I was really fortunate to be able to attend the two week Peatland Restoration Design course recently. The course is designed by NatureScot and hosted and delivered by the SRUC. It's a great mix of theory and practical and gives excellent guidance on formulating peatland restoration design as
Conference 2024: Day 3 programme | IUCN UK Peatland ProgrammeThursday 19th September: topic deep dives (recorded for the Peatland Programme YouTube channel)IUCN Peatland Programme It was unfortunate that I could only attend one day of this conference but it was well worth the trip to an incredibly sunny Aviemore to
I am no great videographer but I have seen some lovely birds this summer and have obtained snippets of footage. Of course, the scope is never set up when the osprey is about but you can never have too many twite and curlew videos. 0:00 /0:08 1× 0:
Enjoyable few days birding in Aberdeenshire- brushing up on my warbler ID as well as a WeBS, woodland bird survey and some nest detecting. A few firsts for me too plus a couple of seals- as someone who doesn’t get to the sea very often I find seals quite
Fabulous day at Culzean Castle learning about GCN identification and surveying. Beautiful weather too. After a classroom session on newt ID, we went out to the education pond to complete a habitat suitability index (HSI) study and for a demonstration on netting. The HSI was very good on this pond,
I am persevering with the trail cam and our local badgers although its quite a tricky spot and I am probably a bit too paranoid about my trail cam going missing! Lots of signs roundabout and I've produced a survey map below-obviously setts and identifying features have not
The Scottish Biodiversity Strategy aims to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reverse it by 2045. Planning for nature is already built into the National Planning Framework, although ways of measuring improvements have not yet been introduced. As part of the Scottish Government's biodiversity commitment the use of
It's early days yet for this place and spring, although everything has greened up a little. The curlews and oyster catchers have arrived and the small birds are busy and vocal. There's been an increase of badger activity too which is not unusual, although new latrine
A busy couple of weeks training. First, two days of excellent training from Peatland Action at Eskdalemuir Community Hub in Dumfries and Galloway. Honestly one of the most useful courses I've been on (also free!) with excellent presentations about the different methodology, what has worked where and why
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I am a freelance ecologist based in South Lanarkshire. This site will be a personal blog of what I am up to and if you are looking for any ecological help, please have a look at my About page for more information.