Lookering on the bog

As you can see, we have sheep on the Moss. This rather motley crew are part of the Scottish Wildlife Trust flying flock, a group of sheep that are not quite as exciting as their name but they are moved around to undertaken habitat maintenance at a number of conservation sites. So for July till September we are hosting 40 different coloured sheep whose job is to nibble as much birch trees as possible hopefully killing them (the birch not the sheep).
We know from old documents that sheep grazed Flanders Moss for hundreds of years up until the early 1800s. This combined with burning of heather probably kept Flanders free of trees for much of its life. The trees only invaded when grazing and burning no longer happened on the Moss. So what we are doing is bringing back a traditional form of management. However unfortunately we can't just replicate the old management just how it used to be. For a start young children used to herd the sheep out onto the Moss and then keep an eye of them for the day and then bring them back to the farms in the evening. Welfare issues rule out this management option these days unfortunately (though my daughter would happily do this for pocket money and to get out of chores and school). Also the sheep of today are mostly not up to grazing anywhere as tough as the Moss. So what we have to do now is to get in special sheep breeds that can withstand the hard grazing and wet conditions. The flying flock are mainly Shetland sheep who think Flanders is a breeze compared to where they come from. The sheep have to be fenced onto the Moss as if unattended they would naturally head for the better grazing in the arable fields surrounding the moss, something our neighbours wouldn't approve. For animal welfare reasons we also need to check the sheep 4 or 5 times a week to make sure they fit and healthy and all present. In the old days this activity was called "lookering", a good name for sheep checking. You would think counting 40 sheep was an easy job but this activity is hard work as these sheep don't like making things easier for the counter. Firstly they hide in the grass. When finally discovered they then mill around, hiding behind each other and generally make it difficult to be counted. And then they burst off across the Moss and try to sneak back to be double counted. But despite this there are signs that the sheep are starting to do their job and all the time the do theirs I am happy to "looker".

Moth Magic 3

Well we have been at it again. In our attempts to track down the rare moths of Flanders the resident moth expert Prof John Knowler and I ran a moth trap out on the Moss last Thurs night. There are a small number of rare and declining moths that haven't been recorded on the Moss that should be out there and their flight periods are all around the July August period. So this means a late evening trek out to the Moss to set a trap running through the night and an early morning trek back to see what has been caught. The evening chosen was fine though maybe a little cold (about 12 C ) so we weren't sure what was going to be there in the morning, moths liking warm, muggy and dampish nights best.
In the morning 223 moths processed, identified, photographed and released later we knew we had a pretty good catch. Some of the highlights included 40 drinker moths (a rather odd looking, golden coloured moth), 19 true lovers knots, 14 smokey wainscots and 15 ingrailed clays. Don't moths have such cool names? A few more with good names that we caught included 1 oblique striped snout, 1 lesser swallow prominent, 2 green carpets and 4 map-winged swifts. We also had 12 Manchester treble bars, a nationally scarce Flanders Moss speciality, the correctly named large emerald and as its name suggests a very dull looking plain wave that is actually locally very scarce. But the absolutely highlight was 5 beautifully fresh, newly hatched, great brocades. This is a nationally scarce moth that sometimes migrates over from Europe but a small number actually breed in the UK. At Flanders we thought we had found the caterpillars before but this was definite proof that the moths breed on the nature reserve. There hadn't been many more than 5 records for the whole of central Scotland before so to catch 5 individuals in 1 trap was something special.
I also set a small trap over the other side of the Moss which I checked afterwards. This one has a weaker bulb so attracts fewer moths but still managed 32 moths of 11 species of which 2 we hadn't caught in the big trap, the subtlety beautiful iron prominent and the way over the top garden tiger. All in all not a bad haul and a bit more of the jigsaw puzzle of the moth world of Flanders Moss pieced together.

Marshmallow Update

You might have been wondering about how the barn owls were getting on in their barrel. Well they have been ringed and as you can see from the photos and very close to leaving the nest. They have their full set of feathers though these still need to grow out a bit more as there is still some fluffy down poking through in places.
What is more surprising is that there are still 4 young in the barrel (in the picture 1 is being stood on). The hard winter with a lot of snow cover meant that the owls were cut off from their food source, the voles. The voles however do OK in the snow as they just go about life as normal in tunnels under the snow insulated from the cold above. Perhaps this many chicks means that the voles survived the winter in good numbers and any owls that made it to this spring have plenty of food available. The barrel stinks even more than it did before so I expect these chicks will be glad to be out into the fresh air soon.
You might also remember that I found a meadow pipits nest with a cuckoos egg in it about a month ago. Well I returned to the nest to see what progress it had made but unfortunately the nest had been found by a predator. It looked like the contents had been pulled out and there were a scattered few feathers still in pin (not full developed). It looks like probably a fox found the cuckoo when it was nearly ready to leave the nest. These ground nesting birds are very vulnerable especially when they get to close to leaving the nest.
It is interesting that the photos of the fluffy young barn owls got the greatest response in terms of comments on this blog. It is so much easier to get people interested in big, fluffy, beautiful wildlife than the less glamorous types. One of the reasons for writing this blog is because bogs don't always interest people, after all the name doesn't help but hopefully through this blog people will that bogs like Flanders are filled with all sorts of amazing plants and creatures and not many of them are fluffy and cute !

