What felt like a long period to be away from home, a partner and a cat, has flown by a bit too quickly. Those swallows that were just arriving as I started my job are now gathering together, preparing for their long journey south, just as I prep for a return to my studies. Eagle chicks have fledged, leaves are starting to turn, hay has been baled. It’s been nice to watch it all happen across such a large area, having had the opportunity to travel around the whole island regularly in the course of my weekly duties.
The highlights have been many – usually wildlife related. Watching a white-tailed eagle build up strength in its wings before leaving the nest was one. Spending a morning in a wildlife hide with 15 holidaymakers as we watched an otter feed for 45 minutes (before another three white-tailed eagles arrived in trees opposite) was another. And I had a lovely evening standing amongst dozens of bats at Loch Torr, just earlier this week.
There’s been plenty to enjoy with the people I’ve worked with as well. Jan has been a hero helping me acclimatise to the role (and helping me find accommodation!), while the occasional workload overlap with Emily at the south end of the island also helped me find my feet. One project I was involved in feels like it’s only just begun – A stakeholder group involving island-based representatives from MICT, Police Scotland, Mull Otter Group, the RSPB and wildlife tour operators, alongside input from national organisations including NatureScot and the National Wildlife Crime Unit, came together to address the recent issues with otter disturbance on the island. The result was new otter-watching guidance, designed to be concise and easy to understand to all visitors – whether they intend to have the binoculars out all day, or if the exciting sighting of an otter is secondary to their planned activities. While it will appear basic to some, we hope it cuts through to those who wouldn’t necessarily research wildlife-watching fieldcraft before they arrive. If anything, it was great to have a group of likeminded individuals from a wide range of organisations come together to help protect one of the island’s star species. The plan is to print leaflets and posters with this guidance, and promote this as a collective concern for all involved.
So thank you to all who have been involved in the above project. And a thank you to all the residents who have kept me informed of concerns from their own area, all the visitors who have been a pleasure to speak to at lochsides and in wildlife hides, and especially to all the café owners who’ve kept me well fed and caffeinated throughout the summer. Til next time!
Paul Fraser, Seasonal Wildlife and Community Engagement Ranger
Protect Mull’s otters
When watching wildlife, the animals’ welfare should always come first.
Keep your distance. If an otter reacts to your presence, then you are too close.
Remain quiet, keep a low profile and stay downwind. Move slowly, and only when the otter is underwater.
Never follow or chase an otter if it tries to leave the area.
Do not disturb other species, particularly ground-nesting birds.
Park responsibly. Never block roads or passing places.
Remember, it is an offence to disturb an otter or obstruct access to its breeding ground or resting place. This is punishable with up to 12 months imprisonment and a fine of up to £40,000. Please report any incidents to Police Scotland on 101.
There can hardly be a better job than travelling between stunning locations around Mull, chatting with folk and scanning the landscape for wildlife. While there’s the occasional uncomfortable encounter with overzealous wildlife watchers, it’s been reassuring to learn that the vast majority of people have the best interests of the animals at heart.
One of the only downsides is I’m rarely in one place for long. My ‘patrol’ area covers the whole island meaning I have plenty of places to go, people to see, and little time to practice the key wildlife-watching tactic that I preach: patience.
Even when I do have time to search out specific species, my day can sometimes (actually, oftentimes) end in disappointment. Fortunately, I’ve always been one to enjoy whatever nature sends my way, which, as it turns out, can be quite a lot on Mull.
So while I might not get much of an opportunity to enjoy the big ‘headline’ species found on and around the island – the eagles, the otters, the seals and cetaceans – I always try to make the most of the smaller but no less special encounters I have whilst out and about.
While many scan the skies and lochs on the drive to Lochbuie, they can miss some brilliant sights mere metres away. Throughout June and July, I’ve watched rugby ball-sized greylag goslings lose their early fluffy down and gain their adult feathers. Young snipe have peeked out at me from behind grass. And I’ve seen lapwing chicks (surely the cutest?) stumble around the grassier areas, while their parents stand on alert nearby.
A call regarding irresponsible wildlife watchers getting too close for comfort to an eagle nest meant a long afternoon drive around the middle of the island, to install some warning signage and reattach a traffic barrier. Fortunately, curlew and wheatears kept me entertained along the way; a stranded adder allowed me to test my snake rescue skills; and a huge golden-ringed dragonfly plonked itself down next to me as I got to hammering the signs together.
