The Flanders Moss Bog Blog

Flanders flowers

2011-08-19T12:17:00.022+01:00

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

2011-02-08T15:06:00.024Z

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

2011-01-26T11:40:00.001Z

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

2011-01-25T16:44:00.003Z

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

2011-01-21T11:20:00.003Z

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.

2011-01-14T16:33:00.003Z

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

2011-01-06T16:35:00.003Z

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.

View From The Loo Is A Reminder Of The Bog

2011-01-05T14:10:00.004Z

Apologies for the long time since the last posting but flu and the Christmas holidays got the better of me.
The picture above is the view from the men's loo at the SNH Stirling office and since the end of November last year I have been seeing an awful lots of it. Not I hasten to add for any health reasons but, because of the poor weather I have been spending lots more time in the office. And every time I used the facilities this fantastic view of the Wallace monument has been in front of my eyes. The tower was built as a national monument on the spot where Wallace stood watching and planning for his greatest victory against the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. But what has this got to do with Flanders Moss? Well you may not know it but Flanders Moss has played a key role throughout Scottish history including the Battle for Stirling Bridge and more famously the Battle of Bannockburn. It was the presence of Flanders Moss and other large raised bogs along the length of the Carse of Stirling that presented a barrier to any armies moving north or south. Further west and you are into the Highlands and Loch Lomond which are equally impassable. So if any commander wanted to move any number of soldiers quickly then they had do so on the east side of the country and cross the River Forth at Stirling. There were roads across the Carse since the Romans used a Ford at Frew (south east of Flanders, near the Kippen roundabout) that would have been used by travellers and local people but these roads were not passable for the fast movement of large numbers of men and certainly not in the wetter winter months. So Stirling castle and the crossing of the Forth were of strategic importance and all because of the presence Flanders Moss to the west. Maybe one day someone will write a book about the role of Flanders Moss in Scottish history ?

Christmas trees and a big shrike

2010-12-10T14:36:00.004Z

The recent weather has meant that we had to have a close look at the pine seedling cutting work parties that we had planned to see if they could be carried out. The snow is so deep that it was proving to get the equipment required for the weekend work party out of our workshop so reluctantly and for the first time we have cancelled the public work party. We also had planned a work party for SNH Stirling office collegues and we decided that they were tough enough to have a go. So yesterday we piled into landrover and headed down a snow filled track laiden with bowsaws and loppers to attack the invading pine seedlings. After a bit of a struggle to turn round the vehicles we marched down to the bonfire spot through deep snow. A few wellies came off but we got there relatively intact. The temperature must have been around freezing which seemed tropical after the brutal freeze a day ago. The team set to work, most people headed off to cut pines while 2 expert firestarters got going with the fire. The best pines were cut and put to one side for Christmas trees and then we set to work clearing in the end an area of nearly 1 ha of pine seedlings. All the Christmas trees had to be dragged off site through deep snow which meant that hypothermia was never an option. After lunch (which took seconds to devour)the team set to clearing and buring up a lot of willow and gorse left over from a previous work party. At the end of that it just left the slog back dragging trees to the landrovers as the sun dropped below the horizon with again one or two wellies stuck. A good days work done and a bit of money raised for Oxfam as the trees taken back to the office were sold to colleagues not brave enough to venture.
And the shrike - well the most exciting thing of all was on the way back up the track we spotted a strange looking grey, black and white bird sitting on top of a tree. Slammed brakes and a grab for the camera and it proved to be a great grey shrike. These birds breed in far north Europe and generally only pass through the UK in low numbers in spring or autumn. But a few few (on average only 7 a year) decide to spend the winter here in Scotland and this was evidently one of those. A very special bird - apologies for the very poor photo at the top of the posting.

Big weather

2010-12-09T13:53:00.000Z

For those a bit further away it has been snowing here. Last week we got 62 at Flanders and at the beginning of this week we got another 6+inches and then incredibly cold temperatures ( a couple of nights going as low as -16 C). As you can guess this makes doing anything a bit of a struggle and so I haven't been getting out as much as usual. But earlier this week I made it down to Flanders to see how much snow was there and whether the work parties that we had planned were going to be possible. The first hurdle was 1 ft of snow in the car park. The farmer hadn't even been down in his tractor so it made the landrover grunt a bit and I had to do a bit of digging to get it turned round. Once out of the vehicle the cold took your breath away. I got the strange feeling when your nostril hairs freeze and photography was limited as you could only take you gloves for a few seconds at a time. Wading up the path to the viewing tower was hard work but worth it as the view from the tower was magic. Banks of freezing fog were rolling through leaving parts bathed in sunlight and parts disappeared in grey wool. I can't help but wonder how the wildlife manages to survive in the brutal conditions. As with last year it will only become apparent in the spring.
A bit of a thaw has started today so the snow will start to disappear but it will be a while before it is easy for a car to make it down to the car park but in the meantime enjoy the pictures from the warmth of your home. We will keep you posted.

Mercy Mission

2010-12-02T14:43:00.000Z

We went out on a mercy mission yesterday. Thornhill Primary were due to come out to the Moss and cut themselves a Christmas tree but extremely cold temperatures and deep snow made it a bit dodgy for them so myself and Nick headed out to the West Moss-side part of Flanders to cut the school a tree. The trees a self-seeding Scots pine that we don't really want to have growing out on the Moss as if they become established they will dry out the bog habitat. So we cut down lots of these seedlings every year but where possible find a home for them. You can't get a much more environmentally friendly tree that a Flanders Moss Christmas tree as they are being cut to benefit a valuable habitat. However most pine seedlings are way out on the Moss and it is a huge problem getting them off the moss once cut. But we had identified a small group of accessible trees that might have soemthing suitable and headed out on an incredibly cold morning. Kate Sankey from West Moss-side farm joined us and told us gleefully that it had been -15 C the night before. Well it still felt something like that but the spectacle of the snow-covered, ice-encrusted moss with the back drop of majestic mountains took the edge off the frost bite as we marched out towards the bog, passing Kate's Shetland cattle that graze the Moss edge and were steaming away looking comfortable under their shaggy black coats. Trees were identified, cut and then hauled back, the exercise disproving my theory that I had lost 2 toes to the cause. All the trees off Flanders are trees of character, that is that they are not always the conventional Christmas tree shape. The one we cut for the school had had a bit of bark stripping by a hungry deer, probably Rudolf I told the teachers. They always look a bit worried when the tree turns up at the school as sometimes the children have chosen a tree that might have 2 crowns (value for money) of patchy branches but this time dispite the bare bits they were pleasantly surprised by the tree we brought them. So mercy mission accomplished, despite the drastic weather the children of Thornhill Primary will still have their Flanders Moss tree for Christmas.

What comes from above is all we have

2010-12-02T10:55:00.001Z

I know it is a bit of an obsession but it is that time of month where it is time to read the rain gauge. A raised bog is raised, that is it is a dome of peat that lies at a higher level that the surrounding land so as water doesn't flow up hill the only source of water for the moss is from above. So if you are charged to keep a bog wet or get it even wetter then you want to know how much help you are getting from above. But reading the rain gauge this time is a bit more of a challenge. For a start the landrover has to be left way back down the track due to the 6" of snow lying everywhere. The hike out though hard work is fabulous, I can look up and see a backdrop of stunning snow clad mountains gleaming on the highland edge. Deer and hare footprints flit across the fields and a small flock of yellowhammers are scrabbling around on a line of round bales looking for seeds. Once out on the moss the whole surface was smooth lumps and white. Underneath wasn't completely frozen so every so often a foot breaks into peaty water. And then the next challenge, spot the rain gauge. The foot high cylinder had totally disappeared and it was only because i knew roughly where it lay that I was able to spot the hole in the top, level with the top of the snow. I dug it out and the insulating effect of the sphagnum meant that the water wasn't frozen. A months rainfall was quickly measured before it froze and it showed just how wet the month of November had been, - 167.8 mm made for quite a wet month and it would have gone a fair way to replenish the peat sponge that is the bog. Another wet month and the yearly average won't be far of average.

Snow

2010-12-01T14:22:00.004Z

As you might have guessed we have been having a bit of snow here. It has taken me a few days to get out of the village where I live where we have had over 2ft of snow over the last few days. Word on the street was that there was a bit less at Flanders so equipped with a landrover, shovel and flask of coffee I headed off to see what state things were in. The track leading to the car park had a good layer of snow and only the local farmer had been down on a tractor. A good 6 inches of snow covered the car park and the path round and made the usual circuit a much harder walk. Up the viewing tower the sub zero temperature made it self felt, it was so cold I could only keep gloves off to take photos for short periods of time. There was enough snow to blanket everything leaving all the heather and sphagnum hummocks looking like a lumpy white duvet. A brave person or two had walked round a few days before leaving smoothed footprints but otherwise there was no sign of visitors at all, hardly surprising. As for wildlife everything was hunkering down hiding from the bitter wind. There were signs that deer had been scratching around at the heather as this is about the only thing with some nutrients left at this time of year. Over the previous week the geese have been heading south in numbers fleeing the advancing bad weather but a few straggling pink feet 'wink, winked' overhead. Apart from the wind there was silence and no colour. Back in the car park the sun broke through, splashing colour, adding warmth and brightness the landscape. Heading back out the sheep looked expectantly as did the rooks and pheasants but unfortunately I had nothing for them. So if you are feeling like heading down to Flanders the track is really only passable to 4WDs and the path is hard going so take care.

Walking

2010-11-23T20:05:00.005Z

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 ?

2010-11-18T17:03:00.002Z

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 ?

2010-11-17T17:20:00.004Z

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

2010-11-15T09:32:00.004Z

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.

2010-11-05T19:44:00.000Z

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

2010-11-03T19:34:00.004Z

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.

2010-11-01T09:42:00.000Z

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.

Winter work for summer pleasure

2010-10-26T17:09:00.003+01:00

Thornhill primary came down to the Moss today to help us with the wildflower meadow by the car park. For the last few years they have helped us with the raking of the grass and then the planting of the wildlfowers as we work to make what was a plain bit of grass inot a fabulous wildlfower meadow. It was grey and miserable with rain from steady drizzle to bucketting down (good weather for planting, not so good for teachers) but they worked really hard and finished off the grass removal and got all of the flowers planted. It is muddy work (see the pictures) and not much to show for it immediately but come June and July the fruits of their work will be there for all to see. Last year the meadow looked good but with another batch of plants next summer its going to be spectacular. Thank you Thornhill primary.

Avoiding Harry Potter

2010-10-25T09:36:00.002+01:00

We had a great day on Sunday cutting birch and making brooms. The bog gods shone on us with a glorious day of clear light, bright sun and blue sky though it were a bit nippy when we were setting up. A steady flow of people, many new to Flanders dropped in to help with the cutting of the birch but the real attraction was Ian who helped the birch cutters turn their cuttings into a broom. Ian who had come from Historic Scotland for the day to help us is a self taught broom maker. Before the event he gave us a list of equipment that he would need which included the thigh bone of a goose. Luckily before any of the geese that live on the smallholding near my home disappeared he clarified this that a piece of bamboo would also do - it is used to help with the binding of the broom. He was busy virtually all day making brooms, having only a few minutes to eat lunch. As people left Flanders most of the brooms clutched in eager hands were to be used for more traditional Halloween witch purposes with only one person going down the Harry Potter route.

Birchsticks and Broommakers

2010-10-22T16:30:00.002+01:00

This Sunday there is chance to get out onto the moss to help us with our birch cutting and make something out of what you cut. From 1030am to 4pm we will be down at the visitor car park ready to show people how to get out onto the Moss and cut down some of the small birch. You can cut for as long as you like and as much as you like but when you have a bundle there will be chance to turn it into a Witches broom, just in time for Halloween . The forecast doesn't look too bad, (better than today which was awful) but wrap up warm and wear wellies as after all it is a bog. You can drop in at any time between 1030am and 4pm so if you fancy a bit of exercise, a breath of fresh air and want to entertain the kids (and tire them out) then come on down.
Hope to see you there.

