life of a truly great man, with speeches, music,
poetry, readings and film clips presented by a string of eminent people in
whose lives Aubrey had figured strongly. I had met and talked with Aubrey
on several occasions to do with my work with The Wildlife Trusts and it is a
privilege to have known him. On Sunday I took four people to the badger hide
where we had 7 badgers at one point. No pine martens though and no clips
of pine martens on the camera over the past two nights - a bit of a concern.
Mon
15th to Sun 21st April
On Monday afternoon I met with Gordon Eaglesham to be interviewed for an
article he was writing for Scotland Big Picture e-magazine. It was
an exhilarating session during which we discussed all manner of issues relating
to rewilding and how that concept might work alongside or even supplant more
traditional approaches to wildlife conservation. In the evening I took
two couples to the badger hide. One of the couples was from Australia and
they had been disappointed in their quest to see a red squirrel. They had
been very unlucky because red squirrels are plentiful in the area so the rest
of us did our best to advise how they might increase their chances by going to
the right places at the right time. The other couple, Cath and
Tony, are loyal readers of this diary; they are also most generous and not only
donated more money than was usual for their visit but also gave me a bag of
various sorts of food for the local birds and mammals; peanuts, mealworms etc.
Such kindness. As for the badgers, the most we saw at one time was 7,
which is about the usual number recently. The camera revealed that the
pine marten had visited the previous evening at about 1045 and shortly before
we left the hide the Australian lady thought she glimpsed something moving up
the slope opposite the hide which could have been a pine marten and she said it
was definitely not a badger. Unfortunately I was holding forth about
something at the time so the rest of us missed it. Early next morning
I bumped into Cath and Tony in our woods and they were looking rather pleased
with themselves; they had just seen two capercaillies, one in flight and one
perched in a tree. I think this was their first sightings of a caper and
I was delighted for them; their love of wildlife and determination certain
entitles them to a bit of good luck. Better still, they got in touch
later that day to say they had seen another capercaillie in woods at
Grantown. At the golf club I rejigged the camera setup and did a bit more
work on the bug hotel, then in the evening I attended David Hetherington's talk
at the Grant Arms hotel about lynx. The question session that
followed the talk centred much on the negative attitude of farmers and farming
organisations towards wildlife. On Thursday I removed the Acorn camera
from its motor cycle monitoring position in agreement with the estate that it
had served its purpose. I can now use it to monitor the pine marten den
box at the badger hide. In the evening I took a family of four to the
hide where we saw 6 badgers, some mice and heard a tawny owl. No pine
marten again but the camera revealed it had visited the feeder briefly on two
of the past three nights, on both occasions in the wee small hours so there's
still not much prospect of seeing one during a badger watch. On Friday I
took the bus to Perth for the quarterly Scottish Badgers Advisory Group and
Trustees meetings. All is well with the organisation and I am pleased to
be able to make a modest contribution. I dashed home in time to get to
Pete Cairns talk at the Grant Arms on Scotland Big Picture. It was a
sizeable audience and the talk was followed by a decent Q and A session.
While I was away Bea spent time on bagging up discarded cores from the golf
club greens which we are going to use to make a grass roof for the bug
hotel. On Saturday I built a new device for holding a trail camera and
used it to install the Acorn camera pointing up the trunk of the tree that
holds the pine marten den box at the badger hide. Hopefully the evening
showers didn't fill up the lens cavity.
As
an aside, after struggling to find any books to my liking lately I have
embarked on re-reading (again) the ten volumes that comprise the Chronicles Of
Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever.
"....and with one word of truth or treachery he will save or damn the
Earth."
It's not for the faint-hearted nor for lovers of a quick read but if you like
complex, thought provoking fantasy then this might be worth trying. It comes as
The First Chronicles (3 volumes), The Second Chronicles (3 volumes) and the
Last Chronicles (4 volumes) and was written by Stephen Donaldson over a period
of 36 years and is set in a period spanning thousands of years. Yes, it's BIG.
Sunday
started with a dog walk during which I met and spoke to some interesting people
including Nancy from the National Park with whom I spoke about various wildlife
topics - a super start to the day. Next, Bea and I collected some fallen
branches in the forest with which to make a containing rim around the roof of
our fledgling bug hotel and when we got it home I hacked and drilled them into
four useable spars. After lunch the dogs and I visited the squirrel car
park and repaired and refilled the bird feeders there and in the evening Bea
and I went to the Abernethy Golf Club to install the new containing spars on
the bug hotel roof. Having done that, I went to check the camera by the
pine marten feeder while Bea spread the earth cores in the bug hotel
roof. I should explain that each year a machine extracts cores from the
golf course greens to aerate them and the extracted cores just lie in a heap
for evermore. Using them to start a grass roof for the bug hotel makes perfect
sense. Finally, when I got home I checked the card from the golf course
camera which revealed that the pine marten with only one eye has visited the
feeder on two of the past three nights.
The Bug Hotel now has a roof which hopefully will soon be a grass roof
Mon
22nd to Tues 30th April
Monday was supposed to begin with meeting a photographer but it fell through and
was rearranged for next day. Instead, I prepared lengths of wood for the
bug hotel and in the afternoon I took them to the golf club and installed
them. I then checked tit boxes 6 and 7 but neither had yet been
used. On Tuesday I checked boxes 2 and 3 at the golf club; box 2
contained a complete nest and box 3 had some nest material covering the floor
but no nest yet. I've still to check Nos 4 and 5. In the afternoon
I took James Shooter of Scotland Big Picture to the hide to check the goldeneye
boxes. One of the boxes contained four goldeneye eggs so we're up and
running. Next job is to get clearance from SNH to do some camera trapping
of activity at that box. On Thursday 2 of the camera traps stopped
working; battery issues I think, easily put right. In the evening I
reset the Acorn cam and set it up to watch the pine marten nest box, then met
the two chaps for the badger watch at which we had 6 badgers and a pine
marten. Spent most of Friday in the Boat of Garten Community Hall at the
annual Scottish Wildcat Action Forum. There was a good turn-out to hear
the latest update on the project and future plans. In essence, after four
years of hard work the project is well informed enough to be able to make a
plans for the future. The wildcat population in Scotland is so small, so
hybridised and so fragmented that it could never recover unaided. To
secure a future for our wildcats a coordinated programme of captive breeding,
reinforcement from Europe, reduced persecution and more responsible domestic
cat ownership will have to be instigated and the sooner the better. In
the evening I checked the two trail cameras at the badger hide; nothing of
interest to report. Saturday saw lots of activity at our sparrow
gallery; a blue tit nest building at the north end and two sparrows taking
heaps of bedding into the centre box. That activity carried on well into
Sunday so we're hopeful for a result. On Sunday morning I went to Milton
Loch and began the process of refurbishing the information table beside the
pond dipping platform - much work to be done but none of it rocket
science. At the golf club I cut another dozen straight branches and took
them home, trimmed them and drilled holes in the ends ready to be added to the
bug hotel. On Monday I went back to Milton Loch, cleaned up the
interpretation board as best I could and photographed and drew a diagram of the
details so that repairs could be planned. I then went to the golf club,
installed the wooden branches I had prepared the previous day and then went to
to see one of the club members who had some kind of reeds that might be useful
to the bug hotel. Indeed the roll of linked reeds looked ideal both in
design and quantity to the point that they might almost complete the
project. On Tuesday that was put to the test and the reeds did indeed
fill the remaining space with some left over to start our next bug hotel near
the clubhouse. Lots of emails coming in this week to book the badger
hide, so many that we are having to turn some people away, which is a great
shame but we limit ourselves to no more than 3 nights per week to comply with
the land owner's wishes and for other reasons which you can probably guess
at. On Tuesday evening I went and sat with the badgers for half an
hour and checked the camera footage. The Acorn cam has failed again so
maybe it's time to chuck it out. The Aggressor had some amazing clips of
the badger cubs larking about around the pine marten feeder tree while a pine
marten blithely scoffed peanuts above them. One of the clips showed
two pine martens, one was using the feeder when usurped by the other.
Weds
1st to Sun 5th May
On Weds 1st I dropped the dogs off at the kennels and set off with Bea for
Edinburgh for the celebration to mark the day that legal protection for beavers
kicks in. All organisations who played a part in the return of beavers to
Scotland were represented and there was a marvelous party atmosphere throughout
the event, as you would expect. I did an interview with Euan McIlwraith
for the BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors programme and then had the privilege of
presenting a commemorative print of a beaver to Roseanna Cunningham, Cab Sec
for Environment, Land Reform and Climate Change, on behalf of the Scottish
Government. She and I had released the first beaver in the beaver trial 10
years ago. Also in the picture below is Michael Russell who, as
Environment Minister at the time, had signed the license to release beavers on
a trial basis at Knapdale, which got the whole thing under way.
