Walking

Walking on the Moss is hard, not quite like the gentle sauntering of Henry Thoreau but still walking is good and walking is work, in fact some of my best and most productive work is done when walking..but don't tell that to my line manager.
Today is hydrological monitoring - that is when the water level with the peat is measured at 22 points around the Moss and this involves a lot of walking. It is a great day, absolutely still with some sun and some cloud but cool. A perfect day for walking. Walking on Flanders is tough, the ground is often calf deep in water, soft and squelchy and dotted with knee high hummocks of sphagnum. To get anywhere requires a lot of effort and a special gait of lifting your knees high, taking long strides and keeping up your momentum. A stick helps, like a third leg and after a while you get used to making progress across the bog but you do have to remember to switch it off once back on dry land. A mountain man who had started his second round of Munro's came out to do the monitoring with me once but it was new terrain to him and at the end of the day once we made it back to the car park he did a Pope and kissed the hard ground in relief.
Walking is the only way to see the moss and by getting out there you can see the changes on the moss. It may have been there for 7000 years but the Moss is still constantly changing. The seasons, rainfall, past and present management, sheep and deer grazing all change the surface of the Moss. These factors have made the surface very variable, the sphagnum carpet can be flat or hummocky, complete or patchy, the Cladonia lichens dusting the surface or absent, invasive rushes and polytrichum mosses taking over from peat forming sphagnum. Reading these signs helps in the understanding of what has gone on before and what is happening now. It also helps you spot hidden, sphagnum filled ditches before you end up waist deep in them. A balance is needed between scanning the ground in front of your feet and looking around. Too much watching the ground and you will miss the buzzard in the tree, the hen harrier quartering in the distance, the roe deer browsing but too much looking around and your day will be spoilt by an unnoticed ditch.
So a strange, long striding gait, stick in hand and your head nodding up and down doesn't make a good look but who's to see you? And it makes the 7 hours walking an intensive experience that has you blinking back to reality when you find yourself back at the truck with the sun dipping below the horizon. Magic - now where is the bath and the whisky?

What is going on - part 2 ?

2 experimental adder homes - executive style available for use immediately. Today a hard working group of volunteers came onto the Moss to help Stephen and Nick build 2 large adder hibernaculums. As you can see from the pictures these consist of a frame made from birch lengths that is packed with bracken and twigs and then roofed with small lengths of birch, bracken and branches and brash. The idea is that the rotting down vegetation within a safe and secure frame offers a safe wintering site where the temperature and moisture levels remain relatively stable. It is probably too late for adders to use them this winter because they will already be in hibernation but they will have nicely settled down by next autumn and maybe they will appeal to the ready to sleep snakes then. Either way we are very grateful for the volunteers that worked so hard to build these structures and we aim to build more in the future but at least this ex[plains the 2 huge mounds that have appeared north of the entrance track to the car park. . There will be more felling this winter to make more material for these snug houses as well as for opening up the sunny glades along the track edge so keep watching.

What is going on - part 1 ?

You may notice as you drive down to the car park at Flanders some tree felling has been going on. Why you may ask. Habitat creation is the answer. The strip of wood along the track faces south and therefore catches the sun and we have long wanted to make some glades along that edge of the wood. These would offer warm patches for basking and feeding insects such as hoverflies, bumblebees and butterflies and also reptiles i.e. the common lizards and adders. The whole team working on the Stirling NNRs needed to get reassessed for using chainsaws so it seemed a good way of getting positive management done while been trained and assessed. But to make the glades even more acceptable to adders we will be working with some volunteers to make some hibernaculums for them. These are basically winter homes where they can hibernate and are specially constructed from all of the piles of logs, twigs and leaves resulting from the cutting that will offer them just the right conditions for them to safely survive the winter. So watch that space by the track and also this space as I will keep the blog posted on these adder homes constructions.

