Cottage Holidays throughout Scotland

So what of 2011 in terms of wildlife and what have been the highs and, for that matter, the lows?          As usual, there have been plenty of both, and in a sense it started  with the very cold weather  of the early part of the year with temperatures down to minus 15 Centigrade in our garden and plenty of snow for weeks on end.    We made our annual winter trip to Burghead along the east coast from Inverness to sit on the peninsular  near the harbour and watch the seaducks.   The scoters have always appealed to me since I first saw a pair of common scoters breeding up in the flowe country of Sutherland some years ago.  However the object of our trip was the king eider that had been reported there.   Fortunately  close to the shore and we had superb views through the telescope at the young male that was just moulting into its full breeding plumage.

There was one other surprise on the duck front for the year and that was one of the very few new birds for our garden.  One morning I had idly  glanced down at the few mandarin ducks  on the pond on a number of occasions.  Then for some reason I looked closer and suddenly realised that one of the birds was a wood duck, often called a Carolina duck.  It was a splendid  male and eventually it walked up with the mandarins to where I had been putting  out mixed grain for them.  It stayed a short while and we have not seen it again.  It was presumably  from a local collection but there have been known records of what could have been migrants.

The biggest disappointment  of the year was undoubtedly  the lack of butterflies in most areas with very few species up to their normal numbers.    In the extensive dunes just east of Nairn for example, where we could see ten species in a day, we only found three and those only  in ones or twos.  In our acre paddock we could expect species in double figures for the year  whereas we only recorded three, possibly four.  Only the Scotch argus seemed anywhere near their normal numbers but even they were down.   One can only wonder how this will affect this coming season.  The only boost was the number of red admirals at the back end suggesting they might now be successfully hibernating as  adults and surviving.

On the mammals front there was a great triumph as the “Atlas of Highland Land Mammals”, edited by Ro Scott, was published by the Highland Biological Recording Group.    If you have not obtained a copy they are   £8.50, including the p & p, so just send a cheque payable to HRGB to Ro Scott, Peddieston Cottage, Cromarty, IV11 8XX.  I can assure you that  it will  more than please you.  On  the personal  front the mammal of the year has to be one in the paddock close to the house.  We had been putting out mixed grain overnight for the wild ducks to come up at first light and feed undisturbed.  Looking down from the bedroom window at dusk one evening there was a badger feeding  on the grain only about few yards  from the house.  Not only that but it was joined a few minutes later by another and they stood gobbling up the food as fast as they could.  Perhaps to put this time of the year in 2012 into perspective, records for 2011  indicated there was frog’s spawn near Lochinver and on the Black Isle in the third  week in February so not long now……

Whilst we may find the cold weather with its mixture of low temperatures, snow and ice inconvenient for most wildlife it is more a question of survival.   Survival not only means finding enough food but also outwitting would be predators and two animals and a bird choose to change their plumage and coats to adapt for camouflage.  The mountain hare, for example, changes to a white winter coat to enable it to avoid being taken  by golden eagles.  Stoats also change into their famous ermine although not all of them.  Even in the cold some stoats will stay in their brown coats of summer and it is now known that this is related to hereditary  factors  plus shorter days.  Whatever the coat of the stoat, it always retains one diagnostic feature and that is the black tip to its tail.  The only bird to change into a white winter plumage is the ptarmigan and apart from the white winter feathering they will also move  to slightly lower altitudes in the winter months.

Some wildlife such as the frogs, toads and lizards just go into a type of hibernation.   Even then there is a difference in  coping.   Toads will generally all leave their breeding sites such as lochans and ponds and find holes or crevices to stay.  Frogs may try and stay actually under water and take in enough oxygen through their skin.  Their problem is just how cold it gets as if the water is not deep enough it may freeze completely which is a disaster for them.  However despite the winter weather to come there is the thought that there will be the first frogs’ spawn in late February so not many weeks to go!

The problem of survival for wildlife is one that many of us see every day in our gardens that attract large numbers of birds particularly small birds  from siskins to chaffinches and greenfinches to blackbirds all gathering  to get what food we put out.   Gone are the  rivalries between birds as the most important activity is to find food.  In my garden I put out, daily, supplies in  a range of feeders offering such food as niger, sunflower hearts, peanuts, mixed grain and suet.  Blue tits, great tits and coal tits are normally the earliest and latest birds as they are very small and need so much food almost constantly to keep going.  In the last few years larger birds such as woodpigeons and pheasants have been coming into garden even in Inverness.  Pheasants can be quite tame in both rural and urban gardens and the dark female pheasant I took in the photograph is typical.   She was walking  around in the snow just waiting for some mixed grain to be put out.

What is important, especially at this time of the year, is continuity of feeding. If you are going away even for a couple of days it is important to either put out more food than usual or get a friend or neighbour to top up the feeders.  Birds need a daily intake of food and if you suddenly stop they will have difficulty in finding another source and may die.   Water too is very important as they need it to wash and keep their feathers in maximum condition to keep them warm in the low temperatures.

The best book for studying garden birds is “Garden Birds and Wildlife” by Mike Toms and Paul Sterry at £20.

Tracking animals in the snow is not the only way to find signs of animals in the countryside.   There are many other signs that reveal the secrets of animals and help us to play “nature detective”.   Tracks can be found in other coverings   such as mud or sand on the sides of rivers and burns.  This is a good place to find tracks of otters and the tracks of their fore footprint is almost circular which gives them away.   Low water after a spate will give bare banks of sand and mud where the tracks can easily be found.     The other tell-tale signs of otters are  their droppings, called spraints, and these are often on rocks especially where two water courses join.  When fresh otter spraints are tarry, black and slimy with a long lasting oily smell.

Cones on various types of conifers attract animals and a few birds and when they attack them on the trees the cones often fall to the ground and can readily be examined.  I regularly visit a group of tall, old Scots pines at the east end of Loch Farr in Strathnairn  to look at the cones.   Red squirrels attack the cones with some vigour and only leave the core with a tell-tale bulge of scales at the end.  A cautionary note here as wood mice do the same but the end result of their activities has a  much smoother appearance.  The red squirrels will often gather the cones together on a  feeding point such as the old stump of a felled tree where a pile of cones can sometimes be found.   At the Loch Farr trees there is also the added bonus of crossbills but they leave the cones looking almost whole with just the  scales opened up for the birds to reach the seed with their crossed beaks specially designed for this.

If you are fortunate enough to come across hazel trees that have  nuts on them there are  various ways to tell which animals  have attacked these to get into the kernels.   Red squirrels find them very attractive and in one or two places it has led to their downfall.  One example is on the south side of Loch Ness running south from Dores.  Most of the hazel trees are on the loch side of the road right along the banks of the water edge.  To get at this food source means  the red  squirrels have to cross the busy  road and risk collision with traffic.  There have been two ways in which this has been partly solved.  One is the signs on the sides  of the road warning drivers that there may be red squirrels crossing the road.  Another is ropes slung between the overhanging trees so that the animals can walk or scamper across.  Both methods have been partly successful but there are still a few red squirrels  that meet their fate on this road.  There is one interesting record from there in that one day someone watched a buzzard try to take a red squirrel  off one of the overhanging ropes although apparently it did not succeed.    The red squirrels use their lower teeth to gnaw into the tip of the hazel nut and then insert the upper teeth downwards so that the nut splits open.    In contrast wood mice will gnaw a neat hole in the side of the nut to get at the kernel.   All signs to help the “nature detective”.