Several other MSPs were also there to share our happy day.
Left to Right: me, Cab Sec Michael Russell and Cab Sec Roseanna Cunningham
On
Friday the weather was awful and it got worse as the day went on. I
checked the Acorn cam at the badger hide and it was actually working but had
recorded no pine martens at the nest box so it looks as if it will not be used
this year. By evening it was snowing but rather than cancel the badger
watch I met the couple who I was supposed to take to the hide and we decided by
a narrow margin to go ahead anyway. Good decision because we had badgers
feeding in the snow for two hours and then a pine marten for half an
hour. The bad news is that the Aggressor camera had failed to take any
pictures since it was last checked which is very disappointing as it has always
been reliable in the past. On Saturday I was back at the hide with two
young ladies from Durham and whilst there I checked the Aggressor again and it
was working but had missed the pine marten activity from last night, probably
because the batteries were almost dead. No matter, our badger watch
followed similar lines to the previous night with 6 badgers, a mouse, a brown
hare, a cuckoo (heard) a tawny owl (heard) and then at 2215 the pine marten
showed up for half an hour. Note to self, make a new pine marten feeder;
the current one is so big the pine marten disappears inside it so a smaller one
would be better from the watchers' point of view. Sunday began with a
check of the crested tit nest boxes. We set off with low expectations
given the lack of success the past few years and the shortage of crestie
sightings this year. However, box 18 had three eggs in it -
probably not cresties, but time will tell. After lunch we cleaned the
interpretation table at the Milton Loch dipping platform and installed a new
magnifier and a new identification chart. The weather is still very cold
for the time of year and yet our sparrows are continuing to nest-build in the
central chamber of our sparrow gallery. I was supposed to go to the
badger hide this evening with a new local badger enthusiast but it had to be
postponed.
Monday
6th to Sun 12th May
On Monday afternoon Bea and I went to give a presentation "Mammals and
Birds of the Cairngorms" for the Fort Augustus Heritage Group. A
very decent sized audience more or less filled the hall and there were some
very searching questions at the end. Later I went to the badger hide and
removed the pine marten feeder to rebuild it to make it smaller; at the moment
the pine martens can get right down inside it which is not much good if you
want to watch them. I installed a temporary feeder while the job is
done. It was a pleasant evening so before going home I called to the
badgers and sat outside the hide with them for a while. They don't seem
to mind too much.
My feet and a badger
On
Tuesday I checked cameras at the badger hide. We've got battery issues
again but the pine marten is still visiting the area but not using the nest
box. The weather was lousy on Wednesday so my plan to check the
goldeneye nest box fell through and instead I rebuilt the pine marten feeder as
described above. I was interviewed on the phone that morning for a
magazine article for the Scottish Wildlife Trust about beavers and the journey
to this point in their recovery as a native mammal in the UK. In the
evening I took Sally and Dennis to the hide; the have been in previous years so
it was nice to catch up. They are very active in badger rescue in Essex
along with another friend of mine (and badgers), Rene Hockley-Byam.
Thursday began with checking Box 18 in Boat Woods; the same three eggs were
there so maybe things are not so good. At the golf club I checked the
camera to find no pine martens had been recorded for two days but that might be
because the batteries were almost dead. It did however catch a red
squirrel chasing off a large woodpigeon. I installed fresh batteries
before leaving. On the course itself, Box 3 now had a blue tit sitting on
eggs. In the evening I took Derek Panton, a wildlife keen villager, to
the hide where we installed the refurbished pine marten feeder and then checked
the goldeneye box. The box contained a female goldeneye duck apparently
asleep and presumable incubating the four eggs we found there last week, plus
any she had laid since. We stayed for an hour or so and had five badgers
in view at one point and watched a brown hare and some geese in the
field. We heard a cuckoo on and off. Spent most of Friday nursing a
rotten cold but stirred myself enough in the evening to attend the launch event
of the Cairngorms Connect project. During the launch they announced the
first winners of financial grants dished out by the Cairngorms Trust and I'm
delighted to say that our project "An Osprey Nest For The Osprey
Village", a project to improve the habitats at Milton Loch in several
respects, was a winner. It means our project can go ahead immediately to
build an osprey nest on a tree on an island, raise the level of the loch by
repairing the outlet dam system, build some goldeneye nest boxes and create a
willow sculpture to represent the Ark of Caledon using a mixture of experts,
local trainees and possibly even visitors. Great stuff. On Saturday
morning we went to the Milton Loch vols morning; our main job was to check the
nest boxes. Most showed no sings of use but Starling Box 01 contained
nest material, starling box 02 had 4 blackbird eggs in it and titbox 03 had a blue
tit on eggs. In the evening I took four lovely people to the hide (they
run a fox sanctuary, bless 'em). We had 6 adult badgers and 2 tiny cubs
and my new friends got some superb badger photos. Then something bizarre
happened. We saw torches approaching across the field so I went to
intercept; it was a police sergeant and two constables coming to see what two
cars were doing parked at the gate; they suspected we could be hare
coursing! All was explained and the crack was really good.
The sergeant is the area wildlife crime coordinator and one of the constables
is a wildlife crime officer and we arranged for me to visit them at the police
station sometime soon for a chat. Brilliant. The badgers would have
scattered as a result of all the fuss so we left it at that.
Mon
13th to Sun 19th May
Discovered via the camera and an endoscope that we have a bird sitting on eggs
in the centre chamber of the sparrow gallery in our garden, species unknown at
the time although it transpires that it's probably a great tit. The
camera also showed a cat crouching on the lid of the gallery sniffing at the
hole where the bird was sitting. I therefore screwed a sheet of Perspex
to the lid in such a way as to stop the cat doing that. Later I checked
cameras at the golf club; no pine marten activity at all for several
days. In the evening I was supposed to take a lady to the badger hide but
she didn't show up.
Cat inspecting a box containing an incubating great tit.
Checked
the camera on Tues morning and no cat was recorded last night. The camera
did show a great tit at the entrance to the centre hole and a sparrow at the
south hole. However, most of Tuesday was taken up with golf at Rothes
where their Green-keeper is very good at making the course welcoming to
wildlife. He has made the biggest bug hotel I have ever seen or imagined,
put up 24 nest boxes and right beside the clubhouse main door he's built
a wood pile in which a long-tailed tit has built a nest. Back at home the
camera revealed visits to the sparrow gallery by blue tit, great tit and house
sparrow so there's a lot going on. On Thursday I checked the garden nest
boxes: nests but no eggs on south and north sparrow galleries but a great
ti on eggs in the centre gallery, tiny amount of nest material in the open
fronted box and rather more but no nest in the starling box. Checked box
18 in the woods; still the same three eggs in the nest so probably
abandoned. In the afternoon I went round all the 9 nest boxes at
Abernethy Golf Club. 4 were unoccupied, one had 9 eggs, one had 3 tiny
chicks and 3 eggs and the other 3 had a blue tit sitting tight either on eggs
or chicks or both. Not bad. I checked the pine marten feeder as I
passed it and the two pigeon eggs that the greens convener had put in it were
gone so the pine marten has been visiting. Took a couple and 2 very
young children (1 and 3 years old) to the hide on Friday and we had a
delightful evening with at least 5 badgers in view. One of the badgers
looked to have a piece of rope attached to its neck but it turned out to be a
long strand of foliage. Sure enough, earlier we had watched a badger
mowing the long grass and rolling it backwards into a sett for bedding so
that's probably at the bottom of the scare. On Saturday morning I braved
the rain and checked the camera and nest boxes at the badger hide.
The Acorn cam had only taken one set of pictures (13th May) of a pine marten at
the foot of the goldeneye box pole so that confirms how little pine marten
activity we have in the area this summer. Thanks to the endoscope I was
able to establish that the goldeneye female was still sitting in the box on a
pole on the ridge and that no other boxes in the area were active. On the
walk out I found a significant badger latrine right beside a badger tunnel
under a fence; a classic badger technique for finding important features in the
dark. In the evening I took former SWA co-steering group member Karen and
her partner to the hide where we had at least 5 different badgers. We also
saw a stoat, brown hare, mouse, chaffinch, GS woodpecker and on the way home a
pine marten ran across the road in front of us. Sunday was mostly golf
but BBC Springwatch got in touch late in the day so that spawned a bunch of
emails. Watch this space.
