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.
