Blogs

On a surprisingly sunny afternoon during an otherwise extremely wet week in early June, a group of South Yorkshire farmers dedicated to grey partridge recovery gathered for a farm walk to celebrate their farmer cluster’s successes so far.

For barn owls, nesting sites have become an important factor in the life cycle. Loss of hollows in old trees through woodland clearance and replanting, the conversion of traditional barns on farmsteads to dwellings for humans, and the need for modern grain stores to be wildlife-free zones for food hygiene purposes have all contributed to the housing problem.

Wasps are widely disliked. Renowned as unforgiving and unnecessary, delivering stings which they have the cheek to survive, unlike our beloved bees, often doomed to a single, fatal defence. But what if these wasps were just as much a farmer’s ally as pollinating bees?

It’s hard to believe how quickly the last six months have passed. The placement has flown by in a busy whirl of tubing samples, identification, data entry and analysis, and the occasional bits of fieldwork. Since September, much of our time has been concentrated in the lab, learning key invertebrate identification skills whilst working through samples collected during last summer.

With nearly 70% of Scotland’s land used for agriculture, farmers will play a key role in addressing the biodiversity and climate crises. In order to document what habitats are present and their condition, NatureScot has been developing tools to help farmers to quantify their habitats and how they are performing.

One aim of the PepsiCo FAB project is to enhance communication between project participants. Over the course of the project, this has been done in a number of ways including regular updates, building relationships and providing project-related training events.

Unlike some of our more celebrated raptors, kestrels often slip under the radar, which makes understanding their needs, and finding practical ways to support them, all the more important.

Every record we make, every flower counted, and every insect identified is part of a much bigger puzzle. Together, our research shows how farmland can be managed so that crops, wildlife, and people all thrive side by side.

A lot of our local Farmer Clusters create habitats to help with breeding success and overwinter survival. One of these is the Cranborne Chase Farmer Cluster, where members of our Farmland Ecology team are monitoring their breeding success, to investigate their use of farmland habitats whilst foraging for invertebrate prey for their chicks.

As spring arrives in the Scottish Lowlands and the mornings start to creep earlier and earlier, it means it’s time for the Lowlands team to complete the annual partridge spring pair surveys at Balgonie Estate.