Auchnerran Blog

Everyone has their own idea of when spring has arrived; for some it’s the first time they spot daffodils coming up, for others it might be the first gloopy frogspawn in a puddle. Here at Auchnerran, it’s a weird, looping sound that fills the skies, almost reminiscent of somebody trying to tune an old radio receiver.

Songbird feeders come in many shapes and sizes and are a common sight in gardens, filled with hundreds of different seed and grain mixes to suit a variety of birds and beak sizes. Yet despite the options available, the reality is overwinter feeding options for songbirds in farmland settings remain somewhat limited. So that is something we are aiming to change with our new songbird feeder research in Scotland.

On a drizzly Saturday in November, four students packed up their fieldwork gear and drove up the winding and picturesque road to Auchnerran, the GWCT Scottish Demonstration Farm.

Well, that’s everything done at our Scottish demonstration farm for another year! Another busy breeding season for the waders is winding down and coming to a close. While we had large numbers of returning birds (with a maximum pre-breeding count of 164 lapwing, larger than both the 2021 & ’22 seasons), we did have fewer nests than in previous years. 

A walk around GWSDF Auchnerran would not be complete without resident buzzards and red kites. We are lucky enough to be visited by an incredibly diverse range of raptor species, such as hen harriers, sparrowhawks and goshawks. Recently, we have witnessed a drastic increase in the number of raptors of various species observed utilising the farm, based on data from our raptor monitoring transects (conducted monthly since 2018).

We are delighted to be able to send our culled rabbits to be used as feed for juvenile golden eagles at the South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project (SSGEP). Remarkably, this project has been able to more than double the population of golden eagles in the south of Scotland since 2018.

Hello and welcome to another Annual Report of our activities at Auchnerran. What a challenging year it has been!

The UK has long been known as a country of animal lovers, with our wildlife and countryside inspiring songs and art for centuries. However, in the UK we are also sadly one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and a number of our beloved species face declining populations for a variety of causes. This unfortunately includes our songbirds, with many species having seen a sharp decline in populations.

In the past, many believed that the curlew’s haunting cry lamented the souls of lost sailors. Sad, then, to reflect that without concerted effort to save the curlew, we may soon mourn its loss to many parts of Scotland.

The capercaillie is a truly magnificent species, one that almost seems too significant and primeval to occur in the small remaining pockets of Caledonian pine forests in the 21st century. The small, declining population of this species is now centred in Strathspey, with fewer individuals occurring in Deeside and Easter Ross. This, sadly, makes observing capercaillie particularly rare in Scotland.