Bog autumn

2010-10-21T16:51:00.002+01:00

Not much to say, just thought I would put out some pictures of the fabulous colours at Flanders at the moment.

Back on hen harrier watch

2010-10-19T14:35:00.003+01:00

Well it is that time of year again, time to take part in the national hen harrier winter roost monitoring scheme as at Flanders we are lucky enough to have these fabulous birds wintering on the Moss....sometimes. This survey is done by picking a suitable vantage point to watch over Flanders from half an hour before sunset to half an hour afterwards and count any hen harriers coming onto the site to roost. Previously we used do this on the set Sunday coordinated nationally, once a month but with more demands on our time we have had to stop this Sunday evening activity and do it as close to the set day as part of our normal working week.
So yesterday evening Stephen and I found ourselves on top of the tower hunched in a bitterly cold wind straining our eyes across the Moss to catch a view of a hen harriers. The male birds stand out well being bright white and light grey with black tips to their wings but the female and young birds (called ringtails) are a mottled brown colour like a buzzard and it is only a bright white rump that makes them stand out against the tweedy bog landscape. But trying to spot a white rump a few inches square from a kilometre away is not easier. While we waited for a hen harrier to appear small parties of pinkies and Canada geese kept us entertained. A group of fieldfares freshly arrived from Iceland flittered across the Moss making no sound that would attract a predator looked for a suitable roosting spot in the birches. And the ubiquitous carrion crows kicked up a fuss along the woodland edge beyond the tower, probably just baiting the local buzzard doing a bit of late hunting. A late evening dog walker appeared on the boardwalk head down, iPod on concentrating on doing the circuit. But still no hen harrier. And then it was too dark to see even a a hen harrier landed on the tower so it was back to the car to put the heater on full blast and head for home.
This morning I was out onto the northern edge of the Moss at 0900 with a contractor and one of the first birds I saw was a ringtail being mobbed by some crows. Half an hour later and a gleaming male bird flounced across the Moss surface heading west. So there are actually hen harriers out there but Flanders is such a big site and they do move there roost sites about that maybe the next count we might have to abandon the tower and use a new viewpoint. With this in mind I think of my collegue John Halliday over in Argyll who can do his hen harrier counts from his vehicle, heater on, thermos flask to hand and I am reminded of just how difficult the logistics of doing anything on Flanders is.

Mysterious visitor and molluscan seed dispersal

2010-10-05T11:28:00.006+01:00

A quick visit to the Moss early on Tuesday morning and a surprise in the viewing tower. There on one of the landings half way up the stairs was a mess. Most people would say bird poo and move on. But it looked not just any old bird poo but an interesting bird poo. Two big white splashes and a round firm blob (see bottom photo). Something had been spending time in the tower, probably roosting over night. My first though was barn owl as I have seen big white splashes like this left by them before. The firm blob was a pellet of hard to digest bits that birds of prey regurgitate after a day of eating. But a close look at the contents of the pellet, just pick them up and crumble like an oxo cube, and I found it was made up mainly of fur and shiny blue, black bits of beetle. Now barn owl do eat furry things but not often beetles so the next thought is a kestrel as they do eat beetles alot. But we won't really now what is using the tower as a night time roosting spot until we get a good look at it but it is still a nice thought that the wildlife are finding it useful.
While whizzing round the path I could see that the colours are changing on a daily basis and the the birches had been letting loose their seeds. Birch seeds are small with big wings so that they can travel a long way. This is why birch trees are so good at colonising new areas. These seeds are usually spread around by the wind but I noticed another method of seed dispersal. There steadily making its way across the path was one of the great big black slugs that patrol the Moss. My daughter always used to call them dog poo slugs due to the fact that they were often found in close proximity to the aforementioned substance, plus the big ones are nearly that size. Anyway there stuck to this slugs back was a birch seed being gently carried off to another part of the moss to maybe be another birch tree. I wonder how it will get on....and the slug.

A Fowl Forecast

2010-10-04T07:49:00.000+01:00

It is the end of the month and therefore checking the rain gauge time. I headed out with a foul forecast of incessant rain and wind in my ears, little knowing that it was also a fowl forecast. As I dropped down from Thornhill there were geese everywhere. They must have been pouring in over the last few days, a couple of flocks on stubble fields on the left and then on the south of the track to the Moss there were loads. I stopped to check them over and count them as sometimes an unusual goose can turn up in flocks like a barnacle or bean goose and sometimes you can pick out birds with neck markers put on by researchers to help find out migration movements. A quick scan revealed 30 greylags, 300 Canada geese and also 175 lesser black-backed gulls passing through on the way to Spain, and I was just starting to count the pinkies when a car came down the track and put them up, so at a guess maybe 500 of them. No neck rings or funny birds. Onto my list of things to do and the first stop the rain gauge. It was still dry but a dark grey wall was heading slowly my way. Back to the car park and then the rain came, good bog rain but uncomfortable as well. I chatted with some English visitors who had had a quick walk round and were heading back to their holiday cottage for another coffee and to re plan their day. Then I headed out onto the Moss to measure up and area for scrub cutting. Quickly everything became wet and I just had to keep my head down and splash my way round. All the time flock after flock of pinkies came over, either the same group had done 10 circuits of the Carse or there were 5000 pink feet in the stubble fields in and around Flanders. And not only had the geese come in, I flushed 8 snipe and 1 jack snipe who also use the Moss as a useful stopping off place as they head south as well. Back to the truck after 2 hours in the downpour and the rain had got through all water proofs (surely misnamed) and everything underneath was distinctly uncomfortable. I called it a day and headed back to the office after picking up a richly deserved Berits and Brown coffee (best coffee around). Oh and I know all you rain gauge buffs are asking what was the rain fall reading ? - 154 mm - a proper months rain at last and judging by the amount of rain that fell today the bloomin' thing is probably full again already!

Different Hues

2010-09-30T10:15:00.001+01:00

The recent cold nights and shorter days are having their annual impact. The Moss is changing colour. Actually the Moss is changing colour on a daily basis, it isn't just green in summer and brown in winter, the greens of June are very different from the greens of August and the browns of November are very different from the browns of February. I am sure that if shown a photo taken at Flanders regular visitors could guess within a few weeks what month it was taken in. The cotton grass looking like its on fire, the birches are speckled yellow, brown and green and the heather is going that muted purple of gone over blossoms. With a bit of sun there are still plenty of insects to study from 5 minutes lying on the boardwalk. These changing hues are always best seen on wilder sites so the contrast between the Moss and the surrounding intensive farmland is even greater at this time of year. So why not go hue spotting ?

Glorious Day

2010-09-28T08:16:00.000+01:00

I am writing this in the cold and damp dark of Monday evening but Sunday (only yesterday but seems long ago) was a glorious day. I did a "Meet the Wardens" event on Sunday which is really just me and a few props on top of the tower chatting to people whether they like it or not and answering questions about Flanders. Being a blue sky, bright sun and warm sort of a day there were loads of people out and I had nearly 4 hours of continuous chatting. And lots of interesting people with good questions. To help things along we picked out some red deer in the plantation on the telescope, a red kite came over the Moss and there were loads of black darter dragonflies around which are always good entertainment. One of the most interesting comments came from a local Thornhill person who noted the calming effect that walking round the boardwalk has on people, old and young alike. Certainly even with groups of children going round there are rarely many screams and shouts. So is it the special atmosphere of the Moss or the ancient landscape or the disconnection from the rest of the world that you get when you pass from the car park through the trees out on to the Moss ?
Anyone out there do with thoughts on this ?

Natural birch control

2010-09-27T08:15:00.000+01:00

The nibblers are off, or most of them anyway. Since early July 40 Shetland sheep of the Scottish Wildlife Trust have been helping with our scrub control by grazing an 8 ha area of Flanders. They have done an excellent job, setting to their task with dedication and over the 3 month period have nibbled off a lot of birch. But one years grazing isn't enough to kill all the birch so this is something that needs to be done every year. And what are the benefits ? Well in keeping the vegetation down and the birch under control it allows the sphagnum to develop and a good sphagnum carpet keeps the Moss wet.
But it isn't as simple of just pushing the sheep out into the field and leaving them to get on with it. The sheep are regularly checked to make sure they are fit and healthy, by the SWT shepherd Laura but also by SNH staff and volunteers Ann and Roy. Counting 40 sheep might sound easy as well but these are small sheep that like nothing better that to hide in bushes and behind trees or sometimes go through fences just for the hell of it. So we are really grateful for Roy and Ann for all their time put in staggering round the moss, trying to find the right number of sheep and check they are still upright (the sheep not Roy or Ann). It is only with their effort that the grazing has been possible. So if anyone else is out there and fancies helping out with sheep counting contact me and we could use your help next year.
And maybe next year the Scottish Wildlife Trust flock might have some Flanders Moss lamb to sell and then you could eat for bog conservation, that is my favourites way of habitat management.

Tesco's bag and dfferent hats

2010-09-24T07:36:00.005+01:00

I had time to kill in between finishing tasks and meeting Laura the shepherd. I could sit in the truck and use the phone and write stuff or I could get out on the Moss. The incessant rain of the last few days was easing and though it was wet, dull and grey and there probably wouldn't be much to see I headed out to look where we have a work party next month.
After 2 days of hard rain the Moss was wet, very wet, wet enough for most treads to be into 3-4" of water. This dampness brings out the rich colours making them almost glow in the dim, moist air. I splashed alongside the plantation and suddenly, looking like a gang of naughty boys 20 red deer hinds and calves crashed over the fence and bounced off to the middle of the moss. It is close to the rut and I expect that they are starting to gather though I saw no sign of any stags. As I watched the deer through the binoculars what looked like a Tesco's bag on the wind floated by in the distance - a male hen harrier hunting along the edge of the High Moss Pow. All around me meadow pipits pee-peed, are they birds that bred here or migrants passing through or northern birds arriving for the winter - another mystery unanswered. Ravens rasped and coughed behind me and overhead a few house martins weaved their way south. By then my ears were working full-time and I heard a snipe making its squelching call above, a party of skylarks barrelled by burbling as they went and all around small parties of geese clamoured, pinkies, greylags and even a party of honking Canadas.
Time to head back to the truck and meet Laura to talk about the end of this years grazing and possibilities for next year - sheep hat on, bird hat off.

European Visitors

2010-09-20T12:46:00.004+01:00

An interesting day at Flanders on Thursday. We hosted a mixed group of European nature reserve managers to look at the work we are doing at Flanders and how climate change may impact on it. There were professionals from all over the place, from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, England, Wales and Scotland and even someone from Australia. As you can imagine the discussion were varied and information went both ways. Advice and options were offered to us on methods of scrub control, especially where it might not involved using herbicides while there was a lot of interest from the group in our recycled plastic boardwalk and the impact of the viewing tower. These events can be immensely useful as they get you to look at your site with new eyes, get you to question and justify again the work that you are doing the methods involved and give you confirmation where you have got things right. It will take a few days of thinking about them for the full impact of all the questions to take effect.

What was also great was that Thursday was the first day of the pinkies arriving at the Moss. Apparently last week pink footed geese had been building up in Iceland until the weather changed the the wind was blowing in the right direction to speed them south. Since then the geese have been pouring south and reached Flanders Thursday morning. Their amazing flight took them hundreds of miles across the seas and for some of them they will have been making this journey for the 10 th time or more. Listen out for their "wink, wink " call as they move around the Carse filling up on the stubble fields for the next stage of their journey south.

Thanks to Udo all the way from Australia for the first 2 photos in this posting.

Take a sniff and squint

2010-09-10T15:29:00.008+01:00

Well you turn your back for a few moments and another season creeps up on you before you know it. If you take a walk around the boardwalk at Flanders the signs of autumn are there to see. The obvious ones are the brightly coloured toadstools that daily change their appearances and magically their locations. The first few brightly coloured leaves that are starting to float down, mainly from the birch which is never hesitant to shed its leaves, the sphagnum, freshly hydrated by the torrential rains of earlier in the week are as bright as they can be and the bog cotton is just starting to take on to turn to red looking like flames licking the each of the pools. But it is also in the smell of the place. Take a sniff and you will get that cool fragrant damp tang that says to me compost and heather. And a squint will show you that the light takes on a very different intensity as the sun doesn't reach as far in the sky and the moisture is the air softens the rays and your shadows change shape with the season. Enjoy.