Update - TV appearences and something to sit on

A couple of things just to keep you all up to date, Stephen and I collected a couple of beautifully made oak benches for use on the boardwalk from Neil Philip's workshop between Muthill and Crieff. They are very solid and should last years but are so heavy that before we put them out on the boardwalk we just have to devise a system to stop them sinking deep into the peat once people start sitting on them. This is all part of working on what is really just a huge liquid blob with a thin crust of vegetation holding it all together. We can't just concrete them in as there is nothing substantial to concrete them to so a floating raft is likely to be the solution. The benches are in the work shop where they will be painted with several coats of teak oil to keep the water out. It is great to be able to use a local contractor and local Scottish oak for jobs like this.
On a different note Flanders Moss was on the TV again last night. It featured in the Making Scotland's Landscape series (programme 4 - watch it on the iPlayer on the BBC website, wwwbbc.co.uk). This is a series about man's impact on Scotland's landscape and Prof. Iain Stewart came to Flanders last March (see posting for 1 March 10) to talk about the peat clearances in the late 1700s / early 1800s. There are some nice panoramic shots of Flanders from the viewing tower but unfortunately the programme concentrated on the angle about how rubbish the land was for farming and how they spent such an effort clearing away they peat. I did talk about how people's perceptions of bogs in general and Flanders Moss specifically have changed since then and now people really appreciate the beauty and wildness of Flanders but this ended up on the cutting room floor. About the film, if you watch it, I would just like to point out that it was not me doing all that grunting.

5 Things To Do At Flanders This Weekend.

1. - see if you can spot the lapwings and golden plovers that are often in the ploughed field to the south of the entrance track, it takes sharp eyes.
2. - look out for the beautiful star moss (scientific name Polytrichum) alongside the boardwalk. You could even pull a few strands and see if you can plat them together. Hundreds of years ago people came onto the moss to collect star moss to plat it into string and thin rope.
3. - catch a leaf - if you catch one that has blown straight off a tree you can make a wish.
4. - have a look at the patch work of sphagnum in the wet bits by the boardwalk. As the colours drain out of other plants the sphagnum seems to glow even brighter.
5. - get cold and wet, then you have your justification to go up to Kippen for coffee and cake or home for something stronger !

Wet heads

Out chainsawing today with Stephen and Nick. The forecast had one of those big suns on it so we were hopeful that time spent in Ballangrew meadow cutting gorse and willow in preparation for Sunday's volunteer work party was going to warm. Oooops, wrong. First shower came through before we had got to the site. Next shortly after we had fired up the saws and as soon as we started lunch the heavens opened and we sat hunched and powerless as rain hammered our sandwiches. To add to the water from above the fen area that we are clearing of willows was awash so spent a couple of hours swinging a chainsaw in nearly a foot of water. Still we cut lots of willow and from looking at areas that we had cut previous years once the willow is removed the fen fill with a lovely mix of wetland plants.
Another positive was that from the experience I learnt 2 good lessons.
- firstly, don't leave your chainsaw helmet on the ground upside down at lunchtime, especially if it raining,
- secondly if you do leave it upside down, check it and empty it before you put it on.

You turn your back and winter arrives.

Well it seems to be here. A few morning frost have turned the air sharp, brought the leaves down and flattened the grass. There are more leaves on the ground than in the trees and the birds are all in feeding flocks with the winter mind set of searching for food. This time of year, once the fields next to the access track have been ploughed is always the time to listened out for a mournful peep. This means that the golden plowers are passing through. Any bird that is speckled with gold, even in its duller winter plumage's you would think would be easy to see. But when the regular flocks stop off on the freshly turned earthy fields of the Carse they just disappear. It is only their sad 'peeip' calls that give them away and then it can take 10 mins. of searching with binoculars to find them. But it is worth it as they are delightful birds. Seeming to have a quiet and calm character they only become really visible when they lift off in flocks and circle to find fresh ploughed fields to feed on. So if you are down at the car park take a little time to scan the fields and catch up with this invisible visitor from the mountains.
In between the frost has been quite a few dumpings of rain, such that it has been a job to get water proofs dry each night before getting soaking the next day. So I was a bit surprised to find that we only had a very average 113.00mm of rain for October. The middle of the month was dry so most of this must have fallen in the last week or so. The annual total is still looking like it is going to be a dry year and you can tell this on the moss as the water levels in the pools drop quickly if there is a break in the rain so this means that the water table within the peat is not at saturation point. However, there is plenty of time yet this winter and it would only take a really wet month of 200+mm of rain to put the wobble back in the bog.