Uplands Blog

Sam is one of the newly started graduate interns with the Uplands Research team, working in the North Pennines.

A local artist heard about our image of a stoat predating a curlew nest and wished to paint it whilst recuperating from a major operation.

I recently read Jeff Knott’s blog on the RSPB website – “There’s something very special about the uplands” – and I couldn’t agree more with the title. But on reading the rest of the blog, I felt obliged to respond. Not to reinforce the ‘contested landscape’ notion but to ask for a bit more tolerance. Just because you might not agree with someone’s viewpoint it doesn’t mean they are wrong, and you are right.

The late May bank holiday is never much of a holiday for our Scottish uplands research team. This date often marks the start of our grouse chick-catching period. There is a window of just a few weeks to get around all the study areas to record the tick burdens – before the chicks are large enough to fly away from us.

We have used trail cameras to provide a unique insight into the nesting behaviour of this elusive and secretive bird, which nests on heather moorland in northern England.

A new fieldwork season has begun and along with it a new project, bringing new tasks. The maternal red grouse condition project commenced in March when 70 red grouse hens were caught from seven different study sites in Upper Teesdale, North Pennines.

Grouse moors appear to form important refuges for breeding merlin. However, recent merlin declines have been suggested to be due to intensified cutting and burning of heather to favour grouse, thereby reducing both the availability of tall heather for nesting and the numbers of small birds, particularly meadow pipits, which themselves have declined by 40% between 1970 and 2010 and are currently on the amber list of Birds of Conservation Concern.

The period immediately following sunrise is usually said to be the best time to survey for most diurnal species, but was it the same for pipits?

With the merlin gone for the winter, we have been busy in the uplands taking field measurements to understand what makes habitats suitable for nesting merlin. As merlin are specially protected, it is important that they are not disturbed while they are breeding, so we collect these measurements after the breeding season ends.

The Uplands team are pleased to deliver some new research from the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project.