Mon
20th to Sun 26th May
Bea and I removed the kestrel box from the badger hide area. It was
falling out of the tree anyway and had never been used by anything, never mind
kestrels. While we were there we swapped the old Acorn camera for a much
better Bushnell to continue monitoring the foot of the goldeneye nest pole in
case the pine martens get up to their hijinks again.. Email
exchanges with BBC Springwatch and others continued; I can't say more at this
stage. Tuesday was a mix of golf and websites, both with an
environmental slant. The main event was a meeting of the Nethy Bridge
Golf Course environmental sub group to review progress so far and agree actions
for the next few months and beyond. It's all going really well. On
Wednesday afternoon I checked the camera at the goldeneye box - it had recorded
a brown hare and nothing else so presumably the eggs have not yet
hatched. In the afternoon I spoke to a bird watcher in our woods who
reckoned he had seen a crested tit which, if true, is very good news in
deed. Later there was another email exchange with BBC Springwatch before
I took a couple to the badger hide in rainy weather where we saw 7 badgers, a
GS woodpecker and a brown hare, and we heard oyster catchers and a tawny
owl. On Thursday, acting on yesterday's crested tit report, I set up the
Acorn rubbishy camera very close to the squirrel car park feeding station, set
to take one image when triggered and then sleep for 10 seconds. That
should work OK without filling the card and killing the battery too quickly, as
often happens at places with lots of visits by lots of small birds, figuring
that once the birds are there they usually stay for much more than ten seconds
so if a crestie should turn up we'd be very unlucky not to get at least one
shot good enough to identify it. Time will tell. On Saturday the camera
at the goldeneye box had a few badger videos and one of a pine marten.
The duck was still sitting tight. At the squirrel car park the
stupid Acorn cam recorded more than 500 videos (I'd set it to take single
pictures! Grrrr) mostly of red squirrels which seem to be doing better
than ever in our woods these days. Sadly, no cresties, which is what I'd been
hoping for.. In the evening I took 5 delightful young people to the hide
where we saw at least 5 different badgers.
Mon
27th to Fri 31st May
While out with the dogs early on Monday I met four bird-watchers. They
had seen no capercaillies but had seen three crested tits, two together near
The Angle and one on its own much deeper into the forest. The
crestie sightings was very good news because so few have been seen in the
forest in recent months. As a result of this good news, when I got home
Heather and I had a diary session to schedule a crestie nest box check quite soon.
Spent part of the morning working on this website, many of the pages of which I
am making Mobile-Friendly; an interesting exercise and fairly daunting,
although not quite as daunting as I had feared. This page is next on the
list; let me know what you think. In future it will spread right across
the width of the screen on all devices so it will look quite different when
viewed on a PC or Mac. On mobile phones, the text will be much larger
than it is at present and therefore be easier to read. After lunch I
checked the nest boxes at Abernethy Golf Club. Five of the nine boxes
have nests with blue tit chicks or eggs or both, which is quite amazing as
eight of the boxes were only built and put out in early March. In the
evening it was away to the badger hide again with two ladies from the Stirling
area. We saw 8 badgers, several grey lag geese, a roe deer and a
kingfisher. On Wednesday I checked the centre box of the sparrow gallery
and there were at least 5 great tit chicks. I also made the BoGWiG
website more Mobile-Friendly. Looking ahead to Friday, I cut some roofing
felt and trimmed some garden canes canes for the next bug hotel at the golf
club - apparently the Junior members are going to help. Time will tell
what their definition of 'help' amounts to. To end the day we received an
email from the BBC Radio Scotland Out Of Doors programme asking if we would
speak to them on the show about the work of the Boat of Garten Wildlife
Group. On Thursday we did some more prep for the new bug hotel at the golf
club, then in the evening I took a lovely couple from
Aberdeen/Cork/Germany/Italy (its complicated) to the hide where we saw 5
badgers plus GS woodpecker, chaffinch, great tit, coal tit, roe deer and
mouse. Friday was manic. It started with a crested tit nest box
check which was disappointing because only Box 18 (of 20) had a nest in and its
three eggs had been there for a few weeks so definitely abandoned. Next
we went to the golf club to build the main structure of another bug hotel which
the junior members would begin to fill during their session in the
afternoon. Of course it rained so my tools all got wet. Next was a
phone call from Scottish Badgers asking if I could attend with police at a
badger sett in the middle of nowhere which was suspected of having been
interfered with. Sadly, I had to decline. Next was a goldeneye nest
box check which we knew had a duck sitting on eggs. The endoscope
revealed that the duck was away, presumably feeding on the river, so I dragged
the ladder out of the bushes and investigated. The nest contained only
the four eggs that I had discovered a few weeks ago and they were fairly cool
to the touch. If the adult duck had only left the scene a short time ago
the eggs ought to be quite hot, so I'm a little concerned that maybe all is not
well. We'll see. In the evening I took a family of six,
including two young boys, to the badger hide. Problems right from the
start because there were cows in the field so we had to take a long detour
through long wet grass to get to the hide. The cattle gathered near the
hide which freaked the badgers out to the extent that instead of coming out for
peanuts right away, which is their usual behaviour, they kept their distance
until the cattle had wandered away and the light was beginning to fade, which
is yet more evidence that badgers avoid cattle. Eventually all was well
and our guests had a super experience. Most of Saturday was spent
travelling to and from Edinburgh where I attended the annual SWT Chair's
Reception for the trust's most avid supporters; Heather and I are proud to be
counted among that number. The trust is in very good heart, doing all
sorts of innovative things to try to restore Scotland's much depleted nature
and trying to bring the public along with them. On Sunday I played
golf at Nethy. During the round one of the members of our environment sub
group spotted a plant that we had not yet listed on the course and then she saw
a golden eagle doing cartwheels overhead. In the afternoon Bea and I did
a nest box check at Milton Loch; the blackbird and blue tit families had all
successfully left their nests so that was a super end to the day. In the
autumn well take in all the nest boxes and create an easier-to-check system for
future seasons in which the boxes will not be so high off the ground and the
box lids will be easily opened for inspection. We did a superficial check
of the bat boxes but there were no droppings under them, no urine stains on the
ladders and no chattering sounds from within so we assume they are not being
used.
Sat
1st to Sun 9th June
On Saturday I attended the SWT Chair's Reception in Edinburgh; always a great
chance to catch up with old friend and colleagues. Sunday was a golf day,
then on Monday it was particularly noticeable how Heather's purchase of live
mealworms for our family of baby great tits has gone down very well with the
rest of the neighbourhood birdlife as we were being visited by great flocks of
newly fledged chicks, mostly house sparrows. I counted at least 12 of them.
In the afternoon I checked the Acorn camera which had been checking for crested
tits at the squirrel car park. It had taken more than 2,000 pictures but
I did not check them all because by now we had heard that cresties were being
seen by bird watchers in the woods. I then went to the badger hide and
changed cards in the E3 camera which had been watching for pine martens and
possibly goldeneye chicks; the card showed a few pine marten visits but no
chicks yet. Before heading home I strimmed the grass near the hide to
make the badgers easier to see. On Tuesday we entertained Mark Stephen of
BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors programme to talk about the Boat of Garten
Wildlife Group, show him Milton Loch and describe the project that we had
recently been awarded funding for. It seemed to go quite well but the
proof will be how they edit together; it may go out next Saturday, depending on
this and that. Afterwards Heather, Mark and I talked over coffee about
possible future topics for the show. In the evening I took Emma and Scott
to the badger hide; it was the couple's 14th anniversary. We had six
badgers and several common bird species, also a lot of cows, their young and a
bull. Yet again it showed how much badgers do not like cattle; the
badgers ducked under ground each time the cattle went past.
Wednesday was wet and cold all day. The great tits were still busy
feeding their young so I was reluctant to build nest boxes in the shed on whose
wall the nest box was fixed in case the hammering and sawing put them
off. I did manage to check the garden trail camera but it had still not
recorded any hedgehogs, which is disappointing. I also spent a little
time sorting through some photos and some old Power Points before beginning to
rewrite my badger lecture. I don't need it until November but this
was a useful way of using the down time. On Friday I went to Perth for
our Scottish Badgers set of regular meetings - all is going to plan. When
I got home, Heather gleefully informed me that an oystercatcher had laid an egg
at the practice ground on the Abernethy Golf Club so next morning I grabbed a
map reference for it and took some photos. The parent birds were both in
attendance. At home our great tits were still in their box which was quite
surprising considering how big they must now be after all the mealworms they
had been fed on.
Oystercatcher Egg On The Practice Ground
Sunday
was a very wet day requiring three changes of trousers between dog walking a
playing golf. The oyk egg was still at the golf club and I think our
great tit chicks were still in their box in our garden - I'll check properly on
Monday if the rain has stopped.