Finally, a visit to Loch Torr Wildlife Hide, where the visitors present were disappointed not to see eagles and otters, became a competition to see who could identify the most species. House martins, sand martins and swallows were all visible from one spot, offering a great opportunity to compare their physical appearance and flight patterns. Redpolls and whitethroats made an appearance, while a small field vole fed amongst the scrub a mere 2 metres away, oblivious to our presence.
It can be easy to get caught up looking for the ‘big ticket’ species, but it can be disheartening too. So be sure to to keep your eyes and ears open to other wildlife nearby – You might see your new favourite creature!
Staffa is one of the islands we look after here at the ranger service, it’s part of our partnership with the National Trust for Scotland.
Plenty of activity on this little island recently! Louise King, the new NTS seasonal ranger has arrived and is enjoying getting to know the place and enhancing our visitor experience with plenty of information, often to be found at the puffin colony where birds are returning and have just started coming on land to sort out their burrows for egg laying. Louise brings a lot of knowledge about rockpool creatures and marine mammals, here she is investigating the intertidal zone.
Sadly the birds that are not returning are our fulmars. Cliff faces that were dotted with nest sites a few years ago are now eerily quiet. Fulmar populations are declining nationally, with marine plastic and climate change affecting food supplies, but ours gave up their breeding attempt mid-season last year and have not returned. We don’t know if they were spooked by something or whether it’s just part of the general decline for this species, but it’s sad to lose a breeding species from the island. Hopefully they will try and re-establish a colony in the future.
Empty cliff face this year compared to last year’s studded with the white dots of nesting fulmars (photo by Rachel Bonnici).
More positively, Louise and Emily spent a night on Staffa with volunteer bird-enthusiast Igua, to enable a dawn black guillemot count which revealed numbers of this auk species are healthy. Birds nest in hidden cracks in the cliffs, but fly down before sunrise ready to head out to sea to fish, displaying their big red clown feet as they perch on the edge of the rocks ready to dive in!
Black guillemot (photo by Terry Ward) and sunset light over Staffa with views to neighbouring islands
In other wildife news, we are keeping a close eye on the colony of shags breeding in Clamshell Cave this year. As they are so close to the landing jetty we need to ensure they have fledged all of their chicks before we start improvement works there in late summer/autumn. This means Staffa will be closed to all landings for a couple of months from mid-late August onwards.
Landing jetty, and shags getting ready to breed area in nearby Clamshell Cave, can you spot any nests?
On the maintenance side of things, we hosted NTS Footpath Manager Bob Brown last week to help us plan future repair work. We love welcoming visitors to explore this National Nature Reserve, but tens of thousands of human feet every year do take their toll on the ground surface, so we are gradually making paths more durable and less muddy. We also completed a spring beach clean and good to see there wasn’t too much rubbish needing taken away.
Bob checking the condition of recent footpath repair work
As avian influenza (bird flu) continues to be a threat to seabird colonies, we will be installing a disinfectant mat and roping off some areas to reduce disturbance to our seabirds, please watch out for signage on the island and play your part in protecting our wildlife.
Meanwhile the National Trust for Scotland are recruiting for 2 roles which will work alongside our ranger service here on Mull, Iona and Staffa – a Staffa Seasonal Ranger, and an Inner Hebrides Property Manager.
Creativity can help us to celebrate our enjoyment of nature, which motivates us to care for it. Both Iona and Bunessan afterschool clubs have had great fun with art activities recently, many thanks to Shirley and Julie for leading these.
The newer shed at the Ross of Mull Community Garden is now adorned with these cheery flowers.
Use the slider to view a lichen-covered rock on an Iona beach and a painted copy of the pattern onto a smaller stone. Plenty of creativity on show with these painted stones!Stone painting in progress
We’ve also had a lot of fun with den building, outdoor cooking, investigating freshwater invertebrates and those which help the composting process, tree height measuring, making bug hotels and learning to recognise birdsongs. Look out for events on offer over the summer holidays.
This is the year that Scotland hosts COP26, when world leaders will gather in Glasgow in November aiming to make progress on tackling climate change. Our summer Nature Adventure Days programme for 11-18 year-olds wove this theme through explorations of our countryside and coastline, thinking about ways in which we influence our natural environment locally and globally and about how we can amplify the voices of our young people and their opinions on climate change.
Thanks to continued funding from Baillie Gifford, this year the ranger service was able to offer 5 days of activities working in partnership with Headland Explorations. On the 7th July, 8 young people enjoyed a day on Staffa, travelling with Staffa Trips and experiencing a close encounter with a minke whale! A low tide gave the oppportuntity to explore the coastline below the puffin burrows with the whirr of puffin wings going back and fowards above our heads. We had lunch at the puffin colony and then took part in a storm petrel survey, playing a recorded call and listening for the response to find nest sites hidden amongst fallen boulders and old walls.
