LANARK AREA MEMBER CENTRE BULLETIN ISSUE 29: JULY 2010
WELCOME
Welcome to the July issue of the Lanark Area MC’s bulletin,
which contains articles of general and local interest, updates
on talks, events, etc. I hope you will all contribute news
and events to future bulletin editions. Send any articles,
photos and ideas to postmaster@lanarkswt.org.uk.
Local Events Diary
Caracara
Trail
Dates: Monday 05 July to Sunday 11 July
Time: Drop in anytime from 11am to 3pm
Location: Calderglen Country Park and Langlands
Moss Nature
Meet us at Calderglen Conservatory by the cactus bed to find out
more about the caracara. With the help of Johnny Rook, fill in
the quiz sheet by following the clues around the Zoo and Conservatory
to find the Caracara’s food.
Suitable for children
Cactus
Day at Calderglen
Date: Sunday 11 July
Time: 10am-4pm
Location: Calderglen Country Park and Langlands
Moss Nature
Calling all cactus enthusiasts join us at Calderglen Conservatory,
beside the cactus bed.
Suitable for all ages
Junior Ranger Club
Dates: Tuesday 20 July to Tuesday 10 August
Time: 2pm-3.30pm (approx)
Location: Calderglen
Country Park and Langlands Moss Nature
An event for all aspiring Countryside Rangers.
Suitable for children
Family Nature Events
Dates: Tuesday 20 July to Tuesday 10 August
Time: 1pm-3pm
Location: David Livingstone Centre
School holiday special. Come along and explore the David Livingstone
Centre Grounds looking for insects, wildflowers, trees and small
mammals plus nature games. Be prepared to get mucky. Every Tuesday
afternoon from 20 July to 10 August. Children must be accompanied
by an adult.
Suitable
for children
SWT Falls of Clyde Visitor’s Centre Open Day Date: August 14th Location: Falls
of Clyde Contact: Willie Buttery 01555 665262.
The SWT Falls of Clyde Visitor Centre will be having an open day
and visitors to the VC will have direct access to the New Lanark
Roof Garden. This is a great opportunity for any SWT members to
see the roof garden for free.
Falls of Clyde Update During
the last week of June rangers smelled smoke in the air and a fire
was seen smouldering on the wildlife reserve on the
Lanark bank of the Clyde, opposite Corra Castle. This
is a remote and difficult spot to fight fire and the
fire brigade were called. After bringing it under control,
by beating it, the fire-fighters left for the night,
advising a close eye to be kept on it. The next day,
it was still smouldering. Even the rocks among the
charred heather and blaeberry were glowing with heat
and SWT staff and volunteers made a huge effort raising
water from the gorge to dowse the worst affected areas. The cause
of the fire is believed to have been deliberate: debris
had been set alight down in the gorge which had soon
spread and caused so much damage.
So, please remember to be constantly vigilant, especially through
this hot dry weather.
Sightings: A rare sighting of a Crossbill, whitethroat,
bullfinch, siskin, heron, goosander, pair of tree creepers and
juvenile, chaffinch, great spotted woodpecker, blue tit, lark,
Ermine moth, badger, otter, roe deer.
Other News
Peregrine chicks fledge
Three
of the four peregrine falcon chicks nesting at the Falls of Clyde
Wildlife Reserve and Visitor Centre fledged on the 25th June marking
another successful year for Operation Peregrine, the round-the-clock
protection watch manned by expert SWT staff and local volunteers.
The final female chick is still to fledge and she seems reluctant
to follow her siblings, and still spends much of her day asleep
on the eyrie. Over the next few weeks the chicks will become
adept flyers taking test flights across the gorge on the reserve
before following their parents further into the countryside to
learn how to hunt.
This is a great time to visit the Centre as you can watch the
chicks flying across the gorge and then returning to the nest site
to be fed. If you visit the Centre you can still see close-up
footage of the journey our peregrine chicks have almost completed,
from egg-laying and hatching to their fledging.
Langlands Moss Local Nature Reserve Guided Walk
The
walk through Langlands Moss in East Kilbride was expertly guided by
John R. Hawell. John is a Senior Countryside Ranger for South
Lanarkshire Council based in Calderglen. Langlands Moss was the
first designated a Local Nature Reserve in South Lanarkshire in
1996. We had a lovely walk along the boadwalk through the moss
with John pointing out various plants and animals. We saw
several meadow pippets feeding their young and identified several
plant species such as cranberry, sundew, cotton grass and various
sphagnums.