Mon
10th to Sun 16th June
On Monday the great tit parents continued to feed the young in the nest box,
although at one point one of them stood on the tin shed roof with food in its
mouth and tried to call the young out with lots of wing shaking. Didn't
work. In the evening I took three great young Aussies to the hide where
we had to wait a bit for the badgers to emerge but when they did we had nearly
two hours of activity. Bad weather and a bit of an injury limited activity in
the middle of the week but there were a few things worth
mentioning. The goldeneye nest at the hide seems to have failed;
the same four eggs are still in the box and even the pine marten has only been
in the area once this week. On Weds the great tits fledged from the nest
box in our garden; about time too, I can now get in the shed and do some noisy
jobs. At the golf club all the of the five families of blue tits have
fledged and the oyster catchers have laid a second egg. One of the blue
tit boxes now has a second clutch of five eggs so we really are doing well in
our first season of multiple nest boxes. Interestingly, a fresh badger
latrine has appeared near box five at the golf club so next day I set up a
trail camera there to start getting to know the animal. On Saturday I
checked the garden trail cam and we have still had no hedgehogs this year.
Mon
17th to Sun 23rd June
The week began wet again but I managed to check the golf club badger latrine
camera (no badgers but a few roe deer recorded) and put a new sign on the new
bug hotel. The new sign portrays a spider and web and a cartoon ladybird
drawn with a mix of pyrography and acrylic paint. On Monday evening I
took a young couple from Singapore to the hide where we had 6 badgers, a brown
hare and a few small birds. Wednesday saw me back at the hide with three
old friends from Wales. We had at least seven badgers, one of which
seemed to have a cord around its neck. A few weeks ago we thought the
same about one of the badgers but dismissed the idea, however it is now plain
to see that something is dangling round its neck and possibly dragging on the
ground, although it was hard to be certain due to the long grass. The
animal seems to be functioning OK and I confess to being at a loss as to what
to do for the best, if anything. Maybe in the short term try to get some
good photos of the problem. I'd hoped that the next night, Thursday,
would give that chance when I took a lovely Spanish couple to the hide.
We saw at least 6 badgers but our badger with the problem did not show
up. On Friday Bea and i checked the crestie boxes; nothing new to report
- box 18 still had its three abandoned eggs in it. On Saturday morning
the dogs and I found a pine marten dropping right on the summit of Craigie Rock
in Boat woods. Later, I checked the Browning camera near the fifth
hole at Abernethy GC, it had recorded some very nice clips of roe deer
including a proud buck and an equally proud doe with her faun. There were
also some clips of brown hares and badgers. The night-time badger clips
were of pretty crummy quality considering how much I paid for that
camera. While at the club I cut some felled Rowan branches, took them home
and cut and drilled four of them to make a low parapet around the roof of the
new bug hotel at the golf club. Before bed I wrote to Handycam telling
them what I thought of the Browning camera they had supplied - not their fault;
it had been recommended to me by a friend. Sunday was mostly a day of
rest but Bea and I did manage to go to the golf club and put some more
finishing touches to the bug hotels.
Mon
24th to Sun 30th June
On Tuesday I went to the Scottish Parliament for the ScotLink meeting about
National Ecological Networks. The meeting was Chaired by Claudia Beamish
MSP, Labour spokesperson for Environment and the speakers were Paul Sizeland of
SNH, Alison Hester from the James Hutton Institute, Jeremy Roberts from
Cairngorms Connect, Katherine Jones for Bug Life and Jo Pike from Scottish
Wildlife Trust. I had to overnight in Perth because it's not possible to
get all the way home from Edinburgh from mid-evening onwards.
I got home on Wednesday morning and went to the hide to retrieve
the Bushnell camera which Had recorded no pine martens at all at the goldeneye
nest site. I checked the box while I was there and the four eggs
are still in the box, just as they were when I first found them on 23rd April
which is more than two months ago so they're addled by now. I'll
check if SNH would like to test them for their records before disposing of them
sensitively as I have done in previous years with dud eggs. In the
evening I went to the badger hide on my own intending to sit outside with the
badgers but they are very inactive at the moment, fat and lazy in this
renewed hot weather, so I only saw one at about 2030, at which point I gave up
and went home. On the plus side, I had seen woodpeckers, collared doves,
roe deer, goldeneye on the river and a few small birds at the feeder and had
heard a cuckoo. On Thursday I took local enthusiast Karen to the hide
where we saw 6 badgers at one point. On Friday morning I worked on
making a stop motion movie of building a goldeneye nest box and completed phase
one. In the afternoon I watched male blackbirds taking it in turns to
bath in the freshened bird bath and I then watched them bask in the hot sun,
stretching each wing out in turn for best effect. Later I checked the
oystercatchers at the golf club; all was well with one bird incubating while
the other patrolled the practice green. On Saturday they were not sitting
but both eggs were still in the scrape and both birds were nearby. On
Sunday I removed the Browning cam from the golf club and replaced with the
Bushnell E3 to try to get better badger footage. Time will tell. In
the evening I took Jackie and Colin, friends from Scottish Badgers, to the hide
where we saw 7 badgers plus a pine marten. The pine marten was the first
such sighting during an actual badger watch for several weeks so that was good
news. The bad news is the badger with the cord round its neck has not
managed to shake it off so I'll take advice from colleagues as to the best
course of action.
Mon
1st to Sun 7th July
Spent much of Monday organising the attempt to rescue our wounded badger.
The upshot is the SSPCA will deliver a trap to me on Tuesday and I will set it
up each evening and check it each morning in the hope that we will eventually
capture the right badger. If we do get it, the Grantown on Spey vet has
agreed to deal with the problem and then, once the badger has recovered a bit,
the SSPCA will look after it until it is fit to go back where it came
from. Fingers crossed for a successful exercise.
Cord around a badger's neck
On
Tuesday morning I checked the latrine camera at the golf club but only had roe
deer and red squirrel videos. After lunch the SSPCA delivered a trap as
promised and in the evening I set it up at the badger hide site in such a way
that any unwanted badger or pine marten could be released directly into a path
under the bushes and escape from me with the least possible stress. Time
will tell how well that works.
I
checked the trap on Weds morning but it had not been tripped. I decided
to move the trap to a more accessible place, then went home and spent the rest
of the morning in bed, knackered. (Message to self: Slow Down!)
Spent a super evening in the hide with Richard and Alex from Newcastle.
We had at least seven badgers at close quarters, including the one wearing a
broken snare, but sadly no pine marten this time. On leaving the hide we
reset the trigger on the trap. Next morning (Thurs) I found the trap had
been tripped and the peanuts just inside the entrance were gone but no animal
was caught. Should have set up a camera as I had originally
intended. At the golf club I checked the latrine cam but still no badger;
a couple of nice roe deer clips though. In the evening Bea and I reset
the trap and fixed up a Bushnell camera to video whatever happened - we'd check
it next morning. Bea thinks the trap may be too short for a badger but
we'll have a better idea once we've seen some footage. Checked the trap
on Friday morning; it had not been tripped but the camera revealed that first a
badger and then a pine marten had gone all the way into the trap and out again
without tripping the door. SSPCA phoned to ask how we were getting
on and on hearing the story so far he agreed with me that smearing honey high
up on the inside of the Perspex exit door, might force the occupant to tread
more firmly on the trigger plate. At the golf club the oyster
catchers were down to just one egg and there was no sign of the parent
birds. In our garden, we'd had several days of newly fledged small birds,
mostly house sparrows but also some blackbirds, being fed by parents. In
the case of the sparrows, they are onto their second broods by now. In
the evening I reset the badger trap, having smeared the agreed honey liberally
over the top half of the exit door. Bea and I checked the trap early on
Saturday and sure enough we had caught a badger, but it was the wrong one of
course so we released it unharmed, which is more than can be said of the trap
which needed a visit to my workshop for repairs. Speaking of the
workshop, I spent part of the afternoon sanding the planks I had cut for the
new goldeneye box in the hope of finding the time over the next few days to assemble
it. I'm hoping to make a time lapse movie of the process, which ought to
be quite easy but it needs a bit of planning. On Sunday morning I checked
the nest boxes and camera at the Abernethy Golf Club. There's no real
change to report and no new nesting attempts. The oyster catchers at the
practice ground seemed to have abandoned their late nesting attempt: there was
only one egg in the scrape and no sign of the parent birds. The
latrine camera near the fifth green had recorded one badger close to the camera
but the clip was not good enough to keep or even put on Social
Media. Also that morning I put the badger trap back in place (with
the trigger not set) near the badger hide and set up the camera again ready for
another trapping attempt after the evening's badger watch. We saw 8
badgers at the watch, including the one with the snare, so when we left the
hide I set the trigger in the trap with the plan to check it by 6.30 next
morning.
