Flanders flowers

Don't miss the wildflower meadow if you're visiting Flanders Moss in the next few weeks.

It's a riot of colours ... with a seemingly never ending variety of beautiful natural patterns and shapes formed by the leaves and stems as well.

And if you look in the right places you'll probably see as much wildlife here right next to the car and cycle park as in Blair Drummond Safari Park.

When I visited yesterday I took half a dozen steps from the picnic area and entered a new and noisy world.


Suddenly the air was abuzz with the hum of tiny life.

Hundreds of insects were busily flying through the clumps of flowers looking for the next course of what seemed like a never-ending meal.

Looking more closely I saw honeybees, several sorts of bumble bee, myriads of hoverflies, as well as butterflies and damselflies.

At times they seemed to be actually queuing up for a turn to get onto favoured flower-heads. Every moment something new seemed to be happening.

I couldn't make up my mind whether the flowers or the insects were more colourful.

Now must be the best time of year to see this flower meadow which didn't even exist a few years ago.

You can find it next to the car and cycle park without having to go as far as the path and boardwalk.

This picture shows where to look. Happy hunting!

A watery world

Hi, I'm Nick, one of the wardens you may see about on Flanders Moss... but even on a winter's day Flanders isn't this wet.



This is one of the other reserves I work at, Loch Lomond, and I took a little piece of Flanders - our latest newsletter The Moss - with me when I last visited.









As it's the nearest national nature reserve neighbour to Flanders Moss, I've posted a few photos here to give a taste

of what you can see there, in

case you get the chance to

visit.









It was a dull day, but on the beach was what looked like the final remains of a burning bush. I promise the photo isn't touched up - the intense colours of this recently snapped-off alder tree stump, all crimson bark and flame-coloured wood really brought a bit of warmth to the day!





At one time timber and bark from the oak and alder woods around this part of Loch Lomond was used for a variety of purposes including clog making and in chemical manufacture.













Returning to the path, from which you can still see the remains of a stone jetty where timber was loaded onto boats for shipment, I walked on through Shore Wood.









The path here is a quiet haven with views out over the loch towards the island of Inchailloch and further to the snowclad heights of Ben Lomond. At present the lichens on the oaks are showing particularly well, and you may come across vocal flocks of long tailed tits among the trees, see and hear a variety of geese overhead and ducks out on the water.






The path is popular with local people and you can park at the Millenium Hall in Gartocharn and follow

a route down across the fields to access the reserve path at Shore Wood via a quiet lane . I'd allow a couple of hours for a first visit and don't forget your winter footwear for the section across the fields.

To a rock from a soft place

This is my last posting to the blog bog as I am changing jobs. After working for 10 years (a chunk of my life but a blink of an eye for a bog) as the Reserve Manager for Flanders Moss it is time for a change of scenery and the change couldn't be much more different as I am going to be the Reserve Manager for the Isle of May NNR, the seabird island in the middle of the Forth estuary. Working on Flanders has been very special. For me it is the wildness and tranquility of the land that gives it a special atmosphere, coloured by the beautiful bog palette that is like not matched by anywhere else I know. But Flanders hasn't seen the last of me and in fact even on the Isle of May I will retain a watery connection with Flanders as the rainfall that is so important drains off the Moss into the Forth and then flows past me on the island and on out to sea. The post of reserve manager on Flanders Moss will be filled hopefully by mid March so you will get to see Flanders through another person's eyes. And in between times my colleagues Stephen and Nick will keep you up to date with what is going on on the Moss.
Working on the Isle of May, my head will be filled with the monitoring of the seabirds, migrant birds and seals, keeping the field station going and perhaps most importantly telling people about the island and why it is so important. This may well involve a blog so by all means check out the SNH NNR website for the Isle of May page and see what is going on on the island. Or you can always take the boat over from Anstruther and come for a visit. Say hello if you do that.
So I wish for a wet future for Flanders Moss and happy bogging for any visitors.
And seeing as the last posting ended on a poem why not this one (or two) as well, this poem by Sheena Blackhall is about the most important part of Flanders Moss, the keystone to the bog - the Sphagnum moss.
-
I am a child of the bog
I am sphagnum
Red as a cock's comb
Yellow as jester's bells,
Orange as carnival,
Green as a dragon's eye,
I drink the dew
From a thousand secret wells,
My coat of many colours is a sponge
Where rainbows tiptoe at dawn, to dip and plunge.

And the last verse of a poem called Flanders Moss by local poet Linna Monteith shows us how important places like this are:

A soft green bowl of precious pristine world
absorbing our breath and our fumes
saving us
from the grey of everyday.

Seeing red

Out on the west side of Flanders this morning and a lick of flame running up a tree caught my eye. A red squirrel. I don't see many of these as the greys have taken over where I live so any sighting makes a day special. For red squirrels Flanders Moss is quite special. Flanders seems to lie close to the boundary of where the greys have expanded to and where the reds have retreated to i.e. you can see reds to the north and west of Flanders and grey to the east and south.
There is now a red squirrel project Saving Scotland's Red Squirrels www.scottishsquirrels.org.uk that is working hard to save red squirrels before they go extinct so as soon as I was in the office I sent in my record to help them get a picture of where there were still red squirrels surviving.
Something that I heard the other day that gave me a bit of hope for the beleaguered red was that where grey squirrels meet pine martins, the pine martins are more likely to eat the greys than the reds as they are heavier, less nimble (fatter) and hence can't escape as easily as the reds. And pine martins are expanding into central Scotland and Flanders itself. One person has told me that they have seen one right on the edge of the Moss. So it is a nice thought that a recently endangered but now recovering species will help to save another endangered species by eating the introduced one.