Exploring Staffa’s coastline
We thought about how the landscape and its wildlife has changed due to human actions, and might change in the future. On Staffa this ranges from the impacts of sea level rise (already being felt in the loss of other islands around the world) and increasing storms, facilities built for visitors (the hotel proposals that never came to be; a tourist shelter in use 200 years ago is now wildlife habitat again; whereas current visitor levels require improvements to paths and stairways to help with erosion and overcrowding), to the changing population numbers of seabirds and grazing animals.
These photos taken by participants Alex Welsh and William McLellan
The 21st of July saw another group of 8 young people voyage aboard the beautiful B.Marie with Alternative Boat Hire Iona. On a warm day with not enough wind for sailing, they decided on a trip around the south coast of the Ross of Mull to Traigh Gheal beach where they cleared up rubbish swept in from the sea, and enjoyed some impromptu raft-building and dinghy training! Lunchtime conversation centred around where all this marine plastic comes from, and how we can reduce it at source by choosing less packaging in the products we buy. Some clothing is even made out of recycled plastics collected from the oceans! We also talked about the areas where we don’t have direct control over our own choices, and part of the answer is to campaign and make our views known to decision-makers who can do something about the bigger issues.
Leaving the lovely Traigh Gheal beach a little cleaner than we found it!
The following week saw 4 intrepid adventurers climb up into the cloud on the Ardmeanach hills above Tiroran, to be rewarded with opportunities for rock-scrambling, an exciting find of a golden eagle wing feather, and an epic game of hide-and-seek in the woods on the way back down. Carpets of colourful flowers prompted discussions on biodiversity, and our lunchtime chat focused on pollinating insects, their importance in producing much of the food we eat, and what we can do to help them flourish. We looked down over Tiroran Community forest which we are also trying to make a better place for nature.
Enjoying the hills in spite of the low cloud, aided by an umbrella hat!
On 4th August we were rock climbing near Knockvologan with 11 young people. On the nearby beach of Traigh a’Mhill Knockvologan Studies artists helped us find ways to work as a team and produce giant artworks, inspired by the geoglyphs that ancient peoples used to mark their landscapes. Today’s lunchtime conversation was about how feeling a connection to our local environment (such as through rock climbing, outdoor art or growing our own food) can help us care for it – and that we can make choices such as purchasing local food or Fairtrade products to help others improve their own local environments while producing crops that we can’t grow here in our climate.
Connecting with nature through beach art and climbing at Knockvologan
The final Nature Adventure Day this year found a group of 6 young people kayaking with Bendoran Watersports. After a great time on the water they thought about messages they would like to pass on to those in power politically or commercially, see if you can spot any of them here. If you would also like to make your views known ahead of COP26, please add your voice to the Climate Scotland campaign and show our leaders you care.
Our ranger service is under threat due to lack of funding. If you value the work that we do, please consider donating here. NatureScot will match fund every contribution up to a total of £6000 so every little helps!
During the past year of intermittent lockdowns I’ve found a lot more time for reading, curling up with a good book on days when the weather’s too extreme for meeting up with neighbours outside! Nature writing is now a vast and diverse genre, so I thought I would share some of the nature books that have inspired, amused and comforted me recently.
Simon Barnes writes with a humorous and light-hearted style and his book ‘Bird Watching with Your Eyes Closed’ is a great place to start for anyone wanting to tune into the birdsongs around us. He recommends beginning at this time of year, recognising the sounds you can hear in winter so that new songs will stand out to your ears as they build up throughout the spring. You’ll also find out why birds sing, and their connections with humanity over time: “Birdsong is not just about natural history. It is also about our history. We got melody from the birds as we got rhythm from the womb. Birds are our music: they teach us to express emotion and beauty in sound. The first instruments ever made were bird-flutes.” A free podcast accompanies the book and can be found here: https://shortbooks.co.uk/book/birdwatching-with-your-eyes-closed
We’re often told that ‘spending time in nature’ is good for us, its importance evidenced by the inclusion of our ‘daily walk’ as an essential reason to be out and about during lockdown…but what does this mean in practice? Perhaps it’s different for each of us. Gaelic place names reveal a lost everyday familiarity with details in the landscape. I’m sure beauty plays a part, although might not be enough when you’ve been scratched, bitten, stung or soaked, or are staring at yet another load of plastic washed up on the beach.