Mon
8th to Sun14th July
Checked the trap first thing on Monday; a badger was caught but again the wrong
one so I released it. During the day there were various offers of more
traps so by mid week we should be able to set multiple traps and thus increase
our chances. I also had conversations with police and the vet to
make sure we're cool with all things legal. In the evening I sat at the
hide from 2100 to 2300 listening for the clatter of the trap closing but that
did not happen which was disappointing, although my spirits were lifted by the
arrival of three boisterous pine martens. I returned on a very wet
Tuesday morning to check the trap but it had not captured anything. The
next few days are forecast to be wet so I'll take advice over the wisdom of
trapping. I suppose I could set out the traps, without setting the
triggers, for the badgers to get used to for a few days and then set the
triggers when the drier weather arrives at the weekend. In the early
evening there was an Environment Sub Committee meeting at the golf club,
Chaired by my good lady. In the meantime, Emma Rawling had delivered her
pull-the-string trap in the afternoon, then in the late evening she and I set
it up at the badger hide. We also set the trigger on the SSPCA trap and
waited. We only saw two badgers, both very nervous so we may have already
freaked out the whole family with our trapping activity, modest though it has
been so far. After Emma left a pine marten wandered around inside
her PTS trap so I could have caught it no bother. I left at 2300 and
closed the SSPCA trap but left PTS trap open with food in to try to get the
badgers used to going into the trap, which is part of a new plan. On
Wednesday Jackie and Anne drove up from the south with 3 more traps which we
carried across to the hide. Disappointingly, the food I had left in the
PTS trap the previous night was all still there. Anyhow, we set up the
new traps and when we left all five traps were locked open with food
inside. For the next few days the food will be replaced each evening in
the hope of getting the badgers used to going in and out of the traps before we
begin trapping in earnest on Sunday night, weather permitting. I
have been most heartened by the interest shown by all and sundry in what we are
trying to achieve here and the offers of help and I am most grateful to all
concerned. On Thursday afternoon our Broadband router and the local
network were fried by a lightning strike nearby so we would be without
Broadband until BT fix the fault at th exchange and send us all new Hubs.
The evening Bea and I went to the hide to check the traps. None of the
dog food had been eaten but most of the peanuts were gone from four out of the
five traps. We topped up the peanuts as necessary and left. On
Friday afternoon I checked the latrine cam and it had recorded a few nice
badger videos. In the evening I checked the traps again at the hide and
stayed for a couple of hours. Again, the badgers had avoided the dog food
and particularly the food in a shiny dish so I removed the dish, scattered the
dog food as best I could and put peanuts and honey butties in all five
traps. At 2100 a badger appeared and gradually three more turned up,
which was reassuring to some extent; at least they hadn't abandoned the
area. The snared badger was not one of the four I saw. On Saturday
I acquired a tick, which is no surprise given the amount of time I spend in the
long grass both at the badger hide and on the golf course. At the hide, I
checked the traps to find the peanuts had been eaten in all five traps but the
honey butties had only gone from one of the five, so maybe keep it simple from
now on and just use peanuts. On Sunday I went back to the hide late
evening. All peanuts gone but the honey butties were all still there. I
got rid of all the honey butties, replaced the peanuts and set the trigger on
four traps, then sat for an hour watching the PTS trap. Two badgers came
out briefly.
Monday
15th to Sunday 21st July
I checked the traps on Monday morning; I'd caught one badger in the small shiny
trap; still the wrong one. It was unable to turn round in the small space
so I had to shake it loose backwards, poor thing.
A trapped badger.
During
the day I collected together all four of my trail cameras and in the evening
spread them throughout the badger hide area to try to find the snared
badger. I then set the triggers on all five traps and topped up the
peanuts. On Tuesday morning, the BBT and SSPCA traps had been
sprung but no badgers were caught. In the evening I reset the triggers
and sat for an hour with the PTS string. A badger ventured into the BBT
and it must have heard me moving in the hide because it panicked and stepped on
the trigger plate, thus trapping itself. I released it straight away.
Altogether I saw three badgers that evening of which two were definitely the
wrong ones and I did not get a good enough look at the other one to
judge. On Wednesday morning I arrived on site to find that the small
shiny trap had been tipped on its side and the other three had all been sprung
but no badger was caught. Later, the SSPCA asked for their trap to be
returned to them for a day or two, after which we would get it back, which was
fine because we had already decided not to trap on Wednesday night due to my
having an early start next morning. On Thursday evening I reset the three
auto traps and sat for an hour watching for badgers and holding the string just
in case the right badger went into the PTS trap but no luck. I saw two
badgers briefly, neither was the snared one. On Friday morning I found
that all three set traps had been tipped over yet the PTS trap still had
peanuts in it. I swapped cards in the cameras and went home to
reassess. The cards had recorded more than 100 video clips of badgers,
none of which featured the snared one. After some thought I decided not
to give up quite yet, even though Simon from SSPCA had told Heather that the
snared badger had very little chance of survival, we aren't seeing it any more
and also my trappings method had been rendered impractical now that the badgers
had twigged that they can access the peanuts by simply tipping the traps
over. I decided I would screw the three traps to the badger hide wall so
that they could not be tipped over and have the peanuts in dishes beyond the
trigger plate rather than just scattered inside the trap so that the badgers
would be forced to go into the trap and all the way to the plate and beyond to
get the food. I would attempt to trap and keep the cameras going until
the morning of Tuesday 23rd July, then think again. On Friday evening I
set the three traps at the hide and tended the PTS trap while watching. I saw
one badger briefly and not clearly enough to make a judgment on its status. On
Saturday morning I found a pine marten in the BGT and released it. A pine
marten had also been inside the BBT, eaten the peanuts and somehow
escaped. I suspect when the door closed it fell past the stop that is supposed
to prevent it opening inwards and the pine marten managed to pull it open; I
know it was a pine marten because it had pooped in the trap before
escaping. I left those two traps locked shut but wired the SST open and
left the PTS open as well. Late morning a group of SWT Members from the
North of Scotland Group assembled at Kinchurdy Road End for a forest walk in
Boat Woods, led by Tessa Jones. Later the group went to Milton Loch Hide
for their packed lunches and a tour of that area, I attended the morning
session but not the afternoon one. Tessa is a terrific guide, very
knowledgeable and she provided a most enjoyable and interesting day for the
group. I did no trapping on Saturday night.
Trapped Pine Marten
On
Sunday evening I reset the traps, which involved crawling inside two of them to
undo the adjustments made by the marten to the trip wires and to retrieve the
and refill the food dishes. I sat for an hour with the PTS trap
string. No badgers seen at all.
Mon
22nd to Tues 30th July
Up early again to check the traps to find we had caught another badger, this
time in the same Big Grey Trap that had caught a pine marten on Friday
night. Neither of the other two traps had been sprung and most of the
peanuts in the open PTS trap were still there. Built a squirrel feeder
for friends, the first of the promised two feeders. Wire mesh is a ****
to work with. In the evening I reset the auto traps at the hide and sat
for more than an hour monitoring the PTS trap, during which time I saw one
badger briefly at the upper sett. On Tuesday morning at 5am I checked the
traps for what turned out to be the final time. We had caught another
pine marten, this time in the small shiny trap. One of the other traps
had been sprung but no animal was caught and the other had not been visited at
all. I checked the cards in the cameras and there was still no clips of
the snared badger. Since 30th June we'd carried out 40 traps nights and
almost as many camera nights. We'd trapped 5 badger and 2 pine martens
and seen no sign of the snared badger so it was reasonable to assume the animal
had either left the area or had died of its injuries so we decided it was time
to call a halt to the trapping. In the trapping process we had disrupted
family life for these badgers to such an extent that they had begun avoiding
the vicinity of the badger hide. It would probably take some weeks or
months to regain their trust. In the afternoon Bea and I and others
helped the Willow Lady to set up her tent and gazebo at Milton Loch before
heading back to the hide to remove the traps and take them home. On Wednesday
morning I wrote emails of thanks to all those who had helped us most during the
trapping process. In the afternoon Bea attended a willow weaving session
and made a lovely swallow out of willow twigs - I called it a Swillow.
While she was doing that I finished building the squirrel feeders and caught up
on emails and phone calls for Scottish Badgers and Scottish Environment
Link. In the evening I delivered the squirrel feeders and then spent
nearly two hours at the hide but not a single badger responded to my calls and
promises of peanuts. It also transpired that my recent assertion that the
hide roof no longer leaks turns out to be wrong; when I arrived there was a
distinct puddle in the seat of one of the plastic chairs following the
morning's heavy rain. Thursday was a carpentry day, as far as it
went. The plan was to finish the first goldeneye nest box and start a
second one but my jig saw, which had been on the blink for a week or two,
finally packed up in a cloud of smoke and a nasty smell. So, the first
box was finished apart from the entrance hole which would get cut once I got a
new jig saw, hopefully next day. Made a point of putting out water at
night for the hedgehogs; the temperature in the garden at 11pm was 24.5C.