Another morning, another bird

Another bitterly cold but stunningly beautiful morning on Flanders Moss, no snow but more hawfrost than you could shake a stick at. I was out for a quick check around the boardwalk and tower to see if all is OK before meeting up with 3 members of the Scottish Raptor group. Kestrels were on our mind and with good reason. Back in the 1970s when I was a boy kestrels were the commonest British bird of prey and as a child one of the few pleasure to be found in a long motorway trip was spotting kestrels every few miles hovering over the rough grass motorway edges. However during the 1980s the population dropped dramatically most likely due to the effects of the lethal pesticides that accumulated in their prey. The population has recovered a bit since then but hear in Scotland there is a particular concern as since the mid 1990s the population have been dropping fast. Places like the Carse of Stirling used to hold a significant number of pairs but can you remember when you last saw a kestrel hovering ? At Flanders Moss we still seen them because unlike the surrounding intensively farmed land Flanders still has rough grass areas that can hold good populations of small mama ls and insects like beetles that they mostly eat. But the kestrels still need help so the plan is to help the Scottish Raptor group put up a few nest boxes for safe nesting sites. These will also allow the group to keep an eye of how successful the breeding pairs are and this information is vital if the decline in these birds is to be halted. The poet Ted Hughes in The Hawk in the Rain (even though he called it a hawk rather than correctly a falcon) beautifully captured the sight of a kestrel and what a shame it would be if the next generation couldn't experience it.
"Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye / His wings hold all creation in weightless quiet / Steady as hallucination in the streaming air / While banging wind kills those stubborn hedges" (Ted Hughes, The Hawk in the Rain)

A top coat less.

If you drive down to Flanders you will notice that there has been a bit of activity in the woodland next to the track. you will see that more birch trees have been felled in 3 specific areas. As posted back at the end of 2010 this work serves several purposes. Firstly we wanted to form sunny glades for reptiles and insects along the south edge of the wood. We also wanted to use some of the materials to build hibernaculums for adders, that is places for them to spend the winter hibernating. And thirdly the 4 members of the Stirling NNR team needed somewhere to fell trees as part of our refresher training for our chainsaw users certificates. So it was a case of killing several birds with one stone. It has been a fun couple of days concentrating on different felling cuts, dealing with hung up trees and ending up smelling of freshly saw timber. And while working we have been able to watch the weather changing drastically, the wind going round to the south west, picking up and blowing hard, rain coming in in squalls and the snow disappearing fast. Suddenly the ditches on the moss are flowing and along the bog edge little springs of water are bursting out of the peat. I don't know how long it will last but it has been heaven to feel the breeze and the rain on our faces but only wear half the number of layers clothing that we have for the preceding 7 weeks.
The car park and path is still a bit icy so be careful as you walk around but hopefully it will soon be clear if this warm weathers last for another couple of days. Look out also for the geese in the fields along side the track. Large numbers of pinkies plus greylags and Canadas were all about while we were sawing.

Back On

I am out on the Moss for the first time in weeks early on Thursday morning. The half light gradually lightens and finally well past nine the sun makes it up above the Gargunnock Hills. Midwinter has past but the mornings get darker for a little while yet even though the evenings are very slowly drawing out. The first thing I notice is the silence, huge and calming but quickly other bog inhabitants make themselves known. The birds know that it is past midwinter and are more lively than before Christmas, a couple of chaffinchs "pink pink" from the tops of birch, a couple of great tits churr away and a party of siskins wheeze overhead. The geese are back now that the grass is appearing from under the snow. Over 1000 pink feet feed in the field next to the Moss plus 9 greylags set slightly apart and more small parties zoom low to join them. One group comes in so low I can hear their whistling wings and the low grunts they make to themselves.
Once up onto the peat dome it is clear that the snow has gone or turned to ice. The ground is frozen rock hard around the edges of the moss but once out into the wetter areas it is wet underneath the thin ice and difficult walking.
I am out to check the rain gauge, a few days late but its the last reading for 2010 and so give us the total for the year. 80.5 mm for the December, a dry month which gives a total rainfall for 2010 of 1006 mm. Since 1997 this is the third driest year we have had at Flanders with only 2001 and 2003 drier. The bog needs a wet winter to fill up the the peat sponge but when frozen, the water just runs straight off so a thaw and a month or two of solid rain should do the job.
I move on, further onto the moss and the rising sun wipes the frost from the heather as it spreads across the bog. It is quiet, wide, beautiful and it is good to be back.
Afterwards I head round to the car park to see what state the public access is in. The boardwalk and tower are clear of ice and parts of the path but some short stretches are still covered in ice. It is passable so by all means go down and enjoy the snow capped mountains but please take care on the icy patches.