Auchnerran Blog

With the Guardian reporting declines in rabbit populations and the importance of intervention in their management, we thought it the ideal time to reflect on how they’re getting on our Scottish demonstration farm.

GWCT is working hard to help these vulnerable species. At our research and demonstration farm, Auchnerran in Aberdeenshire, we are fortunate to have thriving populations of lapwing, oystercatcher and curlew

Dr Dave Parish introduces the 2020 Auchnerran Annual Report, available now.

On 19th April we highlighted an increase in the number of lapwing clutches predated by badgers at Auchnerran, our Scottish demonstration farm. Now, almost a month later, we can provide an update. 3 minute read.

It’s that exciting time of year again when waders start to drift back to their breeding grounds. At Auchnerran, we noticed the first flock of about 40 lapwing on 20 February, which had quickly increased to almost 120 by the 23rd.

It has taken a tremendous effort to achieve, not helped at all by the covid-19 restrictions which slowed things down considerably of late, but the finished buildings are fantastic.

The free-to-use Epicollect App was first developed by Imperial College in London. It provides collection of information through creation of questionnaire forms and can store locational information both on- and off-line, which makes it very useful for a variety of area-based surveys.

Our placement students organised a small trail-camera study to try to capture any action on our newly established wader scrapes. This revealed that there were indeed some waders hanging around and one or two other things as well…