Stepping on an adder

2010-08-30T11:13:00.000+01:00

I trod on an adder on Wednesday, not the one in the picture but a smart, freshly shed skin little female. Both of us were a bit surprised, and luckily it was the side of my foot on the soft bog surface so neither of us suffered. But it did make me jump a bit, the heart beat a bit faster and i was glad of my wellies. I tend to wear these all year round not just to keep a bit drier but also as snake protection. After staring a me for a bit in surprise she just slithered away into the tussocks into the adder sized network of tunnels under the surface. It was at the end of a fantastic day out on the Moss taking the water table measurements. It feels like we are on the cusp of season change. It was cool to start off with and then warmed up to become bright and breezy. There were lingering signs of summer with the willow warblers singing half snatches of songs and swallows, sand and house martins filling up on the Moss abundant insects to fortify themselves for their epic journey south. One of the Moss creepy crawlies made itself felt as I went round, a huge spider had hitched a ride on my back and dropped off when I stopped for a drink, making my pack at least a pound or two lighter. See it on my pencil. But autumn in close at hand and nothing showed this more than there sitting on top of the first water monitoring station was a beautiful 2ND year male hen harrier. It had a brownish tinge to its back feathers showing that it hasn't yet got its full spotless grey breeding plumage. They spend the winter on the Moss after breeding further north so this one was early. I am not ready to think about winter yet, especially after the last one so am trying not to take this as a sign of a hard winter to come but just an individual with a wanderlust and desire to get places early.

Not So Moth Magic

2010-08-26T08:48:00.000+01:00

It has been a great year for moths so far and with a bit of effort we have added a few species to the Flanders list. But there are times when opening up the moth trap just doesn't quite reach the peak of excitement and the other day was one of those times. It had looked a potentially good night but the temperature dropped and it turned out to be probably a bit too cool. Arriving at the trap with Prof John Knowler, the resident Flanders moth expert we immediately found virtually no moths on the vegetation around the trap...not a good sign. We then started into the trap and found a gently scattering of moths but no mass burst of fluttering. A few large ears (a moth not a personal comment) and a chevron were new for the year and a smart late ingrailled clay as shown looked good. But in the end there were only 35 moths of 15 species which was a bit disappointing. It was good thing that Prof John was along as when we got to the bottom of the trap there was a little group of very small moths that I took for micros. Now micro moths and small and very difficult to tell apart. It usually takes a real expert and a bit of genitalia dissection to identify them (the micros not the experts) so I tend to just leave them alone. But John grunted a surprised grunt a picked one up for a better look. "Ahhhh, a marsh oblique barred" he said. This had me scrabbling for my book and it turns out that these moths were actually macros (big moths), there were 10 in all, and are a national scarce moth recorded in fewer than 100 10 km squares across the UK and this was the largest single catch that John had caught. As you can see from the photos it may not be stunning but it was by far the best species of the trap so sometimes good things come in small packages.

Here be bog dragons - is that it ?

2010-08-23T08:54:00.001+01:00

Well last week we were out looking for bog dragons on Flanders... or the northern emerald dragonfly to be precise. This dragonfly is a north species and a bit of a mystery to boot. It is found mainly in north Scotland and was found on Flanders Moss 3 years ago by our redoubtable volunteer Prof John Knowler. He found 1 recently emerged individual while out looking for moths and this has proved to be the most southerly record in the UK of what is quite a scarce species. So after more searching with no luck we invited down the Scottish dragonfly recorder Pat Batty to help us see if we could find out a bit more about this creature. Now the best way to confirm the presence of this insect is not to look for the adults but the larvae. These creatures live for up to 4 years in wet, peaty pools that are completely filled with sphagnum. This makes hunting for them with the usual nets very difficult so a quick raid on the kitchen produced a plastic colander that is ideal for sieving the sphagnum to find these little larva. According to Pat you can tell the difference from other dragonfly larva because they are hairy and have a round bum, probably best to say no more on this point.
Anyway within 10 mins. of starting to look we found 1 larva, so excited we set off with enthusiasm sieving sphagnum in likely pools for the rest of the day. But never found another larvae for the rest of the day despite sampling likely habitats across the Moss.
So the mystery is not only how do these strange creatures survive in thick sphagnum soup, what do they eat and how do they catch it but also what makes them choose specific squidgy bits to live in ? So next year the search will continue to find out more about these dragons on Flanders with trusty colander in hand, and guess what the wife is getting for her birthday ?

The battle of the trees

2010-08-20T08:53:00.001+01:00

When meeting people out at Flanders Moss we gets lots of questions about all the birch trees that are growing up around the boardwalk and the area to the west. People generally know that too many trees aren't good for the bog as they dry it out by sucking water out of the peat and intercepte the rain with their foliage so that it never reaches the bog surface. So they want to know what we are doing about them all. Well things are happening though it is not always obvious. One thing that is going on is in the Plantation, the 40 ha area to the west of the boardwalk over looked by the viewing tower. The conifer trees were removed back in 1997/8 and since then ditches have been blocked to make it wetter but the birch has still started to spread. In the long term we aim to get grazing going in this area to control the birch regrowth but in the meantime we are working with a fellow government agency Forest Research to trial methods of applying herbicide to kill the birch. Plots have been marked out with posts and herbicide applied to the small birch using different techniques to see which one works best and which one has least effect on the bog vegetation. You can see the cleared squares from the viewing tower.
Over the last couple of weeks Forest Research guys have been sweating it out in showers of rain and clouds of midges to fix markers in the plots and carry out studies on the effects of the herbicide.
So these plots are really just a little skirmish against the birch but should help us plan our tactics to escalate the conflict to a battle as part of an overall war. Cor, makes me sound like a war correspondent ! Will keep you posted from the front line.

Those Lizards

2010-08-17T08:25:00.000+01:00

It's Friday and it was blowing hot and cold, a light north breeze and some cloud made it cool but when the cloud broke the sun was warm. And when the sun came out the boardwalk was just heaving with lizards. I walked around and counted 70 small lizards born this year and 11 big ones that were at least 2-3 years old. A recent visitor said that her son loved them as he thought of them as his very own dinosaurs. They were so tame that they just sat there as I walked past slowly and quietly while watching me with their beady black eyes. There was one big brightly coloured one that I decided to photograph and as I edged closer and closer it decided to check out my camera by leaning forward and running its forked tongue over it, hence the blurred blob. For a full on close up wildlife experience when you are visiting look out for them and see if you can get as close but do it soon before the weather cools and they head for hibernation.

Look Up

2010-08-15T08:16:00.003+01:00

I was chatting in the car park to a chap who was making his first visit to Flanders when he suddenly said "what's that ?" and above me appeared an osprey flying low over the us heading south circling slowly. Very exciting, grabbed my camera and took a few poor shots. Ospreys breed in the area, drawn especially to all the lovely big trout stocked in the Lake of Menteith. The young have lefts the nests and hanging around the area before the plucky up courage and give into instinct and head south the spend the winter in the west of Africa. So now is as good a time to see them in the area. Look up and you might be lucky. This was the chaps first osprey he had seen as well so a good day all round !

One moth's poison is another's food.

2010-08-12T12:27:00.000+01:00

On a warm summers day parts of the Moss smell fantastic at the moment. With the heat of the sun the smell of the bog myrtle fills the air and what a fantastic smell it is.
It is a smell that captures the whole feel of Flanders Moss in summer for me but it is hard to describe it, resinous, warm, pleasant and then I run out of words but you will know it when you smell it. Tradition says that bog myrtle has insect repellent properties and some companies are making products which are meant to keep midges at bay out of an extract from the plant. However as I have been walking out on the Moss on midge filled days I have seen clouds of them come up from bog myrtle bushes that I have walked through so I am not sure how effective it can be. The smell is all part of the chemical warfare conducted between plants and insects. Plants producing chemicals that make the plant less edible so stopping it getting completely munched. However there are always ways of overcoming this form of defence and 3 of our special moths all live on the abundant bog myrtle on Flanders. The Rannoch brindled beauty, the great brocade and the argent and sable are all nationally scarce moths (that means that they have only been recorded in less than 100 10km squares in the UK) that use the bog myrtle on Flanders for their life-cycle. Mostly their caterpillars have worked out a way of overcoming the plants chemical defences and feed on the leaves for example the argent and sable caterpillar sticks the leaves at the end of branches together into a sort of tent inside which they can chew the inside of the leaves while hidden from predators.
Purely from a peatland habitat point of view the bog myrtle usually grows on parts of the bog that have been damaged by ditching or the surfaced disturbed. So as is often the case what is important for some special animals represents damaged to another even more special habitat. But the bog myrtle is there to stay now and there is not much we can do about it so I will continue to enjoy the heady aroma and also the beautiful inhabitants that live on it. I may even try the old shepherds trick of trying to keep the midges at bay by putting a piece of bog myrtle behind each ear. Then you'll know me when you see me.

Big ones and little ones

2010-08-04T12:26:00.002+01:00

Aren't lizards brilliant ! Before the boardwalk was put in at Flanders I used to see lizards regularly on the moss but only in glimpses. Now you can get a right good look just from a short stroll along the path. The other day I went round on an overcast day and the lizards were obviously needing to get out to warm up as I counted 46 individuals along the way. Of these only 2 were fully grown adults, the other 44 were all very small, nearly black young beasts that would have been born this year.
And the being born bit is a big surprise because most reptiles lay eggs. But our lizards the common lizard Zootoca vivipara is specially adapted to live more northerly than any other species of reptile, one of those adaptations is to give birth to between 3 and 11 live young. once hatched these quick settle in to catching small insects and start to grow. Males mature in 2 years while females take three. Our Flanders lizards have another 6 to 8 weeks to feed up before, depending on the weather, going into hibernation when it turns cold. On the Moss they can't hibernate to deep into the ground because of the high water table so they probably spend the winter in rotting piles of brash and the large hummocks ready to come out win April when spring warms up. They made be small but they are real wildlife that just about everyone can see if they are quiet and slow moving and in the right weather.

How much from above ?

2010-08-02T12:03:00.002+01:00

Those regular followers who like me are becoming obsessed with amounts of rainfall then they will be pleased to know that things have improved a bit this last month. 119mm of rain for July is above the rough monthly average for Flanders (about 100mm a month) but is actually represents a dryish July, Scotland summers being on the wet side. The Moss has been looking a lot wetter but the sponge that is the body of peat that makes up Flanders still needs more topping up. After only a week of little rain it is starting to look dry again. So August here we come.

Anyone walking around the boardwalk will notice the difference between now and just a few weeks back. It is quiet. The bird song has dropped off completely as males no longer hold territory but hide away with the females moulting and trying to replenish their fat reserves before going on migration. It is a sad fact that April / May seems a long way away when we will next be hearing that cacophony of birdsong that so lifts the spirits.

Lookering on the bog

2010-07-30T12:37:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-26T17:32:00.006+01:00

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

2010-07-20T12:32:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-18T17:31:00.000+01:00

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

2010-07-15T16:57:00.008+01:00

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

2010-07-08T12:43:00.003+01:00

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

2010-07-03T15:59:00.000+01:00

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.

Honking barrels

2010-06-28T16:41:00.001+01:00

Barn owls are magically birds but when they are young they really do look horrible. And their nest smells. Below are chicks in a nesting box we have on Flanders Moss.

Flanders is a great place for barn owls as their is loads to eat in the form of juicy voles found in the long grass around the Moss edges. But it isn't perfect as there aren't any nesting places. So to help them we have put up 3 plastic barrels (recycling !) with entrance holes cut in trees on the edge of the Moss. These need checking each year for use and this year I had a lovely surprise when I took the top off one. A face full of flies, a honking smells and a hiss like a steam engine and there were FOUR fat, fluffy white chicks. We hope to ring them (put a numbered metal ring on their legs) before they leave the nest. It is great to see them doing so well as the previous hard winter winter would have been especially hard for them.