Scientific theories abound: from the health benefits of daylight, fresh air and exercise; to the phytochemicals emitted by plants which can have positive effects on our brain chemistry; the value of wonder and curiosity; or biophilia – even with all our technology, humans are still mammals after all and therefore fellow creatures at home in the natural world. For lockdown reading though, I wanted stories rather than theories, so here are my top recommendations for some personal stories where nature has a role in giving solace.
A severe illness forced William Fiennes to put his career on hold and return to the house where he grew up, once more depending on his parents for support. While convalescing he became fascinated by the garden birds, which inspired a new adventure. His book ‘The Snow Geese’ documents his travels as he follows birds across America, focusing on character studies of the people he meets along the way, and his thoughts on migration, homesickness and what it means to leave and to return.
Amy Liptrot couldn’t wait to leave Orkney for an exciting life in London, but years later as a recovering alcoholic finds herself drawn back north to its windswept clifftops. ‘The Outrun’ is her story of reconciling her need for excitement with the renewed hope she finds amongst wildlife and wide open spaces.
‘The Salt Path’ finds Raynor Winn and her terminally ill husband walking hundreds of miles around the coastline of Devon and Cornwall. Homeless after a failed investment took away their house, smallholding and the dreams they’d worked so hard for, they discover purpose in the daily rhythm of packing up the tent and walking on in the narrow strip between civilisation and the ocean. Its sequel ‘The Wild Silence’ contains one of the best descriptions I’ve read of how connection to the land can sustain us – between vigils at the hospital bed of her dying mother Ray wanders the fields of her childhood landscape, and wonders if their recent endurance journeys could hold the key to her husband’s health. (For those who prefer podcasts, Raynor tells her story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p090xbkk)
At just 14, Dara McAnulty was the youngest ever winner of the Wainwright Prize and his ‘Diary of a Young Naturalist’ is so beautifully written. Chronicling a year in his life in which he faces bullying, school exams and moving house away from his favourite places, it shows amazing self-awareness as he describes what it’s like to be a young autistic boy with a passion for saving the planet. He must overcome difficulties of social interaction in order to follow his desire for environmental activism, along the way describing in intricate detail the lives of birds of prey, insects, wildflowers and his own family, all of them companions which delight and do not judge.
These are stories I will return to many times, and I hope you draw some inspiration as I have from accompanying authors who’ve written bravely about the sustaining power of connecting to nature even in times of deep distress. People who are honest about how tough life can be but somehow gain the resilience to keep on caring no matter what.
This time I’d like to tell you about some nature writing we have created! Former ranger service volunteers Natalie Weiner and Margaret McLarty have been working hard on writing and illustrating a children’s story called ‘Fisherman Pete and the Pirate Problem’. It’s a fun and informative book to teach children (and their parents) about the lives of puffins on the island of Staffa and how even the smallest visitors can play a big part in protecting both the island and the puffins that nest there! It explains how to behave around the puffin colony and that the presence of humans results in fewer attacks from the skuas which specialise in stealing food caught by other seabirds. Of course the skuas are as much part of the marine habitat, but this story is told from the puffins’ point of view!
Fisherman Pete is a little puffin with a big problem… a pirate problem! Captain Brown Beak and her band of Skuas are on a mission to steal the food Pete caught for his hungry family. Can you help him solve his problem and get home in time for tea?!
Continuing the nature writing theme, this month I’m looking at the work of author Robert MacFarlane. His book ‘The Wild Places’ is a favourite of mine, in which he sets off on a serious of beautifully described journeys to remote corners of Britain and Ireland in search of wildness. In the end, his intense experiences in some awe-inspiring places teach him to be more attentive to the wild in the everyday, in the country lanes and fragments of woodland around the edges of his home city of Cambridge. Quite an appropriate message for lockdown life where we’ve all learned to find a new appreciation of nearby nature in our immediate surroundings.
Another book ‘Landmarks’ focuses on the vocabulary we use to describe the outdoors, how it varies across countries and regions, and how knowing the words can also help you to notice the details they describe. A recent NatureScot report on ‘Ecosystem Services and Gaelic’ (available online) also picks up on this fascinating theme, looking for evidence in Gaelic place-names, poetry and song of people’s relationship with nature and the many different ways it has provided our food, medicine, fuel, shelter, recreation over time. MacFarlane’s lovely ‘Lost Words’ series in collaboration with artist Jackie Morris also brings vividly to life through poems and pictures lots of simple nature words now removed from children’s dictionaries and I’ve greatly enjoyed making use of this material in my work with local schools.
