Auchnerran Blog

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. 

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

Dr David Parish talks us through what's been happening at the Game & Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran, on the publication of its first annual report.

Living in the middle of nowhere is difficult at the best of times. But when a global pandemic hits and you’re not allowed near civilisation, different challenges arise. Limited to brief once-weekly interactions with our boss and farm research assistant Marlies, and the occasional grunt and wave from the farmer Allan, it would be easy to start losing your mind a bit. Thankfully, spring was on hand.

2017 was a busy year on the Game and Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm at Auchnerran. We would like to thank all of the individuals and organisations that made it a success highlighting the importance of integrated land management for Scotland and the UK.

Ironically on a day packed with weather – including sunny spells, sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow showers, we set-up a new weather station today at the farm with colleagues from the James Hutton Institute. 

The last couple of years at GWSDF Auchnerran have highlighted the huge abundance of breeding waders on the site, with Lapwing, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Woodcock and Snipe present in droves. Here are a few photographs from the 2017 monitoring season.

On a much-needed sunny day in Aberdeenshire recently, GWSDF Auchnerran welcomed Graeme Dey MSP, convenor of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee (ECCLRC); and Andrew Proudfoot, senior assistant clerk to the committee.

The LIFE+ Laser Fence project aims to investigate whether low-powered bird-scaring lasers might be effective at excluding various mammalian pests from designated areas.