Moth Magic 2

2010-06-24T16:45:00.001+01:00

It is time to set up the moth trap again. This involves driving round Flanders the night before and filling up the genny with petrol and then setting the light running in the dusk. It was a perfect evening but this makes it perfect for midges as well. By the time I had finished I was coated in midges and had given enough blood to run a hospital. At least I knew it was working as when I drove back home I could see the bright light shining across the Moss.
So the next morning I met the local moth expert John Knowler on the edge of the Moss and we headed down to empty the trap and see what we had.
And it was great the trap was full and there were loads of moths of the vegetation around the trap. The downside was that there were loads of midges as well, the is often a puff of them when you first open up the trap. For the next 1.5 hours we systematically worked our way through the moths counting, commenting, putting a name and just admiring them. Some of the gems included several beautiful grey light knot grass, a huge female northern eggar, several delicate grass waves and for me most beautiful of all 4 silvery arches. These moths had only been recorded a few times in the area before and never more than one per trap and we caught 4, all freshly hatched. These moths have a silvery sheen that has hints of pink and green that make then look something like a delicate sweet wrapper. I was thankful to have John along as when we were searching through the trap twice we came across small dull looking moths that tried to flitter away. I would have let them go but John quickly caught them in pots. After a lot of umming and arhing he identified them as a shaded pug and a round-winged muslin moth. Well it turns out that shaded pug has only been caught 3 times before in this area (lowland area of central Scotland), the last time being in 1987. The round-winged muslin hasn't been caught in this area since 1977. So both of them very special species even if they don't look at smart.
The names of some of the moths we caught are fantastic beautiful brocade, clouded bordered brindle, common lutestring, scorched wing, true lovers knot and the coxcomb prominant.
There is plenty of the season left for more trapping and this year is proving to be a cracker.

Butterflies that don't fly

2010-06-23T16:01:00.001+01:00

A different day a different species. Counting again but this time orchids. All this counting what is the point ? Well it gives us measurable information about the changes of these key plants and animals. So I headed out to the west part of Flanders with local orchid counter Roy Sexton to find the patch of greeny white lesser butterfly orchid and pinky fragrant orchids. The lesser butterfly orchids (or LBOs) are a flower that is declining fast across the UK and so a lot of effort is being put into monitoring the colonies left to find out more about them. 2 years ago we had a record year of about 40 flower spikes, last year only 10 or so. So we were unsure what we would find. First to appear the fragrant orchids and i set off to count them. The fragrant orchid gets its name from, yes you guessed it, its nice smell, some of the orchids smell at lot worse, like the early purple orchid that smell of tom cat wee, it is lucky it didn't get its name from its smell. 79 fragrant flowering spikes, excellent. Meanwhile Roy was counting the LBOs - 87 spikes !! A Flanders record. Orchids are funny things and it can be difficult to tell why they suddenly do so well but one reason maybe the good grazing levels where the sheep and cattle are removed to allow the orchids to flower.
Other gems while orchid searching include roe deer bouncing away after dozing in the sun, bright orange small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies bombing past and a small meadow pipits nest that had an unusually large paler brown egg amongst the dark brown pipit eggs. I suspect that it might be a cuckoo egg but I will have to revisit and see if a week or twos time.

Counting birds again

2010-06-22T14:57:00.008+01:00

Its a bird counting day today - as part of the UK wide British Trust for Ornithology bird survey I am counting birds on a 2 km square (called a tetrad) of Flanders. This is hardcore birding, an intensive, sense altering, in another world experience that just blows your mind. All you have to do is to count all the birds so why is it so intensive ? Well to tune in to the birds everything else goes out of your mind. Your eyes are drawn to every twitch of a twig, any speck in the sky, each wing flick. Your ears become like man holes in the side of your head scooping every bird sound, sifting and processing it and then putting a name to it.
It was warm and muggy and I started off trying to separate towering skylarks and plunging pipits along the grassy edge of the Moss. Working my way onto the dome the cottongrass twinkled in the heat haze like stars on a frosty night and suddenly there was a different sort of tweeting. There sitting in the grass was a young reed bunting nearly left the nest - proof of breeding, tick box. Ears ready and receiving I kept moving, further on a "peep chuck" signalled a whinchat, finally pinned down to the top of a bush, further still the scratchy phrases of 2 whinchat males singing against each other across an expanse of bog. A cascading torrent of willow warblers song contrasted with the chaffinches clatter. A brief reeling of a grasshopper warbler, a trilling blast from a wren and a few heat smothered flutety notes from a blackbird all made it into the notebook. At the lochan a wall of willow warblers needed sorting and in all the noise I nearly missed the funny hiccuping bit at the ned of a tree pipit song flight. In the distance a pheasant squawked, overhead and then landing close by a couple of redpolls churred. So at the end of the set 2 hours I stumble blinking off the moss, shake my head and re-enter the real world remembering to close down my ears so as not to be deafened by the first loud sound and look forward to the next count.
And in between the birds the Moss had other offerings, large heath butterflies bobbling across the moss looking for nectar, common heath, 4-dotted footman and grass wave moths zig zagging the bog, a huge rattling golden-ringed dragonfly and much less welcome and proving that it isn't all perfect out there the first of the years clegs slipping their needle mouth parts under the skin.

Lie Down, Look Up

2010-06-21T19:56:00.004+01:00

I had just written this following post when I saw that Helen and David (see comment on previous post) were ahead of me and already doing it, well here goes anyway.

Well it was a nice day, warm and dry and the boardwalk looked quite comfortable so I thought why not have a lie down and see what Flanders looked from down there. When you get to know a site really well sometimes it is good to try to look at it from a different perspective or with new eyes. This was my corporate justification for lying on the boardwalk on a sunny day for 15 mins, just in case my line manager is reading this - if he isn't then it was just a nice thing to do.

Being low level meant that nodding cotton grass and the sky was about all you could see so immediately it felt like the volume was turned up in my ears. The Moss became alive with busy insects and birds. A great buzzing came from all around as flies, beetles and bees criss crossed above me. The bird song got louder with meadow pipit display songs all around, the tinkling and trilling of skylarks and willow warblers filling the background and piercing it all the was the excited common gulls. Spread across the sky the cirrus clouds confirmed the fine weather and then a dot slowly moved across the cloud wall paper resolving itself as a sparrowhawk given away by the flap, flap circles it flew. Swooping around it feeding on the aerial plankton of insects the swallows from surround farms and swifts from nearby villages. And then a buzzard stirred things up as it sedately soared across, sending the gulls in a frenzy. And it between all of this there was time to appreciate the cloud shapes that many people don't give a second glance to.

So why not take a few minutes to lie down and look when you are next at Flanders, but I hope the Labradors don't find you !

Forth Valley Outreach Class Go Bogging

2010-06-15T14:19:00.003+01:00

Forth Valley outreach class which is part of Access and Progression held in Callander visited Flanders Moss on Thursday 3rd June and met up with David Pickett. It was part of their course Citizenship and Environmental Studies.

Here are some of the students comments.

Craig
The weather was great and so were the views.

Jimmy
I liked the sphagnum moss and saw lots of dragonflies.

Shona
We saw damsel flies they lay their eggs in the water.

Kay
I enjoyed looking through my binoculars and a lizard went between my feet.

Jenny
It was a beautiful day hot and sunny and we learned so much having David to show us round.

George
I enjoyed the visit and seeing the insects in the water.

Lesley Anne
David showed us some antlers and we sat on the board walk.

Gardeners - do something for a bog and compost. !

2010-06-12T10:22:00.000+01:00

It is a shock when you hear experts get in wrong. I was at Gardening Scotland (Scotland's biggest gardening show) last weekend and was horrified with what I heard from a well known media garden expert. At a wildlife gardening debate that he chaired he was heard to say that "harvesting peat was sustainable only thin layer of peat was taken off the top of the bog and bogs grow 1 mm a year anyway ". So basically he said was it was fine to cut peat to use in gardens as the bogs grow back. Unfortunately this is very wrong. Flanders Moss took 7000 years to grow to what it is now but in the 1970's a 100 ha part of Flanders was prepared for peat "harvesting" by scraping the layer of vegetation off and putting in parallel drainage ditches. SNH managed to step in a buy out the peat planning permissions to prevent peat being actually dug and save the bog but not before this area was left dry, dusty and with no bog plants or animals on it at all. Since then we have been damming ditches to rewet the area and restore living bog and this has brought back sphagnum to parts of it but after all this time some areas still are only bare peat and heather with no sphagnum . It may take 100's of years before it is covered with a complete living bog skin.
So quite simply peat "harvesting" (even this word is wrong as it implies an annually produced crop) in not sustainable. Any bog where it happens is at best irreparably damaged and at worst killed (above is a picture of a bog undergoing "harvesting", see no green at all). The simple fact is that if you use peat then it has come from a bog somewhere that is being destroyed so if you want to save wonderful plants and animals like the ones that you see in this blog then don't listened to the so called gardening experts that say it is alright to use peat but make your own by home composting. Before the 2 world war virtually no-one used peat in their gardens but they still managed to create wonderful growing areas so it is possible to grow big veg and beautiful flowers not at the cost of bog wildlife.

Moth Magic

2010-06-11T09:00:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I had my first moth night for the year. So what is a "moth night " ? Well it involves setting up a moth trap in a place where you think that the species that you want to find out about live. And a moth trap ? Well it is like an electric lobster pot, it has a bright light that atttracts in the moths, a narrow gap that they fly in and a large chamber that is difficult to fly out of again so they settle down in the comfortable egg boxes provided until the trap in emptied in the morning.
The area chosen for the moth trap this night was on a far off corner of the reserve so once the trap was set running after sunset it wasn't worth me going home so I spent a surprisingly comfortable night in the back of the works truck. At 0530 I was back on the Moss on a overcast, murky, damp morning. All sorts of disasters can befall a moth trapping night, the generator (that provides the power for the lamp) failing or a bulb blowing or just not the right weather for moths. So there is an incredible sense of anticipation as you walk down to the trap. Firstly the overcast but muggy night was a good sign, perfect moth weather, next the genny was still running, another good sign and then when I got to the trap there were moths all around it, settled onto the vegetation once daybreak had broke, brilliant, I was in business.
The next 2 hours went incrediblely quickly. I was in the zone, emptying the trap and catching the moths around it, identifying them using my sketchy knowledge and the moth bible, Waring and Townsend and recording and photographying the details.
In the end 110 moths were recorded of 28 species and I didn't have the time to check all of the tiny "pugs" that are so difficult to identify. Best of all was a birch mocha, never recorded on Flanders before and only recorded in the central scotland area 5 times before. Moths have such beautiful names and of those I caught that morning the lunar thorn, the miller, pebble hook-tip, pale-shouldered brocade, nut-tree tussock and red-sword grass stand out. And the clouded drab sounds better than it looks. But for many even the names don't do them justice, some like the emperor moth with its eyes are too showy for words, others like the pale prominant look more like a stick than a stick does.
So in the next week i will be out there again for another hit of moth adrenaline followed by the satisfaction of puzzling out each one caught. I'll keep you posted.

A Bit Damp

2010-06-10T09:00:00.000+01:00

It has been raining on the Moss the last 2 days - fantastic ! After having only half the normal rainfall for this year so far things were really starting to get dry and crispy out there, never a good thing on a bog. So it was wonderful to see to Moss filling up again, soaking up the water and literally swelling in size. The sphagnum bloomed, glowing with rich colours, the stems inflating with water like party balloons. The purple moor grass blades held glistening pearls of rain in its tiny hairs, the ditches trickled and gurgled again, the delicate princess pink cranberry flowers blushed and even the ever present dew drops on the sundew got bigger. So this rain will do for the next few days but we want more !
As our signs on the boardwalk say, a dry bog is a bad bog.