On Friday I bought a new jig saw and finished the Goldeneye Box:
The finished article.
We're very grateful to BSW
Timber for donating the wood for this and other next boxes.
On
Saturday evening I went to the hide to check the cameras and to sit a while to
see if the badgers had begun to forgive us yet. The Acorn and Browning
cameras had recorded no badger activity, the Aggressor had recorded 5 badger
videos and the E3 had recorded 20 badger videos, only one of which was in
daylight. The snared badger was not featured on any video, neither were
any pine martens. This did not look very promising, however at 2115
a badger emerged from the upper sett, then one from the lower sett, then
suddenly there were four at the upper sett and then a fifth showed
briefly. Unfortunately, as I moved in the hide the floor creaked and the
badgers all fled. However, they were not away long and at 2200 there were
4 badgers very close to the hide. This activity was most encouraging and
will help me decide when to reopen the hide which is becoming urgent as more
requests for visits are arriving every day. Sunday was all golf, then on
Monday I put together a heap of the items we would require for Saturday's
working party at the badger hide, then cut up some of the pine planks ready for
the next goldeneye box. On Tuesday I called in at the willow weaving at
Milton Loch Woodland, not so much to join in as to discuss with those attending
other aspects of BoGWiG's latest projects including the osprey platform, the
goldeneye boxes and the upcoming working party for the Badger Hide on
Saturday. In the evening I went to the badger hide and removed all four
cameras. I sat in the hide for a couple of hours and checked the camera
cards. There were quite a few badger videos, some with up to three
badgers in the frame, plus one video of a pine marten. While I was there
I was treated to the sight of at least five badgers enjoying the peanuts I had
scattered. It looks as if things really are settling down, but next
Tuesday's public badger watch will be the acid test. On Wednesday I spent
the morning wrestling with the settings on two of my Bushnell cameras in
readiness for a time-lapse session later in the week. I got there in the
end. In the afternoon I built goldeneye nest box No 2.
Thursday
1st Aug to Sun11th Aug
On Thursday I set up two trail cams at Milton Loch ready to take time-lapse
shots of the building of an osprey nest platform next morning then, on Friday,
bright and early I switched them on before meeting Alban and Fraser who would
do the job. They canoed across the loch to the tree in question and sawed
and built for three hours while I took photos from every available angle,
mostly from very dodgy tufts in bottomless bog. As things turned
out the time lapse camera results were disappointing but most of the 'live'
shots were fine and here's an example showing the finished article.
Osprey Nest Platform at
Boat of Garten
Saturday began with
BogWig being featured on BBC Radio Scotland Out of Doors programme mostly to do
with the new Milton Loch project involving the new osprey nest, repairs to the
dam, building some new goldeneye boxes and creating a willow Ark Of Caledon
feature. Later, BoGWiG members Andy and Alan and I went to the badger
hide and started its annual face lift. We began by inspecting the leaky
roof and coming up with a plan involving bitumen paint, mastic and, if that
didn't work, making a new plan. We then set to and gave the hide a fresh
coat of wood preserver. In the afternoon I went back to the hide and
strimmed the grass and on the way home I adjusted the hinges on the Milton Loch
gate. In the evening I went to the hide again, swept the carpet, fixed
the sagging cover on one of the led lights and settled down to watch badgers in
the hope that all the day's work had not freaked them out. By the time I
left I had seen at least seven different badgers so I guessed all was well with
them. Sunday 4th and Mon 5th Aug were a well-earned days of golf and
rest. On Tuesday I did some prep for meetings this week and next week and
then in the evening I took a group of five great Australians to the badger hide
where we saw at least five different badgers. We got rather wet on the
walk out when the heavens opened. Next day I returned to the hide to make
sure no harm had come of the heavy rain and to my amazement the roof had not
leaked at all. I worked the rest of the morning on the Powerpoint for a
badger talk scheduled for later in the season in which I wish to use fresh
videos so a good deal of editing will be required. Later I read through
the papers for the Link meeting in Stirling next day. The LINK meeting
went ahead on Thursday despite some weather-related call-offs; flooded railway
lines being the main culprit. My own trains were affected but I
coped. Lots of technical stuff was covered and a few decisions and
recommendations were made to pass upstairs. On Friday I wrote a brief
summary of the main points for Scottish Badgers trustees and advisors. The
weekend was mostly golf and watching football.
Mon 12th to Sun 18th Aug
Monday was devoted to badgers. Most of the day was spent reading a heap
of papers ahead of Friday's meeting of Scottish Badgers. In the early
evening I edited various bits of video of American Badgers and Rattels for a
PowerPoint lecture and I then took a delightful young family from the
Netherlands to the badger hide where we saw at least six badgers. The
following evening I went to the hide again with a family and we once more had
six badgers. Friday I spent all day in Perth at our quarterly series of
Scottish Badgers meetings, combining that with the chance to return the traps I
had borrowed for trying to capture our snared badger last month.
Mon 19th to Sun 25th Aug
On Monday I tore into a whole bunch of wildlife emails which seem to get more
numerous with every passing month. In the afternoon I set up a camera at
a squirrel feeder near the clubhouse at Abernethy Golf Club, then in the
evening I took a guest to the badger hide where we saw 8 badgers and a pine
marten. On Weds I spent the afternoon at the golf club doing a few jobs
with the feeders. We now have two full feeders, both being monitored with
cameras for red squirrels and pine martens. On Thursday I took a
family of 5 to the hide where we had six badgers again; no pine martens this
time. On Friday evening Anne Elliott from SNH led a highly successful bat
walk at Abernethy Golf Club during which we encountered lots of bats, mostly
Pipistrelles (probably the alto type), and some Daubentons over the pond.
Whilst there I checked the camera at the new feeder by the 9th green to find it
had recorded a red squirrel that very afternoon. Encouraging. On Saturday
I made a time-lapse video of the making of a goldeneye duck nest box and posted
it on Twitter, then took a young lad from Perthshire to the badger hide where
we had bats, wood-mice and 7 badgers.
Mon
26th to Sat 31st August
On Monday I reset the sensitivity of both cameras at the golf club to Normal
(Auto simply doesn't work for red squirrels) then in the evening I took a super
couple for a three-hour session at the badger hide where we had 9 badgers but
no pine martens. Tuesday was mostly spent working on the badger Power-point, as
were Weds and Thurs but I did squeeze in a visit to the badger hide on Weds to
take some fresh badger videos. Also, on Thursday I checked both
cameras at the golf club where red squirrels were shown to be active at both
the ninth and sixth areas although those at the ninth still had not worked out
how to open the lid. Disappointingly, pine martens had not visited the
sixth hole area at all in the last four days. On Friday Bea and I met
Craig Johnson, raptor enthusiast, to decide where at Milton Loch he might place
a kestrel nest box and a nest basket which would also be for kestrels but which
a merlin might also use. Apparently both species use old crows nests but
since we have no crows in this area the kestrels and merlins might use an
artificial substitute. In the afternoon I collected a dead badger from a
farm house at Tulloch. It was a female weighing 12kg and had almost
certainly been hit by a car; it is now quietly decomposing in undergrowth in a
peaceful patch of woodland. On Saturday I did some more work on videos
and Power-point, then in the evening I took a young couple from a University in
Spain to the badger hide; we had at least six badgers, a buzzard and some
woodpeckers. Their enthusiasm impressed me so much that before taking
them to their Air B&B I drove them through the village to show them a
couple of local wildlife hotspots for them to sample in the coming days.
Sun
1st September to Sunday 8th September
On Mon 2nd I started to build a hedgehog nest box for our next door neighbour
using left-over wood from various bird nest box projects. On Tues morning
I checked the cameras at the golf club to find lots of squirrel activity at the
6th hole feeder but no pine marten but we had a pine marten at the 9th hole
feeder for the first time on camera. The squirrel or
squirrels at the 9th still haven't worked out how to lift the lid. On
Tues afternoon I nearly managed to finish the hedgehog box but not quite due to
the need to crack on with some Scottish Badgers and ScotLink work. Weds
and Thurs were mostly domestic duties due to my wife being away and on Friday I
got back in the shed to finish the hedgehog box, modify a camera bracket and
create a new locking device for the said camera. Later I set up the
camera at the badger hide ahead of a weekend of badger watching; a group of six
on Saturday and then a lady on her own for two nights on Sunday and
Monday. On Saturday I took the said group to the hide where we had 9 badgers
but not much else. On Sunday morning I checked the camera at the hide to
see what the pine martens had been up to the last two nights; there were two
there just before 11pm on Friday night and one at just after 11pm on Saturday
night. On Sunday afternoon Be and I helped to 'plant' the willow wolf
called Merlin at Milton Loch. There was a nice wee crowd for the
occasion. In the evening I took a lady photographer to the hide where we
had 7 badgers in view at one point.