As
part of the tour John told us about the Friends of Langlands Moss
which is a voluntary group who are working in partnership with
various conservation and interested parties in conserving this
most important habitat. Over the past few years, the Friends in
conjunction with the Countryside Ranger Service have organised
and run various public open days on the Moss. In recent months
the access paths to Langlands Moss have been cleared and are being
re-surfaced. The cost of the materials has been met by the South
Lanarkshire Rural Trust and labour has been provided by South Lanarkshire
Criminal Justice Team.
SWT wants YOU as their Facebook friend
The Scottish Wildlife Trust has launched its official Facebook
page and they need your help to make sure their first week is a
big success.
SWT are hoping that supporters from across the globe will find
and support the SWT on Facebook and help spread the word that SWT
are now officially part of the popular social networking site.
By attracting more Facebook followers SWT hope to get in-touch
with more people who are interested in Scotland’s amazing
wildlife. This support could help SWT achieve more as part
of their efforts to conserve and protect our rich biodiversity
for the future.
New
nature Writing Competition for Unpublished Authors
The Wildlife Trusts (TWT) have teamed up with independent publisher
Elliott & Thompson (E&T) and Foyles to launch a brand new
writing competition for unpublished authors. The winner will see
their entry published in Nature Tales: Encounters with Britain’s
Wildlife, a beautiful anthology of British nature writing which
E&T will publish later this year in partnership with TWT. From
Gilbert White to Charles Darwin, from Robert Macfarlane to Kathleen
Jamie, the book features some of the greatest nature writers of
all time.
The competition invites previously unpublished authors to submit
entries of up to 2,000 words describing a real-life personal encounter
with wildlife by midnight on Sunday 18th July 2010. The winner
will be decided by a panel of judges, comprising Simon Barnes,
renowned naturalist and writer; Michael Allen, Chairman of The
Wildlife Trusts and co-author of Nature Tales; Mark Searle, Publisher
at E&T; Adam Cormack, Communications Manager at TWT and Julia
Kingsford, Head of Marketing at Foyles. The
winning entry will appear alongside contributions from both modern and historic
naturalists, including Roger Deakin, Joseph Banks, Steve Backshall, Simon Barnes
and Bill Oddie, when the book is published on 24th September 2010.
To enter, or for more information on how to enter the nature writing
competition, visitwww.naturetales.co.uk
Two new beavers for Scotland’s first wild beaver trial
On
Wednesday 23 June in Mid-Argyll, two beavers were released in Knapdale
Forest as part of the five-year Scottish Beaver Trial (SBT). The
male and female, which were captured in Norway, bring the number
of resident wild beavers in Scotland to nine. The
pair was released following permission granted by the Scottish
Government on 10 June 2010, allowing additional beavers to replace
or supplement family groups to work towards ensuring a core population
of four breeding beaver pairs is established in the first two
years of the Trial. This pair replaces the third family group,
one adult and one juvenile female which dispersed from the Trial
site last year (June 2009) and a male from the same group that
was permanently removed from the Trial due to an underlying heart
condition. Simon Jones, SBT Project Manager, said: “This
is the fifth group of beavers to be released as part of this
project and what is really exciting is that nearly a year into
the Trial, we are now seeing many signs of positive beaver activity.”
This addition to the Scottish beaver population follows a first
release of three families in May 2009 and, more recently, a further
release of a male and female beaver pair on 4 May 2010. Following
the dispersal of one family and an unfortunate death within another
beaver pair, the new additions are necessary to bolster the Trial’s
beaver population.
The Eagle Has Landed (Again)
The
return of white-tailed sea eagles to Mull, Skye and other parts
of western Scotland has been one of the outstanding conservation
success stories of recent times. The presence of sea eagles in
Mull is currently worth more than £1.5 million to the island
economy. Now a new batch of chicks has arrived in Edinburgh and
will be transported to a secret location in Fife, where they will
be reared until fledging. Although the public generally associate
the sea eagles with the mountainous west of Scotland, their natural
habitat is generally coastal areas, lowland wetlands and estuarine
and riparian areas with shallow, productive waters. As this habitat
is widely available on the east coast, the new eagles should establish
quite easily. In contrast, if left to their own devices, the west
coast eagles could take decades to reoccupy their old haunts in
the lowlands (though sightings do occur). Hence it is hoped that
the white-tailed sea eagles will once again become a regular occurrence
throughout the lowlands since the last native breeding in 1916.
For more information about this project, go to http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/projects/eastscotlandeagles/index.asp (Photo:
RSPB)
The SWT Lanark Members Centre
e-mail: postmaster@lanarkswt.org.uk
web: www.lanarkswt.org.uk
The Scottish Wildlife Trust is a company limited by guarantee,
registered in Scotland (registered number SC040247) having its
registered office at Cramond House, Cramond Glebe Road, Edinburgh
EH4 6NS. It is also a Scottish registered charity (charity number
SC005792).