A Pause

2010-06-09T08:49:00.000+01:00

Many apologies for the pause in blogging. I have been away for a week counting gulls on the Isle of May NNR and then got swamped with paperwork once I got back.
So what sort of things are in the inbox/in tray of a reserve manager ? Well here are a few of the issues that have come up and need to be dealt with -
- a party of amateur radio enthusiasts set up to transmit for the weekend from the Flanders Moss car park. Though this didn't cause too much damage it did concern regular local visitors.
- there have been concerns of disabled access to the site such as problems with the gradients of the paths and the surface of the car park so we have been meeting groups of wheelchair users to see if we can improve their access to the site.
- someone from Cumbria wants to know how we manage for adders on Flanders Moss (very carefully !).
- I have been arranging for new moth trapping equipment to make us more efficient in our moth monitoring.
- the higher profile of the nature reserve has meant that more groups are wanting to come and visit to reserve, we have hosted 6 groups in the last 2 weeks.
Enough, you get the idea, but I will endeavour to keep blogging.

NOTE - MEET THE "WARDEN" DAY - if you have any questions about the reserve I will be down at the viewing tower on Sunday from 1 pm to 4 pm to meet and chat with anyone who is visiting the reserve. Hope to see you there.

What does the tower mean to you ?

2010-05-17T14:45:00.000+01:00

Climbing the tower at Flanders is really something special. Even for someone like me who has been visiting Flanders Moss for nearly 10 years and since the tower was completed in November has been up it 4 or 5 times a week it still has a special feeling of anticipation as you climb the steps for a whole lot of reasons.

Firstly there is the chance to see what you couldn't see before. The panoramic view across the moss to the hills and mountains that make the amphitheatre that Flanders sits in is something special and having looked at Flanders for man height for so long it is still a novelty to see as you haven't seen it before. Once on the platform you are into the tree tops and so on bird level. With the summer migrants arriving this means that you are ear level with willow warblers, chaffinches and redstarts, and the cuckoos call and swoop right past you. You are also up in the weather, the sun is brighter, the breeze fresher, the wind sharper and the rain wetter. For some the climb offers a challenge to be overcome if vertigo or the stairs are a problem but the exhilaration can be all the more if they make it to the top.

For me there is a feeling of escape from everyday life as you climb the stairs. Up on the platform is just a different world. And for many people they climb the tower just cos its there, perhaps it is an unconscious desire to get high on flat land and just to look where you couldn't look before.

So what does the tower mean to you ?

Pink Waves

2010-05-16T16:39:00.000+01:00

You might know from gardening that some flowering plants do better some years than others. Well the same can work for wildflowers and this year is the year of the cuckooflower. It has been bursting forth in pink waves on damp grassland across the area this year in exceptional amounts including all around the edge of Flanders Moss. It is named from the fact that it usually comes into flower when the cuckoo arrives, around about the end of April but continues to flower through into June. It is a plant of many names and two that I know are lady's smock and milkmaids. I don't know why these wildflowers fluctuating years of abundance but it is likely to include the effect of previous springs and winters that has the collective effect of promoting vigorous flowers from plants that otherwise may lie dormant. In recent years with warmer springs it has started flowering earlier still and this might causes problems for one of the creatures that uses it for food. The orange tip butterfly lays its eggs on cuckooflowers so that the caterpillars can feed on the plant when they hatch. The eggs are laid just under the flowers and when the caterpillars hatch they feed on the developing seed pods that are packed full of energy. But all this needs careful timing so that there is enough food for the caterpillars to fill up on, too early and there are no seed pods to eat, too late and the plant is dying back just when the caterpillars want the most amount of food. This is just one illustration of how climate change is affecting the everyday wildlife we see. Climate change can have unforeseen knock-on effects as cuckooflower is reputed to be sacred to fairies. As the flower was so special to them traditionally is was never picked for bunches of flowers in case you angered them. So just think when you next take the car rather than walk a short journey that the effects can be even wider ranging you might have imagined.

The Signs Are There To Be Read

2010-05-13T09:38:00.000+01:00

If you go down to the boardwalk you will see some new signs that have been put up in the last week. These hopefully will provide a bit more information for visitors. This includes details of what events we are running, guidence for dog walkers at the moss and 2 signs have been designed, written and drawn by Thornhill Primary. One is all about the do's and don'ts of visiting the site at different seasons. The other tells visitors all about the wildflower meadow by the car park that Thornhill Primary are helping us create (more about this later in the season). Luckily they weren't up when we had our bit of vandalism. We also have new leaflet holders up with laminated leaflets that visitors can "borrow" for their walk.

The frames that hold the signs have been beautifully made by John Burgess from Arnrpior using loal Scottish oak from the Garden estate. It is very satisfying to be able to use a local contractor and a local material and it doesn't get much local than that.

At other points around the Moss there are also new threshold signs. These "monoliths" (corporate term for great big signs) tell people that they are about to enter the NNR, what hazards they might find and that they are better off going round to where the boardwalk is.

On The Boardwalk

2010-05-11T15:13:00.000+01:00

Flanders is a big piece of land, you can see that from the viewing tower and it sits in a big landscape surrounded by hills and mountains but today it was the small things that took my attention. A funny day on the boardwalk, the sun was bright and warm but every so often a cloud would come over and snow flakes would drift down. The warmth of the sun set the little stuff buzzing, everywhere I looked something was purposefully going about their life. In the car park the dandelions were crawling with hoverflies, bumblebees and honey bees. The hoverflies with the bee-look-a-like yellow and black stripes would sit tight so that you could get a really close look. Darting in between all the yellow and black stuff were striking orange-tip and green-veined white butterflies, their names tell you all you need to know to identify them. Along the aggregate path green jewels kept drifting up from my feet. Once they landed a few feet ahead these revealed themselves as green tiger beetles - ferocious predators that run down their prey like cheetahs. Further down the path marched a big hairy caterpillar, obviously on a mission. I am not great at caterpillars so am not sure what species this one is but maybe it is a drinker moth, also big and hairy.
But for many people the best site is the Flanders lizards. These common lizards have taken the boardwalk for their own, using it as a perfect basking area. They sit on the side kicking boards and then can dive between the treads or drop off the edge if they ever feel threatened. However they seem to be getting used to people as I found I could get very close to them before they darted away.
So a face down mooch along the boardwalk on a sunny day can reveal and wealth of life the everyone can see. Just pick a warmish day.

No Rain (to quote Blind Melon)

2010-05-05T15:01:00.000+01:00

Well actually a bit of rain but not very much. The total for the year so far (Jan to Apr - 4 months) is 256 mm and this is only 65 % of what Flanders Moss would normally get. I realise that most people would think this is good news but a bog manager looks at things in a different way and little rain means a drying out bog. The pools on the Moss are starting to dry up a bit but things are too bad yet but when the daytime temperatures start to rise so increasing evaporation and the trees come into leaf and start to suck water out of the Moss then the water levels drop faster. So a bit more rain over May would be nice, .......but I won't say it too loudly.

Dawn chorus

2010-05-04T15:34:00.000+01:00

It is something everyone ought to have a go at sometime or other, that is get up before dawn to listen to the dawn chorus. I did it at Flanders last Friday, for the first time sampling it from the viewing tower and it was magical. With sunrise being 0530 it was a bit of a struggle getting there early enough but I managed to be in the tower 10 mins. before the sun came up, well dressed to deal with the cold westerly wind. Of course the dawn chorus doesn't just start on the dot of sunrise and there were already lots of birds singing in the half-light as I climbed the stairs. At least 3 willow warblers were pouring out their delicate warble, a grasshopper warbler was reeling away, a chaffinch clattered and a wren rattled and trilled. Gradually as the light grew stronger more birds got in on the act, 2 male pheasants yelled at each other, the cuckoos started competing against each other, up to 4 different birds at one time, a male redstart chiruped and squeaked away at tree to level and a great tit gradually worked through its reptoire of calls. Of course it was not all beautiful singing, the common gulls on the pool by the boardwalk suddenly woke up and every so often would start hysterically laughing like a bunch of teenagers at a bus stop and in the woodland edge the harsh barking of a couple of roe deer made me jump. At 0530 there was no sudden burst of light as the rising sun was being blocked by low lying cloud, just a slow increase in light intensity as if the dimmer switch was being turned up. The Kippen bells marked 0600 and then at 0615 the sun suddenly topped the cloud and burst onto the top of the Menteith Hills in the west. With the sun rising higher a golden carpet of warmth rolled across the Moss accelerating the wake up and eventually reaching the viewing tower. Activity increased with the sun with a cuckoo incurring the wrath of 2 meadow pipits who chased it off, a couple of teal worriedly kee, kee'ed by the boardwalk and a redshank fluttered across a marshy bit. Overhead a small group of late pinkfeet headed north, 3 black-headed gulls and a couple of immature lesser black-backed gulls mooched over in the opposite direction. By 0730 things seemed to be quietening down and the rhythm of the day had been set, my stomach was telling me that it was time for breakfast so I headed off to find some and start work. 25 different species of bird were seen and heard in 2 seemingly very short hours and though when the alarm had gone off at 0430 I had questioned the idea by breakfast time I was feeling fulfilled, enriched, smug and superior and thought it had been the best idea I had had all year. You don't have to know your birdsong though to enjoy the event so why not give it a go ?

Box Strainers and Otter Poo

2010-04-30T14:08:00.000+01:00

A good day yesterday. Nick, Stephen and myself spent the day repairing gates and stiles. I did the basic labour of digging deep holes in the sticky clay while Nick and Stephen did the skilled work of tensioning up the wires and fitting struts and rehanging gates. The gates we had bought are meant to be self-closing but on the clay soils the hanging and shutting posts move around so much when the clay dries out and wets up again that the gates had become self-opening. For the technical fencers Stephen and Nick fitted box strainers in the hope that this will stop the posts moving. It may have less effect when the West Moss-side Shetland cattle rub up against them or lean on the fence but we will just have to wait and see. The stiles were a health and safety issue, the old stiles were in such a state that if one broke when in use the resulting injury could have been very nasty.

A cool breeze kept us cool when digging, the rain showers held off and the birds kept us entertained. Up to 3 grasshopper warblers reeled away, the summer's first whinchat scratchily put himself on the map and reed buntings zip, zip zupped from thick patches of rushes. A couple of wheatears mooched around the arable fields, the anxious males have mostly passed through, rushing to grab a space, these laid back females passing through now are calmly confident of claiming a male on territory. All the while I dug away a skylark towered over me singing the whole while. I hope I didn't disturb him too much. Across the Moss the big caterpillars were on the march, I didn't know the species so just admired the hairy defence and singleminded migration.

And to finish off close to the last stile we found a small pile of otter spraint, a sign that they continue to use Flanders as a link between the Goodie Water and the Forth .

Trouble At Bog

2010-04-28T15:19:00.000+01:00

Stephen Longster, Site Management Officer at Flanders Moss reports - "Spring has finally begun on the Moss, this is one of the best times on the Moss, no longer cut in half by the brisk northerly winds; the plants are growing, insects and lizards on the move. During the weekly visitor checks I took a couple of minutes on my favourite spots on the boardwalk, to see what the regulars were up to. The pond skaters were busy disputing (some times violently) their little patches of aquatic territory, there were recent signs of construction by the potter wasp, adding to her multi storey property and the reed bunting singing away on a stunted birch, clearly in the market for female company.
The summer migrants are returning. The willow warblers are warbling and the cuckoos are erm, cuckooing? Meadow pipits beware, if you end up with one massive offspring that bears an uncanny resemblance to a cuckoo, the chances are, you’ve been had.
The anti social elements are emerging from their all too short winter hibernation, and signs of there seasonal migrations are appearing at Flanders Moss. The telltale tracks of cheap cider cans and buckfast bottles are just one of the indications that a temporary nest site has been established on Flanders Moss.

The sporadic infestations of this life form are also evident from broken information panels and scattered glass. Largely nocturnal beasts, they can be occasionally be observed indulging in display rituals, which seem to involve shouting at each other and throwing bottles. Those of a more artistic nature may have noticed the subtle lines of a boot print where an attempt was made to kick out a glass panel.