Right under our feet

It took me a little while to realise it but for much of May and June a pair of redstarts nested on the viewing tower. These beautiful woodland mermbers of the thrush family normally nest in holes in trees but this pair had obvious returned from their winter travels in the spring to find a huge new structure in their territory. After inspecting it they found a small niche at the end of one of the supporting arches of the viewing platform that was literallly a few inches under the feet of all the visitors to the Moss. The parents became more obvious when in June they srtarted to bring grubs and caterpillers to feed the young. It might have been that the presence of all the visitors actually suited the redstarts as it would have kept away nest predators.
These birds have been declining over the last 25 years and so register as orange on the list of birds of conservation concern. It is a real seal of approval for the tower to have been used by this striking and declining species and hopefully many people have got a good look at them over the past few weeks. The young have now left the nest so we will have to see if they are going to come back next year. But it does make me wonder if we can make the tower more accommadating to other birds by putting up more bird boxes. Something to think about before next spring.

You have to be careful what you wish for

You definitely have to be careful what you wish for when it comes to the weather. June was hot and very dry. I then go away for 2 weeks holiday and come back and it seems like it has been raining for all that time. The difference on the Moss is amazing. An inch or 2 of water lies across the moss surface making every step splashy, the ditches are trickling and burbling and the whole moss has swelled and bloomed with colour. The sphagnum has been transformed from a faded, dry and crispy carpet to a luxurious, soft bright duvet, the difference is like a pot noddle before and after you have added the water. The time of cotton grass is almost over and now the later bog flowers are coming out. The spikey, canary yellow bog asphodel are coming out while the alien looking bright red, fleshy sundew are sending up in complete contrast their delicate snow-white drop-like flowers.
So as always with bogs water is the key and as this is a raised bog, that is the dome of peat is raised above the surrounding land the only source of water is going to be from the sky.
I did speak to a farmer later on today and he quietly (so his neighbours couldn't hear) admitted that it had been getting a bit dry even for him so secretly he was a glad for some rain, at least his second cut of silage will be OK. It isn't often that a bog manager and a farmer agree !

Dry bog, bad bog

It is 6 months into the year and the rainfall for Flanders for the first half is 303.9 mm which is 50% of what a normal year would be. The monthly total for June was 19.4mm, the 3rd driest month we have had a Flanders since 1997 when we started recording rainfall data. Bogs need at least 550mm of rainfall a year to continue to function and survive though they need more to thrive. They can stand shorter times of lower rainfall and wet back up again so Flanders is still OK but it explains why it is so dry and crispy out there at the moment. Still a normal Scottish July and August should readress the balance. Lets hope huh ?

Starting from pure clay

Flanders Moss is a 7000 years old bog that has evolved with its mantle of plants and animals over time to what it is today. But next to the car park at Flanders is a much more recent bit of habitat. There is a bit of meadow that is only 3 years old but is already looking great and getting better each year. When the car park was landscaped a large pile of sticky, infertile clay from ditches was flattened and spread. Few pants grew back on it and we realised that this would be ideal for creating a wildflower meadow. Wildflowers grow best where there is little plant food available. Where there is lots (as in a modern farm field) then the grasses swamp out the flowers. As the grasses were growing so poorly we knew that wildflower would grow on our bit.
So we enlisted Thornhill Primary to help us over the past 3 years to plant out pot grown wildflowers from the SWT Jupiter wildlife garden site at Grangemouth. And now we are starting to see the fruits.
A gentle walk round the meadow will show you bright yellow meadow buttercups, purple vetches, pink wispy ragged robin and bubbly yellow and orange birds foot trefoil. Some have spread in on their own like the selfheal and others have come in from seed collected from other meadows nearby. Especially pleasing is the yellow or hay rattle. This plant is special as it is semi-parasitic on grasses so helps keep the grasses down so other wildflowers can fill-in the gaps. More flowers are growing and we will be planting more in the autumn so keep an eye on the meadow and see how it develops.