Mon
9th to Sun 15th September
On Monday I took the same lady photographer to the hide. Just before we
left the hide a fight started between two badgers and almost at once other
badgers joined in. The noisy squealing and screaming was like nothing I
had ever heard before. The fight travelled quickly up the hill away from
the hide so we were able to leave, but we could hear the noises all the way
across the field to the car. On Tuesday I collected two damaged feeders
from beside the Milton Loch hide and took them home for repair. On Wednesday
morning I returned the repaired feeders to Milton Loch and reinstalled them,
then in the evening Bea and I attended the Scottish Wildlife Trust North Group
event at Eden Court Theatre where the mountaineer, traveller, author and
broadcaster Cameron McNeish gave a packed audience his talk "There's
Always The Hills" - an excellent evening. The next few days was
mostly spent wrestling with failing computers so very little wildlife stuff got
done. I did manage a trip to the hide with a lovely couple on Saturday
night and I delivered the completed hedgehog nest box to my neighbours who were
most appreciative.
Mon
16th to Sun 22nd September
Took two people to the hide on Monday evening. The good news is we had
ten badgers in view at one point which equals the all-time record for the
hide. The bad news is that one of the badgers was the one with a snare
round its neck. It had not been seen since 30th June so we assumed it had
died but clearly it had not and there it was, large as life and functioning quite
normally with the rest of the clan. One of the other badgers had acquired
a cut on its nose and I'm guessing that was inflicted on it during last week's
fight. On that point, the badgers seemed generally less calm than normal
and there was a lot of jostling for the peanuts so perhaps the clan has become
over-large and that is causing competition for space, food and breeding
opportunities. All of that is just conjecture and is not to be taken too
seriously. Back in the hide on Tuesday with a photographer called Stuart
- he got loads of great badger shots. Our snared badger was still around
and it looks OK. On Weds an opportunity cropped up to go the Legislative
Training Day at the Scottish Parliament on Friday so it was a dash to get train
tickets and otherwise get organised. Friday came and it was a long day,
starting with getting up at 4.30am to catch the early train and ending at 11pm
when I finally got home. It was however very worthwhile indeed and I left
the Parliament with a much clearer idea of how it all works. While I was
there the Climate Strike marchers filed past the building; I'm told there were
20,000 of them, which would not surprise me, given the amount of time it took
for them all to march past. On Saturday Bea and I began sorting the
garden for the winter, clearing out the pond and removing the sparrow gallery
for repairs. The week ended with a visit to the badger hide with a young
lady where we saw at least seven badgers; the snared one was not among
them. Looking back, the week has been a bit of a blur, much of it
to do with kicking the new and refurbished laptops into shape, such as
persuading them to behave themselves when plugged into a projector, so I've
probably left all sorts of things out.
Mon
23rd to Mon 30th September
In the morning I did the BTO Dem-On Schedule One returns for crested tits and
goldeneye ducks. I've also got lots of small tit records for this year
but it's such an awkward process I might not bother. Later I worked on
the sparrow gallery and then moved the hedgehog box from under the hedge which
is about to be demolished to a safer site. In the evening I took two
couple to the hide. The badgers were much slower than usual to come out
but in the end it was a terrific session with seven badgers close to the hide
at one point. Mid week was mostly domestic stuff, golf and music but I
did manage to finish rebuilding the sparrow gallery and check the cameras at
the golf club where we recorded no pine martens at all this week but the red
squirrels are doing fine, including one that has finally managed to learn to
lift the lid of the feeder by the 9th green; up till now they'd all been too
thick to work it out. On Friday I took two families to the hide; we had
at least 10 different badgers including the one with the snare round its neck.
Tues
1st to Sun 6th October
On Tues I took the bus to Edinburgh to attend the Wildlife Crime Prevention
meeting at the Scottish Parliament. It was organised by ScotLink and well
Chaired by Colin Smyth MSP with speakers Ian Thomson (birds) and Eddie Palmer
(Badgers). Encouragingly, the meeting was attended by a range of
interested NGOs plus Scottish Govt, SNH head of licensing and three members of
the ECCLR Committee, Mark Ruskell, Claudia Beamish and Alexander Burnett.
The Chair went away with a list of actions which could help the situation if
the powers that be can be persuaded to implement them. Time will
tell. On Weds Bea and I attended Jonathan Willett's talk on Dragonflies,
dragonflies (yes there's a difference) and damsel flies. On Thursday I
checked the crappy Browning camera at the badger hide feeder which has been
monitoring pine marten activity. Amazingly, badgers had been climbing the
tree to the feeder almost every night. Pine martens also attended
most nights and, with only one exception (8.45pm), always after midnight.
On Friday a BoGWiG Group went to the hide where they watched the antics of at
least 5 different badgers at close quarters. Saturday saw a
gathering of BoGWiG members at Milton Loch where a number of end-of-summer jobs
were carried out such as reducing the overgrown vegetation at the duck-platform
and erecting the new goldeneye boxes. Some of this was captured on video
by the Cairngorms National Park staff for raising awareness and to help with
fundraising.
Mon
7th to Sun 13th October
On Monday I did some badger paper work to do with achieving greater protection
for badgers. Lately there has been a spate of misinformation and
downright lies about badger behaviour as well as some rather odd courtroom
decisions on sentencing. Time to get tough. Later I filled up
woodland feeders that have been a bit neglected lately. On Tuesday I
filled some more feeders at Boat woods, then removed all the cameras at the
golf club and at the badger hide. I also moved the feeders at the 6th
hole at the golf club and at the badger hide for a variety of reasons.
Back at home I checked the cards in the three cameras. Red squirrels are
working the lid at the 9th hole at the golf club and the pine martens, at least
two different ones, are at the 6th hole feeder most days. At the badger
hide, the pine martens were there every night, usually around or after midnight
but one also turned up at 1945 one evening. Badgers were regularly climbing
the feeder tree but none so far had managed to open it or wreck it, however
twice the camera had captured a badger sitting on top of the feeder!
Mon
14th to Sun 20th October
On Wednesday I checked the camera at the badger hide to find that pine martens
were not there every night in the past week but when they were it was always
after midnight. In the evening I took a family to the hide where we saw 6
badgers but very little else. Even the moths failed to attract
bats. Never mind, can't win them all. Not much happened this week.
obviously.
Mon
21st to Thurs 31st October.
On Monday I checked the camera at the hide to find that a pine marten was there
most nights, sometimes two of them, and twice they arrived as early as 8 or
9pm. Later I filled all the feeders at Abernethy Golf Club, then in the
evening I took a lady vet and her young son to the hide where we had 9
badgers. Once again the badger with a snare round its neck turned up and
was still looking fine. These animals are toughies. On
Tuesday the Golf Club ran a successful and productive fungus foray which was
attended by a surprisingly good number of people despite the rain. In the
evening, Steve from Wildlife Safaris in Aviemore took his clients to the hide
and saw 8 badgers and a pine marten. On Weds I went to Scottish Wildlife
Trust HQ at Leith, Edinburgh to collect the Christmas calendars and cards ready
for our next get-together. A discussion on wildcats, badgers and red
squirrels ensued with some of the SWT staff while I was there. Thursday began
with a spectacular up-close view of a beautiful male capercaillie in our woods
at Boat of Garten - great start to the day. On Friday I put the finishing
touches to a video called "A Wolf Came To Stay" and uploaded it to
YouTube here. On
Saturday I was disappointed to find that some of the signage in Boat Woods had
been vandalised - the local Council have been informed. On Sun 27th
I filled a few woodland feeders but mostly stayed at home popping pills due to
being a bit under the weather - as a result I was able to catch up on some
paperwork. On Wednesday I found pine marten droppings on the Secret Path
near The Elbow Junction and in the afternoon I refilled the feeders at
Abernethy Golf Club. On the last day of the month we had an Environment
Group meeting at Nethy Golf Club to review the work of the past year and plan
for next year.
Fri
1st to Sun 10th November
On Sunday I submitted a nomination form for election to the Board of a
significant environmental body. Stay tuned. In the evening I took
two young people to the hide in rather wet weather. The badgers don't
mind the rain so we had a good evening. I checked the camera SD card to
find the pine marten had not been visiting for the past few days although the
fact that the peanut feeder was empty may have had something to do with
that. When we left I took the camera home with me for drying out,
checking and redeploying elsewhere now that the badger-watching season is
almost at an end; we close from 1st December to mid March. On Mon
4th I spent a few hours (yes hours) updating and then pruning my Badger talk
for Wednesday night. I also got on with making two new squirrel feeders
for friends at the golf club. On Wednesday the dogs and I came across
capercaillie droppings in the local woods, not too far from the village.