It is unfortunate that nature reserves (not just Flanders Moss) can attract the attentions of people who regard such areas as an opportunity to get drunk and break things. Flanders Moss suffers relatively little which in makes it more of a shock when it does happen. Luckily nearly all of the visitors who come to Flanders Moss enjoy the experience and appreciate this 8000 year old habitat. Some take a real pride in the place so many thanks to the visitor who alerted us to the damage and had done quite a lot of the tidying up before I got there. We will have to get a few new bits and bobs such as leaflets dispensers and an information panel so please bear with us until we have them in place. Of course if anyone sees anti-social behaviour at Flandfers the best thing to do is either report it to us or the Police but hopefully this won't be happening enough to spoil other users of the site ."

So what is this all about the belly button fluff ?

2010-04-24T16:07:00.000+01:00

So what is all this about fluff. Well the Rannoch Brindled Beauty is a rare moth. Flanders Moss is the southerly edge of it is range that spreads north through the central highlands to Inverness. The degree of its rareness is described as Nationally Scarce A. Officially this means that it has only been recorded in between 16 and 30 10km squares since 1980. It was first recorded on Rannoch Moor in 1871 hence its name, its Latin name is Lycia lapponnaria scotica which apparently means wolf-like and refers to its shaggy body but this thick coat is more about keeping warm when the adults are out in the cool early spring. Flanders Moss is fairly typical habitat as it likes boggy moorland and heathland especially where its caterpillar food plants, bog myrtle and heather species, are found.

The adults hatch out in spring, the female has no wings (and looks like a bit of fluff) so just crawls up a fencepost or tree trunk and pumps out pheromones (chemicals) to attract in a winged male. Once they have mated the female climbs back down and searches for the dry flower heads of heather species and bog myrtle where she lays up to 150 greenish yellow eggs. The caterpillars hatch in May and eat their food plant until about August when they climb down and burrow underground to pupate. The pupal stage can last up to 4 years while the caterpillar breakdown into a moth soup before reforming as an adult moth. So the adult phase of the life cycle is only a blip compared with the prolonged larval stages.

But there is still much to be found out about this moths life at Flanders. We still haven't plotted its complete distribution on the moss. We also don't know exactly what its food plant preference is and if it has any other special requirements. For instance how important are trees to it ? All the moths recorded have been found on trees but is this only a fraction of the moths that are present ? As much of our management on Flanders is about removing trees from the Moss to keep the bog wet this is an important question to answer as we want to continue to host this special moth as we work to restore the wet bog of the past.

Revolving door

2010-04-23T14:44:00.000+01:00

With spring being so squashed by the lingering winter and an on-rushing summer, now it has warmed up the flood gates have opened. Summer bird visitors are pouring in and everyday new songs and sights can be seen on the Moss. Today the willow warblers and cuckoos who arrived a few days back were well established and have now been joined by redstarts. Three males of these lovely relatives of the robin were singing scratchily from the tops of birch trees along the south edge of the moss, one easily seen and heard from the car park. Even better there was a snipe drumming over the boardwalk. Drumming is the name given to the activity these birds do when marking their territory though it is not very descriptive. The birds make a bleating noise as they dive but this is no call but actually the outer tail feathers vibrating. Redpolls and crossbills were buzzing and chupping overhead respectively and a tree pipit put in a quick appearance close to the car park. But the highlight of the morning was a couple of redshank that dropped out of the sky to the pool by the stone seat making their soft pleading calls. Another called high up as it passed over so these 2 are probably only stopping for a quick rest but it would be great if all the wetting up of the moss tempted them to stay longer.

With all these spring birds decorating the changing season it was a complete contrast to hear a group of 100 late pink feet geese fly over, some of the last winter residents taking advantage of the recently turned southerly winds to make their break for Iceland. Their 'wink, wink' calls taking me back with a slight shiver to the icy winter just gone.

Thank you to Rachel of Thornhill Primary School for her fantastic picture of Flanders.

The finding of the belly button fluff.

2010-04-22T17:05:00.000+01:00

Having missed out on the belly button fluff before Easter (see posting 9 April) I thought
I would have another go. The Moss is gradually shaking off its winter lassitude and is moving towards the summer business of air filled with birdsong and the bog surface being as busy with insects as the Royal Mile in festival season. The wind was still bitterly cold but there was a warmth to the sun and a brightness to the light intensity that is missing in winter. So I headed out onto the west side with invertebrates on the mind. The willows on the edge of the moss were already buzzing with activity, they are one of the first nectar sources available for insects so are a magnet at this time of year. Once out on the moss I started searching the south sides of the bases of the tree trunks. A cream-spotted ladybird stood out, as did various sawflies and weird looking wasps. A beautiful Engrailed moth did anything but stand out, matching the lichen covered trunk perfectly. And then finally the fluff. There clinging to the trunk was a small ball of grey and orange fluff, a female Rannoch Brindled Beauty moth soaking up the sun and waiting for a male to turn up. Gradually as I got my eye in I found more, after 30 mins 10 females and also 1 male with its delicately decorated tent like wings matching the lichens that it sat on.
All these insects are early birds, they get their life cycles going early in the year before there are too many predators about by trading less danger for colder temperatures and less available plant food. Even on the Moss there are species adapted to just about every niche and time of year.

What a difference 2 weeks can make

2010-04-21T16:45:00.000+01:00

It's like grandmothers footsteps, as soon as you turn your back everything changes. After months of unchanging winter hardship I take a couple of weeks holiday and its all new when i come back. Well actually the weather is still the same mind with frosts, bitterly cold northerly winds though now seasoned with a sprinkling of volcanic ash. But things are happening. Even as I drove down the track to the boardwalk a wheatear flitted off the track onto a fencepost, its just passing through on the way north, and more unusual, a cuckoo swooped across the track onto the Moss - a good few days earlier than normal. Once at the car park the willow warblers had also arrived and were yelling at the top of their voices, curlews were bubbling in the fields next to the moss, the carrion crow was sitting on its nest and the common gulls had reached a gaggle of 20+ on the pool by the seat. Plant life was magically bubbling up from the dead moss surface, cotton grass flowers stuck up like a rack of spears and in one place a small patch of wood anemones showed. These give a hint of a past wooded spring landscape long gone. Spring is in full swing, if you blink you'll miss it.

The Search For Belly Button Fluff

2010-04-09T16:36:00.000+01:00

This rare species and habitat monitoring is not always what it is cut out to be. Last week I was out on the Moss monitoring the water levels in the peat. This means an 8 hour, 12 mile slog in a big circle around the bog visiting all 22 water measuring devices to see how wet the Moss is and how weel our "making the bog wetter work " is going. As it was the right time of year I decided to check for one of our rarest moths, the Rannoch Brindled Beauty. This moth is an early one coming out of its pupae in March and April to meet up, mate and lay its eggs on bog myrtle. As it is a cold time of year the moth wears a thick furry coat to keep warm. The males have a fetching grey and orange mottled look that matches perfectly the base of the birch trees where they sit waiting for a warmer day. All the females have to do is crawl from the ground where they have pupated up a nearby birch tree and wait for a male to turn up. For this they don't need wings and so don't have any. However this means that with their thick fur coat they look very like a small bit of belly button fluff . So you can imagine the job, looking for a bit of fluff about 1 cm long on the base of trees across a nature rerserve the size of 2200 football pitches. And I didn't find any ! The pay back came in the form of a pine beauty moth and 3 golden horns moths, both common species but still beautiful. And the base of birch trees are not too shaby on the moss being encrusted with lichens and algae. But after 12 miles on the bog I was walking a bit funny the next day.

New Fence, Old Boundary

2010-04-06T18:14:00.000+01:00

The fencers have finished a new fence out on the Moss. It fences off a piece of land on the west edge of Flanders that hasn't been grazed for many years. The aim is to get some sheep grazing onto it to increase the number of wildflowers you find there, the sheep removed the yearly grass growth, reduce the shady that the grass causes and thereby create gaps for wildflowers to grow into. This field is also right on the edge of the Moss so maybe act as a springboard for when we want to graze further out on the bog in the future. What is interesting is that for part of the length the fence runs along a slightly raised, straight bank. What is the story of this bank ? To find out you need to look at the historical maps and the Flanders Moss historical research project carried out by local historian John Harrison. It turns out that the bank was a land division put in in 1749 when a Mr. Hew Graeme, a local man and Edinburhg lawyer, bought the land. Mr. Graeme was a developer, different from the modern day developers in that he bought unproductive bogland that couldn't be farmer with the aim to turn it into productive farmland. He bought 2 parcels of land, the piece that we have fenced and a piece at Poldar Moss right next to where the boardwalk and car park is today. For 10 years he put in all his capital and considerable effort to try to turn a profit on the peat. At the Poldar Moss area he usedthe method of clayed moss, that is he (or his team of labourers) dug ditches across the peatland down to the clay and spread the clay he dug out onto the surface of the dried out bog and mized in with burned peat to make a soil. This was then ploughed with breast ploughs wrought by mean as the ground was too wet to bear oxen or horses. This he tried farming for a few years but after 10 years of toil his money ran out and he disappeared leaving the land to revert back to the people who sold it to them.
The fencers are local father and son team George and Alistair Watt from Gargunnock. They have done a large amount of fencing on the Moss and are well used to its soft, wet and wonderful ways. Last year they put up several 1000 yards of fencing out on the deep peat. Hard graft as it is too wet to do much by machine so a lot of the materials were carried out and put in by hand in waterlogged conditions. 200 years later, though they are doing a different task, the Watts labouring out on the Moss is very similar to the labouring done by Mr. Graeme's team but hopefully with more success.

Follow The Signs

2010-03-31T18:04:00.000+01:00

Flanders Moss National Nature Reserve has just become been officially put on the tourist map this week when Stirling Council put up some new brown tourist signs. It has been a bit of a performance to get the signs up but now the reserve is sign posted from the B873 Aberfoyle road in Thornhill and the A811 from the Kippen roundabout. It wasn't easy to find the reserve before but now tourists and day visitors will have no problem getting to the car park.

Why do we want brown signs ? Well Scottish Natural Heritage has invested a lot of money in the infrastructure of the reserve so that people can visit it, enjoy it, be inspired by it, learn about why it is special and find out what they can do to save this bog and others around the world. So it is important that people can find it easily. There are a large number of visitors to go along the main roads to the north and south of Flanders to and from Stirling and the Loch Lomond National Park and we would like to attract in some of them. Hopefully the surrounding villages will also benefit from these visitors when people go to them for refreshments and services.

The one possible problem is if we attract too many visitors that start to affect the reserve. But if this happens then we easily remove the brown signs to reduce the visitors again.

Spring before the snow

2010-03-29T17:39:00.000+01:00

This is what I have mostly been seeing on the Moss today:

Skylarks singing,
Meadow pipits dispalying
Frogs spawn everywhere
Cotton grass flowers just starting to come out
Curlews bubbling away in the fields
Common gulls on the pools by the boardwalk

Good for the soul and all good reasons to visit Flanders Moss NNR boardwalk over Easter.

Parachute Birds

2010-03-23T17:24:00.001Z

Last night was the last hen harrier count for the winter and other counts since Christmas there were no hen harriers seen. It has been a poor winter for hen harriers at Flanders Moss but we will have to wait and see when all the national count results are collated if this just applies to Flanders or applies across the country.

Despite the lack of raptors it was still a joy standing on the tower watching the day end on the Moss. I did watch with trepidation the onward march of a huge black cloud coming in from the south west bring with it a curtain of rain that crept across the moss and soaked me 5 minutes before the end. But there is always something to see and hear and for me the highlight was a small group of meadow pipits pee peeing across the bog. And then one of them flew up and started singing its display song while spreading its wings and floating gently back to the ground with its wings held still and out. This was the first display flight of what will be many by what the children call the parachute bird.

Thanks to Lorne Gill, the SNH photographer for the photo of the meadow pipit below.