In ‘The Old Ways’ he suggests two questions we should ask of any landscape: “…what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then…what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?” Whether you can’t wait to travel or are enjoying getting to know your local area in depth, I hope you enjoy your own explorations.
As lockdown started to ease, the ranger service teamed up with Camas Outdoor Centre, Bendoran Water Activities Club, Headland Explorations and South West Mull and Iona Development’s new community garden to provide 3 weeks of outdoor activities for the second half of the school summer holidays. As all the usual summer island events were cancelled, we wanted to provide some fun primarily for local families who might not manage a break away this year after being cooped up homeschooling for weeks
Despite limited places available due to rules about the number of households able to meet together, we soon had happy kayakers in Camas bay and rock climbers tackling routes at Knockvologan and Camas Quarry.
Volunteer Abbie Cato helped plan and run some nature events for younger children. We went to Fionnphort beach and found lots of interesting rockpool creatures including shore crabs, blennies, two types of anemones and bright orange breadcrumb sponge:
Then played some games about food chains (who eats who in the rockpool), limpets (did you know they move around underwater eating algae, then as the tide goes out they go back to their ‘home scar’ where their shell grows to match the rock exactly and stop them drying out), dolphin echolocation (we’ve all noticed more marine mammals around during lockdown, with reduced boat traffic), and seabird migration – designing obstacle courses around which we had to throw stones representing birds on their journey.
The following week we had a real-life mystery quest at Camas – to figure out why there was an abandoned oystercatcher nest on the beach. We discussed how rangers might find out – looking for tracks and signs, watching from a hide, using trail cameras etc. Participants had great fun with magnifying glasses looking for wildlife clues down the track, such as footprints in the mud. We had a shortlist of 3 predators – mink, otter and raven and learned about where each of them lived, and practised moving like our chosen creature. Each child then had a pizza box with a lump of clay to make into a pizza and a list of toppings (the diet of their chosen animal) they had to collect things to represent these eg. crab shell, rabbit skull, grass seed to represent grain, make seaweed into a picture of a spider etc.) which we took up to Camas’ outdoor pizza oven and pretended to cook. Next we built a wildlife viewing hide in the woods from branches – and managed to stay still for 5 minutes while a few small birds came past. The group decided that the raven was the likely culprit and were rewarded with the sight and sound of one flying past overhead.
We also held an activity day at our emerging community garden in the grounds of the Ross of Mull Historical Centre, looing at invertebrates found in the stream and on bushes and trees. After hunting for them, drawing them and making cardboard models, it was time to help with garden clearance and we had a go at sawing rhododendron branches and trimming willow twigs. Everything will be reused for garden structures or wildife habitat piles.
After weeks of back-garden citizen science earlier this summer, I’ve also been having my own nature adventure days on several recent trips to Burg, checking on our species-rich grassland, clearing bracken and monitoring some rare species including the slender scotch burnet moth and the tiny Iceland purslane plant. Huge thanks to all the volunteers for their help! Had some lovely sightings of golden eagles and peregrines around the cliffs while there. Also on a pre-season trip to Staffa our boat was surrounded in all directions by dozens of common dolphins leaping into the air!
It’s great to be out and about again isn’t it? Whether local resident or visitor we can all play our part in leaving no trace, take your rubbish home or hold onto it until you find a bin. Please don’t throw it out of your car window. We picked up 30 bags of roadside rubbish during lockdown and sadly it’s starting to reappear on the verges 😦
Thanks for reading and please make sure to take care of our environment on your travels. Emily
Photos by Philip Yielder, Peter Upton, Abbie Cato and Emily Wilkins
Join me on a little walk around the nature trail set up by Bunessan Primary School’s Class 1 last autumn, to look at the changes now it’s spring.
Can you spot the differences between November and May in the photos below?
The fungi we found have all disappeared or dried up, but instead there’s lots of spring flowers. Can you spot primrose with yellow pimpernel, violet, dandelion, tormentil, bluebell, wood anemone and willow? Click on the pictures to zoom in.
There’s lots of fresh green leaves as well…beech and larch trees, spruce tree buds opening, ferns, young hazel tree, birch tree, rowan tree seedling, bilberry. Again, click on the pictures to zoom in.
It’s been a really dry spring. The burn beside the path has completely dried up.
The sphagnum moss which was so colourful in the autumn has dried out and turned pale, and all the water in the little pond below the fallen tree roots has gone, can you see the pondweed leaves sticking to the mud?
The puddles along the track where we saw lots of creatures have dried up, just last year’s cones now lying on the ground.
Some things have stayed the same though: our markers with painted numbers, the little bridge and evidence of deer!
Mull & Iona Ranger Service 