Auchnerran Blog

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…

Dr David Parish talks us through what's been happening at the Game & Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran, on the publication of its first annual report.

No wonder they have a day dedicated to them each year. But curlew are in dire straits. They have declined across Scotland by 61% (1995 to 2016), twice the rate in England. This is worrying as Scotland holds around 60% of the UK population or approximately a whopping 15% of the world population of this globally declining species. Something needs to be done to help them.

World Curlew Day is a grassroots initiative, supported by major environmental organisations, to raise awareness of the plight of curlews and to encourage activities to help them. We cannot simply preside over extinction. We must take the opportunity to assess all practical options at our disposal to safeguard the future of our curlews.

Living in the middle of nowhere is difficult at the best of times. But when a global pandemic hits and you’re not allowed near civilisation, different challenges arise. Limited to brief once-weekly interactions with our boss and farm research assistant Marlies, and the occasional grunt and wave from the farmer Allan, it would be easy to start losing your mind a bit. Thankfully, spring was on hand.

Over the past month, thrush surveys have been the primary job here at Auchnerran. Luckily we have been able to continue this study despite the COVID-19 pandemic as we are based on the farm, which is in a remote location, and no travelling is required.