Toad Policemen

2010-03-22T09:23:00.000Z

The warmer wet weather is starting to encourage some action out on the moss. On Friday I headed out onto the Moss and passed an old sheet of corrugated iron. Now turning over corrugated iron sheets is a much underrated pastime as you never know what you might find. Sometimes it is an ants nest, sometimes a vole or two and I live in hope if finding an adder under one though that was never going to happen this time of year. This time there blinking in the day light was a toad. Almost certainly it had in the last few days come out of a hibernation, about a month later than many years. As soon as it has got itself together and had a feed of slugs and earthworms it will head off to its spawning grounds for a few weeks of mating activity. On Flanders this might be the lochan or smaller puddles, ditches and pools. Someone the other day told me that toads can live for up to 40 years if lucky. I rather like the idea of an ancient toad patrolling its same part of the moss for years on end cleaning up the neighbourhood of slugs. "Right what's going on around here then, oi you young feller-me-slug you're knicked,.. slurp. " Every garden should have a toad on slug patrol so why not make a toad home such as a pile of stones or bricks of a sheet of iron and let them clean up your neighbourhood ?
Further onto the edge of the Moss I found 2 rather sluggish frogs, also just out of hibernation and probably heading off to the lochan. From the photos you can easily see the difference, the toad with the lumpy (warty ) skin and horizontal pupil (top 2 photos), the frog (bottom 2 photos) with the smooth, damper looking skin and the rounder pupil. And to help in identification the toad often walks but the frog always hops. All across Central Scotland over the next few weeks frogs and toads are on the move, especially on warmer, wet nights so please be careful at night when driving and try to avoid them as they cross the road.

Pretty Gulls

2010-03-20T15:58:00.000Z

There are lots of gulls about. So what ? Well actually they are worth paying a little attention as at this time of year there is a lot happening in the gull world. At Flanders Moss the other day the field next to the Moss was being ploughed and there were several hundred gulls feeding on the freshly turned soil. After a bit of a watch I found 3 types of gulls, common, black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls moving around the field. All these gulls have different annual life strategies but had congregated at the crossroads that is the Carse of Stirling.

Take the black-headed gull. These gulls breed and winter in Scotland in large numbers, about 43000 pairs breed here but 160 000 winter, the wintering birds being local birds and also from all over including England, Iceland and Scandinavia. These birds by Flanders are on the move to their breeding grounds, stopping off on the way for a feed. Back in the 1950's a huge colony of 10-12000 pairs used to nest on Flanders Moss out by the lochan and it was to these birds that people would walk out onto the Moss to collect their eggs. No-one really knows why the colony on the Moss disappeared but it was unlikely to be down to just the egg harvesting.

The common gulls are not namely correctly as they aren't really common and are in fact declining. About 80 000 birds winter in Scotland but in spring up to 200 000 birds move through Scotland from where they winter down south. These birds at Flanders Moss are probably moving through Scotland and onto Scandinavia and Norway especially. Later in April we may see the pair that nested near to the boardwalk at Flanders return. Maybe this is the start of a big colony like the black-headed gulls ?

As for the lesser black-backed gulls, they are fair weather gulls. Apart from a very few birds they all winter in Spain and southern Europe and return to Scotland to breed in March/April. These birds also used to breed on Flanders Moss, the colony growing to at least 4000 pairs before disappearing in the mid-1980s. One theory for their disappearance was the closing down on the small local landfill sites such as the one at Buchlyvie, their food supplies, and the opening of the further away Polmaise dump. Tellingly lesser black-backs now nest on the roofs of industrial buildings in Stirling, nearer to their food sources.

So next time you spot some gulls have a go at trying to identify them and have a think about how far they might have travelled to get where you are seeing them. A bird id book will help you put a name to the gulls, it is far better than me putting photos on the blog.

Low Flying Witches

2010-03-18T15:50:00.000Z

It is that time of year that birds are starting to think about nesting and if you are at the car park at Flanders you could be mistaken in thinking that one of the birch trees on the edge of the Moss is full of birds nests. But what you are seeing are Witches Brooms. Not birds nests but birch disease. These masses of twigs are caused by a fungus called Taphrina betulina that enters into the tree and upsets the plant hormones (chemicals) that control the growth of the tree. The exact arrangement of twigs and buds in all trees are controlled by these chemicals, each tree has different chemicals which give the tree its distinctive arrangements of twigs and branches. This fungus messes with these chemicals and encourages a burst of twig growing. Why ? So that the fungus can then feed on the increase of plant material. The tree itself isn't actually harmed and can have these "birds nests " on it for years.

If the twig growth all goes in one direction then it can look a bit like a birch or witches broom and was probably used for sweeping where possible. The other theory on their formation is that they are formed when witches fly over the tree. In which case we have a witch flyway over the moss as there are so many.

So if you are in the car park before the leaves are back on the trees check out the witches brooms but keep an eye for low fliers overhead as well.

Twice in a day

2010-03-16T16:33:00.000Z

I got trained on yesterday and it was fantastic. Finally the weather is turning. Glorious as the cold dry weather has been yesterday the wind blew hard from the west bringing heavy showers that the dry moss desperately needs. Many winters have been continually wet and windy so the return of the rumble hiss of the wind was like an old friend met again, the rain welcome even though it barely put the dust down. But that bit of moisture brought colour to the ground and at the risk of sounding like a politician there is evidence of green shoots of recovery in the blasted browns of the bog plants. Later on in the day more evidence of something starting to happen, the first plop of a frog diving in one of the pools and some frogspawn.

I was clearing more junk off the Moss, the remains of another pheasant pen that the past users just left for others to clear up. While doing this I met Mr Miller, a neighbouring farmer who grazes land right next to the Moss. He has been working next to the Moss for over 20 years but has never been out on it and never really wanted to. I hear this quite often and I can understand it, if you are working long hours to manage land productively why go out onto the completely unproductive land next door. Luckily some people are keen to see the Moss and as I was handing out the latest Flanders Moss NNR newsletter a number of people said how much they enjoyed visiting the place. One of the ladies in Berits and Brown said that she had gone down to the Moss for the first time on Sunday afternoon and she enjoyed it so much her second visit was only a few hours later.

By the way if you want a newsletter just contact the SNH Stirling office on 01786 450362 and leave your name and address and we can send you one.

Spinal Tap on the Moss

2010-03-10T15:56:00.000Z

I am sure that it seemed like a good idea at the time, to have a photo shoot with an actual doorway on a National Nature Reserve and people going through it as a visual image to promote people visiting an NNR in the springtime. So I turned up at Flanders Moss this morning to meet a photographer, PR specialist and Bertie, Freya, Christina and their headteacher Fiona Anderson, volunteers from Thornhill Primary School for a photo shoot. Now I know that budgets are tight but when the door prop was taken out of the estate car I felt like I was having a Spinal Tap Stonehenge moment as it was only about 4 feet high. But we all went to work to make the best of it. Luckily Chris the photographer was excellent and the Thornhill team pulled all the right poses and were stars and some of the resulting pictures are attached. I hope they work in encouraging people to get out and visit these fantastic places.

As for the door, it is heading off to Blawhorn and Forvie NNRs amongst others but it was looking a bit battered after its Flanders shift so whether it will last the duration we will have to wait and see. And eventually some pantomime in Glasgow will probably want it back for the Krankies before Christmas.

It is all in a name

2010-03-09T16:47:00.000Z

The birds are looking good today. Finally the lochan has unfrozen and immediately the ducks have found it. 4 teal, 4 mallard and best of all 6 goldeneye. These super smart ducks are probably passing through on migration. A small number of pairs breed in the Scotland but in winter a large number of birds come over from Scandinavia to enjoy the warmer conditions here ( perhaps they wondered why they bothered this year). On the lochan were 2 females being courted by 4 pristine males. The males were doing their courtship thing where they stretch their head up and tilt their heads forward. While doing this they make a noise like a finger being run down a comb fast, twice, or maybe like a duck with a sore throat on helium gas. Anyway they looked fine even if they sounded odd. Overhead greylag geese went one way, pink feet went another and 2 whooper swans went a third. And not far from the lochan another visitor made a brief appearance. A jack snipe flipped silently up from close to my feet and weakly flew about 100 yards before dropping to the moss again. These are rarer, smaller relatives to the common snipe that is usually seen in the area. Jack snipe generally use the UK to pass through in autumn heading south and early spring heading north. But some spend the winter here and I often flush a few over the winter on Flanders. It can be hard to tell the difference from a common snipe which is also out on the moss at the same time but once you get your eye in it gets easier. Firstly it doesn't usually make a noise when it is flushed whereas the common snipe squawks. Then it often waits till the last minute before flying up, sometime from virtually under your feet. Finally the common snipe buzzes away in big flashy zig-zags but the jack snipe can barely be bothered to fly 50 yards before dropping down again. If you do get close enough to see them they are the most beautiful of birds having creamy lines down a back with a sheen of the darkest metallic purple. Surely they deserve a better name than jack snipe, at least something as grand as the goldeneye.

Not like a bog

2010-03-02T17:01:00.000Z

It is rock hard and no standing water. Flanders is not much like a bog at the moment. The long freeze continues with a couple of nights of -8C so the last couple of mornings when I went out to Flanders it creaked but didn't give like it usually does. And it is dry. The rainfall for Jan and Feb has been only 133 mm when the usual monthly average is 100mm. This is the time of year when the peat body is refilled with water after the drier summer period. With the last summer being so wet maybe this isn't so much of a problem but we will only really be able to tell when the freeze comes out of the ground. At the end of March I will be carrying out the first round of water table measuring for the year and will have a better idea of bog wetness then.

This morning I was out meeting Julie, a ranger from north Lewis where they have a wetland Local Nature Reserve that they would like to get people out onto. She came to see out recycled plastic boardwalk to find out if it would be a suitable option for her nature reserve. I hope that what we have learnt at Flanders in getting people out onto a wet hazardous habitat will be of use to her.

A contrast on the Moss as I was waiting for her, a ringtail hen harrier hunting low over the moss showed winter was still with us while a skylark bravely flew high singing a hint that spring was close.

A bum gig

2010-03-01T09:27:00.000Z

Some of you may have been watching the BBC2 TV series called How Earth Made Us. The presenter Prof Iain Stewart travelled the world for the series looking at the impact of the natural forces of earth on humans. He visited amazing places around the world including the Sahara desert, Mexican crystal caves, lakes in Oregon, glaciers in Iceland plus sites in Iran and China.
So imagine his thoughts when he found himself filming on a cold late afternoon in February on Flanders Moss. He was there with a small film crew to make a short part of a series of documentaries looking at man's impact on Scotland's landscape. Their point of interest was the peat clearances of the Carse of Stirling between 1750 and 1860 with Lord Kames and the removal of Blair Drummond Moss as the focus. Flanders was being filmed to show what the moss looked like before the clearances happened. The crew and Iain turned up at nearly 3pm so were chasing the light for nearly all the time they were on the site. One poor cameraman was sent in a ditch to film water flowing over sphagnum while we set up peat core to show the depth of peat. This had to be pulled out and pushed in about 5 times to film different angles. They then filmed in the gathering gloom and sporadic sleet Iain from the viewing tower before finishing at 6pm.
The whole team were in good spirits and didn't complain too much despite the charms of Flanders being hard to discern on that particular day. Though I am sure I could detect a slightly wistful look on Iain face at times as he must have remembered some of the slightly more exotic locations he had filmed and wondered how he landed this bum gig on a bog.

Beware the ice

2010-02-24T14:20:00.000Z

Yesterday I was meeting the Forestry Commission out on the Moss. John and John work on Coalburn Moss in Lanarkshire (amongst and whole host of other sites) and have plans to start restoration work there to make their moss wetter. This means damming ditches so they had come along to Flanders Moss to see the damming work we have done there. It wasn't the best day to show them as it was beautifully sunny but very cold, it had been -8 C at home, and we really wanted it to b wet and wobbly to get a feel for the bog hydrology (water works). But we headed out to look at big and small dams, dams made of peat and recycled plastic and talk flow rates and fluid dynamics. Gradually the sun had an effect and burned off the hoar frost, bringing the sphagnum carpet back to life as its rays touched. Now the ditch that we had to cross to look at the last dam wasn't big and the ice was thick so I crossed fine and the first John crossed OK as well. I don't know if John no.2 was maybe a little heavier or carrying too much gear but the next minute he was through the ice and in the freezing ditch up to the top of his legs. He took it very well all things considered and we headed quickly back to the car park to prevent frost bite setting in. I hope it doesn't put him off, if it did that could have a drastic affect on the recovery of Coalburn Moss.