Later that morning I refilled some of the woodland feeders and delivered a
sack-full to the lady who looks after one of the sites. I also got into
the workshop again to press on with the new squirrel feeders before relaxing
for a while prior to my 'performance' in the evening; the dreaded badger talk
for the North Area SWT Members Group in Inverness. I need not have worried;
there was a super crowd of 35+ people it all went well. On Saturday
I finally finished the two new feeders, the design of which is an improvement
over previous versions but is very time consuming to construct so I will be
working on a simplified version over the winter. It snowed on Friday
night which was lovely, it turned the forest into something new, as it always
does. On Sunday I took a family of four to the hide in sub-zero
conditions. Two badgers came out almost straight away and we eventually
had six. There's only one more scheduled visit to the hide in the diary
before we close for the winter.
Mon
11th to Sun 17th November
The week started with poor weather so not much practical work got done. Pine
marten droppings were found in two places in our woods, On on the scret path
again and one near the Kinchurdy Road gate. I took a couple from Wales to the
hide on Friday where we had 6 badgers, including the snared one: it's still
looking great. On Saturday I checked the squirrel feeders at the golf club and
set up a camera on the one at the 6th hole to see if pine martens are using it.
Before going home I assembled my long pole and checked the roof of the pine
marten nest box with the phone's video camera; no droppings on the roof yet I'm
afraid. On Sunday a group of five of us planted something like 30 native trees
(birch, cherry and rowan) in an out-of-normal-play area on the Abernethy Golf
Course at Nethy Bridge. We hope to add more trees in due course.
Mon 18th to Sun 24th November
This week a number of meetings and other appointments
were in the diary so not much work on the ground would be possible.
On Wednesday a number of house sparrows were seen investigating the starling
box and the open-fronted box; in November???!!!. Crazy birds.
On Thursday I was up at 0430 to catch the early train to Edinburgh for a
three-hour Link Wildlife Group meeting at the Woodland Trust's office then
on Friday it was off to Perth for four hours of Scottish Badgers meetings.
By Saturday my brain was scrambled but I had to tidy up some odds and ends
from the meetings such as editing music into a badger video for the Nature
of Scotland awards ceremony on 4th Dec. I chilled for the rest of the
day, promising the world that I would get busy on Sunday with practical
conservation; I like to get all the nest boxes checked and prepared for next
season before Christmas but none had been done so far. So, first thing
on Sunday the dogs and I walked the crested tit nest box circuit and, as I
had previously discussed with Heather, we reduced the level of the rotten
wood filler in the boxes to a point just below the entrance hole instead
having it right to the top of the box as in recent years. Our crestie
success rate in recent years has been pretty poor so anything is worth a
try. Later, I went to the golf club and checked the feeders and the
camera. The feeder at the 9th green had hardly been used at all and
was still nearly full whereas the one at the 6th hole was almost empty.
The camera near the 6th hole feeder had taken lots of photos, mostly of red
squirrels but disappointingly there were no pine marten pictures.
One of the Milton Loch nest boxes
Monday 25th to Sat 30th November
Started the
week with some practical work at Milton Loch where I trudged through the
bogs with a ladder to clean out the starling, blackbird and tit nest
boxes. I also brought them all down to head height for easier
checking and cleaning in future. On Tuesday I did a similar job at
Abernethy Golf Club. You can find a video of the boxes
here.
Eight of them I was able to check and clean out in the usual way but the
weird concrete one can only be checked with an endoscope and it cannot
be cleaned out at all. Wednesday afternoon was spent in the
workshop perfecting a design for a secure, yet flexible, device to hold
my phone on the end of a long pole to video the roofs of pine marten
nest boxes to see if they are being used; pine martens pile droppings on
the roofs of their dens. It's a mustelid thing. On Friday I
photographed badger doors at Milton and Auchgourish for Scottish
Badgers; at Auchgourish I found pine marten and fox scats quite near
each other. Both sites had active badgers setts with lots of
freshly dug out tunnels and busy latrines. On Saturday in a
temperature of -9 Bea and I shifted the bird and squirrel feeders at
"The Angle" junction in woods at Boat of Garten to a new site from where
they could be seen by people sitting on the new bench beside the new
All-Abilities path.
Sunday 1st to Sunday 8th December
Sunday's plan to inspect the pine marten and goldeneye nest boxes at the
badger hide was cancelled; I didn't fancy climbing a ladder with icy steps.
We'll do it when the temperature rises a bit next week. Monday was too wet
to do much but on Tuesday I managed to check the feeders and cameras at the golf
club; plenty of red squirrel activity but no pine marten footage. One of
the feeders had rotten food in it so I unscrewed it and brought it home for a
good scrub. On Wednesday I travelled to Edinburgh as a guest at the RSPB
Nature of Scotland Awards Dinner. A fabulous evening with everyone
in posh frocks and black ties, well nearly everyone. I was delighted that
the Scottish Wildlife Trust/RZSS beaver project won its category and was even
more pleased to have been asked to be one of the acceptance party.
A moment in the spotlight with the celebrities as we accepted our award.
A great night for beavers.
On Saturday I went to Edinburgh for the AGM of the Scottish Wild Land Group which was held in the Quaker Meeting House in Victoria Terrace. Plans for a leisurely pre-meeting lunch were thwarted by the bus breaking down so that I only arrived just in time for the meeting, having grabbed a hasty baguette from a stall at the station and scoffed it while power-walking through the Edinburgh streets. Good meeting, which included a presentation of mountain scenary images with orchestral accompanying music. The week ended with terrible weather so no field work.
Mon 9th to Sun 15th December
Spent most of Monday
wrestling with website uploading, including this one, all due to a new
computer and confusing ftp systems. Let's see if it's working now.
I'm back - yes it is!!! Wet weather most of the week made any attempt
to work out of doors a grim prospect so I didn't do any. I was
supposed to attend the ScotLink AGM on Thursday but travel disruption and a
heavy cold led to my cancelling the trip. Dog walking was a wet affair
all week but I did notice some signs of wildlife activity, pine marten poo
for example. On Saturday I checked some of the peanut feeders in the
woods but they were not in need of refilling. At Abernethy Golf
Club I checked the Acorn camera and in the past ten days the nearby feeder
had been visited by a pine marten, red squirrels and, bizarely, a tawny owl.
I guess it was a useful perch while the owl was watching for mice underneath
the feeder. Later I put my Nikon camera and the telephoto lens
on eBay; I've hardly used them in recent years and cannot think when I
might have a need to do so. Remarkably, there were offers immediately.
On Sunday I checked the roof of the golf club pine marten nest box but there
were no droppings so it's probably not being used at the moment.
Mon 16th Sun 22nd December
Once more the good
intentions of practical work were thwarted by the weather; it snowed.
The dogs and I did however find some pine marten droppings on the so-called
caper track during our morning walk. Later, despite the snow, the
workmen arrived to demolish our out-of-control hedge. When the time is
right we'll plant a new one of a species not likely to become a monster.
The rest of the week went by in a fairly unstructured way so I'll summarise
even more than usual. At the badger hide I checked the pine marten
nest box with the phone on a long pole; no droppings on the roof so it's
probably not in use. However, nothing daunted I set up a trail camera
facing the tree trunk to see if any of the martens are visiting - I'll check
it weekly and report back. Female pine martens get pregnant in
mid January so I'll check the roof again then. At the hide itself our
tree-climbing badgers had totally destroyed the pine marten feeder so I'm
going to have to be creative as to where to site the next one. While I
was there, I scattered some peanuts and sat outside for half an hour but no
badgers emerged; to be fair it was still mid afternoon. In Boat
woods there's never much scope for practical stuff in winter apart from
keeping the feeders filled up, however it has been noticeable how many pine
marten scats can be found along the tracks. Speaking of peanuts,
I made a point of filling the feeders at all of our sites and resupplying
our volunteers before Christmas. At the golf club, I found pine marten
droppings on the path leading to the 3rd tee. Sunday was my 80th
Birthday so I did not very much at all except update this diary.
Mon 23rd to Tues 31st December
And so we arrived
at the last week of the year and the first week of my career as an
octogenarian. Not much happened at first but on Christmas Day I
visited the feeder at the golf club to fill it up and to change the
batteries and SD card in the Acorn camera. There was a red squirrel on
the feeder when I arrived and two more on the SD card when I checked it at
home. And so ended the year. All in all pretty good one if
you ignore the Tories gaining a strong majority in Parliament - which is
quite hard to ignore. See you all in 2020.