Caracara
Trail 
Cactus
Day at Calderglen 
Location: Calderglen
Country Park and Langlands Moss Nature 
Location: Falls
of Clyde
During
the last week of June rangers smelled smoke in the air and a fire
was seen smouldering on the wildlife reserve on the
Lanark bank of the Clyde, opposite Corra Castle. This
is a remote and difficult spot to fight fire and the
fire brigade were called. After bringing it under control,
by beating it, the fire-fighters left for the night,
advising a close eye to be kept on it. The next day,
it was still smouldering. Even the rocks among the
charred heather and blaeberry were glowing with heat
and SWT staff and volunteers made a huge effort raising
water from the gorge to dowse the worst affected areas. The cause
of the fire is believed to have been deliberate: debris
had been set alight down in the gorge which had soon
spread and caused so much damage. 
Three
of the four peregrine falcon chicks nesting at the Falls of Clyde
Wildlife Reserve and Visitor Centre fledged on the 25th June marking
another successful year for Operation Peregrine, the round-the-clock
protection watch manned by expert SWT staff and local volunteers.
The final female chick is still to fledge and she seems reluctant
to follow her siblings, and still spends much of her day asleep
on the eyrie. Over the next few weeks the chicks will become
adept flyers taking test flights across the gorge on the reserve
before following their parents further into the countryside to
learn how to hunt. 
The
walk through Langlands Moss in East Kilbride was expertly guided by
John R. Hawell. John is a Senior Countryside Ranger for South
Lanarkshire Council based in Calderglen. Langlands Moss was the
first designated a Local Nature Reserve in South Lanarkshire in
1996. We had a lovely walk along the boadwalk through the moss
with John pointing out various plants and animals. We saw
several meadow pippets feeding their young and identified several
plant species such as cranberry, sundew, cotton grass and various
sphagnums. 
As
part of the tour John told us about the Friends of Langlands Moss
which is a voluntary group who are working in partnership with
various conservation and interested parties in conserving this
most important habitat. Over the past few years, the Friends in
conjunction with the Countryside Ranger Service have organised
and run various public open days on the Moss. In recent months
the access paths to Langlands Moss have been cleared and are being
re-surfaced. The cost of the materials has been met by the South
Lanarkshire Rural Trust and labour has been provided by South Lanarkshire
Criminal Justice Team.
By attracting more Facebook followers SWT hope to get in-touch
with more people who are interested in Scotland’s amazing
wildlife. This support could help SWT achieve more as part
of their efforts to conserve and protect our rich biodiversity
for the future.
The
winning entry will appear alongside contributions from both modern and historic
naturalists, including Roger Deakin, Joseph Banks, Steve Backshall, Simon Barnes
and Bill Oddie, when the book is published on 24th September 2010.
On
Wednesday 23 June in Mid-Argyll, two beavers were released in Knapdale
Forest as part of the five-year Scottish Beaver Trial (SBT). The
male and female, which were captured in Norway, bring the number
of resident wild beavers in Scotland to nine.
The
pair was released following permission granted by the Scottish
Government on 10 June 2010, allowing additional beavers to replace
or supplement family groups to work towards ensuring a core population
of four breeding beaver pairs is established in the first two
years of the Trial. This pair replaces the third family group,
one adult and one juvenile female which dispersed from the Trial
site last year (June 2009) and a male from the same group that
was permanently removed from the Trial due to an underlying heart
condition. Simon Jones, SBT Project Manager, said: “This
is the fifth group of beavers to be released as part of this
project and what is really exciting is that nearly a year into
the Trial, we are now seeing many signs of positive beaver activity.”
The
return of white-tailed sea eagles to Mull, Skye and other parts
of western Scotland has been one of the outstanding conservation
success stories of recent times. The presence of sea eagles in
Mull is currently worth more than £1.5 million to the island
economy. Now a new batch of chicks has arrived in Edinburgh and
will be transported to a secret location in Fife, where they will
be reared until fledging. Although the public generally associate
the sea eagles with the mountainous west of Scotland, their natural
habitat is generally coastal areas, lowland wetlands and estuarine
and riparian areas with shallow, productive waters. As this habitat
is widely available on the east coast, the new eagles should establish
quite easily. In contrast, if left to their own devices, the west
coast eagles could take decades to reoccupy their old haunts in
the lowlands (though sightings do occur). Hence it is hoped that
the white-tailed sea eagles will once again become a regular occurrence
throughout the lowlands since the last native breeding in 1916.
For more information about this project, go to 