Crow Country

2010-02-23T12:03:00.000Z

After a week away on holiday I went out to the Moss to get a feel for it again for one of the scheduled hen harrier counts. So an hour spent over sunset in the tower on a gloriously still, crisp, clear and very, very cold evening was perfect. It was so still that any utterance by any bird for hundreds of yards around could be heard. A couple of cock pheasants tried to outdo one another, a distant carrion crow shouted from a tree top and a couple of ravens cronked like distant laughter. Then the silence was shattered as a microlight took off from Easter Poldar airfield. The pilot must have had a truly amazing view but I wonder if he ever wondered what the effect of the racket the machine makes has on others. Once the sun dipped below the horizon deer wraiths appeared on the moss. Roe deer were betrayed by their white bums, red deer materialised out of the scrub edge, first 1, then 3 then 12 before it was too late to see. And then it was time with no hen harriers seen again. They are still using the moss but just haven't been seen on the last two official counts. I headed back to the truck and started down the track before pulling up. There against the navy blue sky were several hundred jackdaws and rooks wheeling around, splitting and joining like a group of big clumsy starlings. Just a small group compared with most roosts these birds were going through their daily preparations for roosting where they fly group aerobatics and call their heads off before heading to the tree tops for the night. A book called Crow Country by Mark Cocker that I read recently describes it far better and in more detail than I ever could if you wanted to know more. Some of the best sights of the day can be from everyday common birds that you might normally ignore.

Crunching bog

2010-02-12T10:31:00.000Z

The Moss has been looking absolutely fabulous these last few mornings. I have been out meeting contractors and counting birds and for once this has coincided with blue skies, crispy cold air and plenty of sun. After the quiet bird count on Monday I had a better day on Tuesday with the first chaffinches singing, a few surviving wrens spotted and best of all my first drumming greater spotted woodpecker of the year. Did you know that woodpeckers hit their heads against a tree at a speed of 20mph and this would flatten a normal bird's skull. But woodies are specially adapted with a thicker skull than other birds, more flexible neck joints, a beak that isn't rigidly connected to the skull and cushioning caused by the powerful neck muscles to withstand the shock. And just to show how well they are adapted they also have stiff feathers around the base of the beak to stop sawdust and wood chips flying up their nostrils, handy huh !
Yesterday as I headed out across the crisp, frozen, crunching moss I misjudged the edge of a ditch and one leg went through the ice nearly to the top of my thigh. There was no danger and I sorted of pinged out again with my waterproof trousers stopping me from getting very wet. But it could have made an uncomfortable walk back.
But as you can see from the photos it is well worth a visit out to the tower and boardwalk for a dry view of the snow capped surrounding mountains.
However apologies for the state of the access track to the car park. A few people have commented on it and we aim to get it patched up as soon as possible but that can't be done until the frost comes out of the ground. When that is is any ones guess but in the meantime I hope you enjoy the snow and frost for the scenic views.

Silent woods on the edge

2010-02-08T17:49:00.000Z

Today I was counting birds. I was carrying out a 2 hour bird count for a specific 2km square as part of the BTO Atlas, an attempt to map the distribution of the UK birds. The first hour was along the woodland edge of Flanders, the second hour was to be back across the open moss. But the birds were thin on the ground. Carrion crows, rooks and jackdaws stalked the farmland but in the woods it was silent. These edge woods, a bog habitat called the rand, are an under rated place. They are not of the conservation value or the majesty of the open bog vistas but are achingly beautiful in their own right, the subtle pattern of tall straight birches broken by the occasional twisted and gnarled tree made beautiful by disease. In the gaps the floor is littered with gonks of battered Molinia grass and scatter cushions of Polytrichum moss. But so few birds. Only a party of great and coal tits, goldcrests and treecreepers passing through make it onto the notepad. It has been a hard winter and some will have perished but it maybe just that others have moved to places with more food like gardens. Not a robin or a wren were heard so spring will tell if they have survived and returned. In the past these woods have been the dumping ground for the local farms and the evidence of this abuse it still there, amongst the metal work a fine bog, on a bog. The only sign of more recent abuse a single birch felled and removed, most probably for Christmas logs.
At half-time it was time to head out onto the open bog and face up to the nagging north wind. Out there a couple of crows hang around. Are there bog crows and farmland crows and do the bog crows chose to be there ? Or do they just move around all habitats looking for feeding opportunities as they go ? But the bog was as quiet as the woods, not a peep of a meadow pipit, not a chack of a stonechat nor pheep of a reed bunting, just the rumble and hiss of the wind. But Flanders always delivers and suddenly charging low over the moss with the wind went a peregrine looking as tight and muscular as a greyhound. And 5 minutes later a red kite sauntered north scoping the ground as it went. I finished up at the High Moss Pow where a line of old, twisted hawthorn mark an ancient land boundary. A final list of only 17 species of birds a poor haul even for winter on Flanders.

Cheeky trees and Denzil Washington

2010-02-07T19:39:00.000Z

It is Sunday on a cold murky February morning and we are out on the west edge of the Moss dismantling a pheasant pen. Why ? Well in its past life Flanders Moss used to be shot over quite a lot. A previous shooting syndicate decided to build a huge pheasant pen but when they finished they left a huge pile of junk and collapsed fencing which should be on one of Scotland's top nature reserves. So we have a hardy band of volunteers who are going to do the demolishing. But it is not just demolishing, we aim to recycle or reuse as much as possible. Some already has been used for giving grip to bridges and for building hen runs and everyone on the work party is looking at what they are dismantling to think what they can re-use the materials for. Ballangrew wood is a dry edge to Flanders and is filled with a mix of straight and twisted trees hinting at an unclear, mixed history. Some of the wind-blown biggest look like a moss covered whale skeletons lying abandoned in the wood. By 1230 everything was done in perfect timing for lunch, the highlight of which was Di's smelly cheese, no actually it really was good.
Smelly cheese digested we head south through the wood to tackle rhododendron seedlings. This is an area where over the years we have been tackling the invasive rhodi and seem to be winning. The huge bushes have mostly been killed but like the aliens films it keep coming back. Seeds in the soils every year sprout into life so we sweep through the woods pulling seedlings as we go. A little heave today is much easier than a major operation later. Through the woods we see the creative browsing of the increasing deer population with the beautiful topiary of the holly bushes. Rhodis blitzed we head out onto the open bog and have a go at pulling and snipping the pine seedlings that are spreading out onto the moss. Claudine swears at the cheeky trees, the smallest that are often the most difficult to put out. She's French. A large brown hare lopes off the moss disturbed by us from his bog siesta.
On the way off the Moss the highlight of the day, we find a small hummock of Spahgnum fuscum, a rare sphagnum moss that has very firm brown hummocks. For a bog manager this is exciting and very beautiful but Di starts muttering about Denzil Washington and I know that I have lost them, its time to go home.

Pinkies and the Beeb

2010-02-05T09:43:00.000Z

It was a bit murky as I drove down the track to the car park at Flanders yesterday, a fresh inch of snow covered the ground and the sun was yet to break through the Carse mist. I clocked the usual rooks and pheasants pinching the sheep's food from their troughs and suddenly pulled up with a sudden jerk as I realised that the stubble field next to the track was absolutely filled with birds. It took me a moment to realise that they were pinkies, pink-footed geese and there was an awful lots of them. I got to the end of the track going very slowly so as not to spook them and then did a quick estimate of numbers. 2500-3000 was the guesstimate and quite a site they made. The sounds of their calls came in waves across the field (pinkies make more of a "wink wink" sound, greylags more of a "wank, wank" - this method of telling them apart isn't for sharing with all visitors on the moss) as they walked back across the field away from me. I did a quick scan across the group for any other species of geese that might be mixed in, in the past we have seen a few barnacle geese, a snow geese and even an odd hybrid mixed in with flocks at Flanders. I also checked for neck rings, these are coloured bands around the neck with a unique code on them that researchers use to track individual birds. They are much easier to read in the field than leg rings. The bustle and noise of the geese moving from field to field as they fed and of more geese flying in in groups brought the landscape alive as the sun burned gaps in the mist and back lit the scene.
I had gone out to Flanders to meet a Tim and Maeve from the BBC. They are making a series of programmes about man's impact on the landscape and were interested in the peat clearances of the 18th and 19th century. They had come to see Flanders not so much because of the bog itself but to see the contrast between the remaining bog and the land where bog had been cleared from. It is hard to get over to people the shear effort that went into the clearing of the peatlands on the Carse, hundreds of thousands of peat were removed to get at the good agricultural land underneath, this activity would have totally dominated local people lives 200 years ago. The landscape would have looked very different with smoke from the burning waste peat rolling over black fields, the workers houses almost indistinguishable from the land itself, and everything stained black. I am not sure if I was able to get this over to the BBC crew but they were very taken with the wobble of the bog when you jump up and down on it and the ease that you can push a stick into the deep soft peat. So we will have to see how they will portray the moss of today.

A good day ends with gerkins

2010-02-02T17:34:00.001Z

Yesterday was a good day. We got lots done and pretty much according to plan for once. Stephen, Nick, Ash and myself headed off to the west side of Flanders to do a number of jobs. Firstly I managed to catch up with one of our neighbouring farmers for a chat. You can do a lot of more work chatting over a fence than chatting over the phone. Stephen, Ash and I then headed off to Ballangrew wood to remove an old sign post and put in a new one. Why 3 of us ? Well the sign designers have over the years been designing bigger and bigger signs and it takes 3 of us to lift the current version into its hole. The next version will probably need a helicopter for installation. We also managed to cut back the rhododendron that was narrowing down an access track and pick up some timbers from a replaced bridge so that we can reuse them . All this and we didn't get our tracked wheelbarrow (called an iron horse) stuck despite being nearly knee deep in mud at times. Meanwhile Nick was using his finely honed Ray Mears fire lighting skills to get a damp fire going in Ballangrew meadow that was to burn up some cut gorse. We joined him at lunchtime and set to to burn a huge pile of gorse that had been cut before Christmas on a volunteer work party. Stephen and Ash then went to patch up a crack in ditch dam while Nick and I finished off the burning up. I then met up with a fencing contractor to look at a job nearby. So by half past four we had completed all the tasks that we had set out to do and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. By then the fire had died down a bit and Stephen was able to weave his magic. Stephen is to bonfire baked potatoes what Michelangelo is to sculpture, but it is not just the potatoes, he always surprises us with fillings. Last time it was olives, this time it was gherkins. Fantastic. Sitting around the fire, aching after a long day it tasted fantastic even in the steady drizzle that had started. Goodness knows what he will do next time.

Busy Sunday

2010-01-31T19:44:00.000Z

I went out to the Moss this afternoon because my wife hadn't seen the viewing tower so we though a quick stroll round would do the job. However it was hooching. It was probably the busiest I have seen Flanders since we have opened the boardwalk with probably 30 + people going round in the time we were there. There were various people that I knew amongst the crowd and I chatted with several as we went round. They were all people with a link to the Moss, there were people who had volunteered on species surveys, people who had come for Christmas trees, people from local businesses that we had used for events on Flanders and local community councillor. Some of them had come down for the first time, some regulars but all had headed out to Flanders for a (freezing cold) breath of fresh air. And all had positive things to say about the Moss and how much they were enjoying their visit. It struck me that there quite a variety of ways that people came to know about the Moss and the different links that they had with the site. And 4 years ago none of them would have been out there as there was no boardwalk and virtually no links with local people. A result.
Another result (maybe) is that this blog has just got little bit better know. We were asked by the Stirling Observer if there was anything new happening at Flanders and they only thing I could think of was the blog. So a very short press release went out but also went out to a few other media. Suddenly someone in the office told me that the blog featured on the BBC Scotland website and then apparently it was in the Herald on Saturday. I even got sent a message on Facebook from a dog who had picked it up on the BBC. The pressure is on to deliver. So welcome to any new bog bloggers, I hope you enjoy what you read and maybe be encouraged to find out a bit more about this special site.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8485561.stm