A little round-up of some recent ranger sessions with the children of the Ross of Mull and Iona. Environmental education is an integral part of our work, encouraging everyone to connect with nature and take action to care for it.
We run afterschool clubs with both Bunessan and Iona primary schools.
Fiona Fraser helped us learn how to be archaeologists with her simulated dig activities.
Both groups found out about the night sky, making star constellations with candles on the beach.
As spring approached we investigated nearby trees and how to identify them from their bark and twigs before the leaves had opened, then thought about what characters might represent them!
Meanwhile in class time, Iona primary became soil scientists helping us investigate the grassland health of nearby farmland, and Bunessan primary are busy writing new information signs for their nature trail at Tiroran Community Forest.
Thank you to all volunteers, parents, colleagues and teachers – it’s always a pleasure to collaborate!
Exciting news! National Trust for Scotland are recruiting for 3 seasonal ranger posts across our islands this year. Please indicate at the top of the application form which is your preferred location. (Currently only the Staffa job description is on the website, but the Lunga and Staffa/Lunga/Iona roles should appear there next week and are very similar.) https://www.nts.org.uk/volunteering-jobs/job-search/highlands-islands-region
At the end of September the ranger service teamed up with Rowanbank Environmental Arts and Education to bring their Positive Imaginings Climate Circus to the woodlands of Mull!
Undaunted by the (at times challenging) weather, the team began to set up and rehearse at Aros Park and Tiroran Community Forest.
We worked with children and staff from all 6 Mull primary schools on interactive workshops about climate change. Sadly Iona school were unable to join in due to weather cancelling ferries.
A series of games and demonstrations helped to explain the science and causes of global warming, how it links to climate change, then we heard about situations around the world where many people had been inspired to become involved in solutions when just one person voiced their idea and started taking action in their own small way. People such as Wangari Maathai planting trees in Africa, or Afroz Shah cleaning beaches in India – their individual actions have built into global environmental movements.
The children used natural materials to make pictures of the positive futures they would like to see, featuring water-powered cars, solar panels, communities that grow their own food, and lots of trees.
Later in the week everyone had a chance to experience a colourful and exciting outdoor performance through the joy and wonder of storytelling, circus and connecting with nature. As the audience arrive at the forest, they are met by Flow, the forest dreamer, and Jay, the planter of oak trees, who introduce them to all the plants and animals living there.
However, as the story unfolds, Flow starts finding black bags in the forest, which represent real environmental problems, and becomes weighed down with anxiety and despair. Jay and the audience must seek help from Anam the Dreamweaver.
Anam empowers people to make their dreams a reality, and weaves the children’s dreams into a bright cloth representing collective action.
At first Flow cannot see the colours, but Anam helps Flow understand that what is needed is a new perspective, to use our imagination to find new ways of thinking and doing. Flow learns how to live with her climate worries and manage these complex emotions: by working with others to take climate action; and by remembering to notice the natural beauty that exists all around us.
The performance ends with a ceremony in which everyone has a chance for their dreams to be heard, the first step towards living in a kinder way for all who share this planet.
Thanks to our fundraising efforts, the work with schools and an additional public performance were supported by The Waterfall Fund, Argyll and Bute Council Supporting Communities Fund, The National Lottery Community Fund and partners An Tobar and Mull Theatre, Forestry and Land Scotland, Mull & Iona Community Trust and South West Mull & Iona Development.
We need to change the pattern, to see things from a different perspective. How do you imagine a positive future here on our islands? What one action could you start taking for our shared environment and communities?
Photos by Ranger Service and Rowanbank staff and volunteers
Back at the end of April, Rebecca Lewis from Buglife joined us on Mull to lead a Riverfly training session on the River Aros.
Cased Caddis
The Riverfly Partnership (RP) was formed in 2004 and brings together anglers, conservationists, entomologists, scientists, watercourse managers and government agencies to increase our knowledge of riverfly populations and actively conserve their habitats.
One of the RP’s leading projects, launched in 2007, is the ‘Anglers Monitoring Initiative (AMI)’. The AMI enables trained volunteer groups to apply a simple monitoring technique to record the presence and absence of 8 invertebrate groups, 7 of which are riverflies. This allows us to monitor the biological water quality of our rivers. The volunteer groups monitor their local rivers on a regular, often monthly, basis and if severe changes are detected a rapid response by the statutory bodies is ensured.
“Empowering citizens to protect their rivers“
The Riverfly Partnership
Training on the River Aros
We now have a small group of trained volunteers on the island who undertook an online training session, followed by spending a few hours with Rebecca on the banks of the Aros to put into practice the sampling and monitoring skills.
The sample collection itself takes only four minutes in total, with three minutes of kick sampling and a further one minute of rock sampling, then the fun part begins!
We spent a significant amount of time pouring over our trays that were filled with a veritable smorgasbord of aquatic invertebrates. We were able to separate individuals into eight groups with the help of a fantastic sorting mat (we can’t wait to use this with adults and schools). This included Stoneflies, Mayflies, Cased Caddis and Freshwater Shrimps. We were pleased to find a great mixture of species and some that aren’t included within the eight groups like Freshwater Limpets, snails and worms. We counted and scored our sample, which will be used as our baseline for future surveys here.
Volunteers Wanted!
We plan to have three sample sites along the River Aros which will be surveyed by volunteers roughly every six weeks. We have a small group of volunteers who attended both the online training and the practical session but we’d love to welcome others to join and develop their skills. We hope to be able to provide more training in the future with Buglife and this will be an opportunity open to those those who join us.
We’re keen to develop a core group which can share out the survey sites along the river and share out each of the survey dates to lighten the load and make sure it’s a fun and friendly experience. The minimum would be at least two people running a survey but the more the merrier and we can always bring along a hot drink and slice of cake to enjoy together on the river bank!
We’re also hoping to start surveying the River Lussa which runs adjacent to Ardura Community Forest. This will help us to keep track of any changes in the river system as the community forest begins to implement it’s long term biodiversity action plan – hopefully we’ll see positive changes in the riverfly populations as native trees are re-established.
How to get involved…
Come along and join us for our next survey on the River Aros on Sunday 11th June.
Jan and I will be there to support those volunteering and we’ll continue to learn together.
Buglife also provided us with specialist equipment including a few sizes of waders and buoyancy aids but it is not necessary to enter the water if you don’t want to. The actual sample collection time in the river is small and the identifying and counting is where we really need support.
If you think you’d like to get involved, do contact either Jan (jdunlop@mict.co.uk) or Rachel (rfrench@mict.co.uk) and we can answer any of your questions.
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.
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.
Mull & Iona Ranger Service 