My Next Adventure...

Yep, it's official, starting next week I'm off on a new adventure! I'm travelling back up to Inverness to become the Capercaillie Project Assistant until March 2016! Mega news! I'm so happy to have gotten a full 12 month contract, a big achievement for someone that has just worked seasonally in nature conservation so far. This contract is a joint post with the RSPB, FCS (Forestry Commission Scotland) and SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage), so it should give me loads of awesome experience and connections which will definitely help me to progress in my career with the RSPB, so yay me! Click here to find out more about this joint project to conserve Capercaillie.

A male Capercaillie, resplendant in his beautiful plumage, dancing at a lek to attract females

This role will mostly involve surveying lekking (displaying) male Capercaillie, advising landowners about the management of their land for Capercaillie, and counting how many chicks they manage to raise! For those that don't know a Capercaillie is a big, black, beautiful grouse, male shown above. They are found across Europe but in the UK they are limited to Scotland. They went extinct in the UK in the 1700's due to the felling of Scotland's native pinewoods, but were reintroduced in the 1800's after more forests had been planted. The population boomed as birds spread into the suitable habitat, but numbers soon decreased again as demand for wood increased, especially during the wars, and their habitat was once again destroyed. By 1999, only 1000 birds remained. Their numbers have increased since then due to targeted management of Scotland's forests by the RSPB, FCS and SNH. However, the population is still struggling to increase as Capercaillie need large areas of woodland for feeding and breeding. They really like native Caledonian pine woods (the kind of forest that used to cover most of Scotland) but this has mostly been cut down and replaced with more profitable plantation woodlands, which require specific management to be suitable. They need lots of Blaeberry to eat and Heather to hide in, plus boggy areas for the chicks to feed in, so their management can be quite complicated. This is why they have become restricted to a just few Core Areas in Scotland, with the majority found around the Cairngorms National Park. Due to their low numbers and the small areas of suitable habitat, these birds are still at risk of becoming extinct in the UK for a second, and possibly final, time. It is because of this that the RSPB, FCS and SNH are working together to survey and monitor Capercaillie throughout the year and increase the amount of suitable habitat so that these birds can flourish once more.

Blaeberry, also known as Bilberry, the Capercaillies favourite food

The surveys for these birds seem to mostly take place at dawn, as this is when the males get together and dance and sing to attract in the females, so it sounds like I'll be spending a lot of nights camping out in hides so that I can count the birds at dawn! Most people seem to think I'm crazy to want to camp overnight and get up super early to count birds, but I can't help it, I just love it!

Hopefully I'll manage to get some photos as good as this!

I'm not particularly organised right now, but I've found somewhere to live up in Inverness, in a very nice new build house with two housemates who both seem lovely. It's warm, it's got internet and TV, it's got people, it's out near the countryside in easy access of walks, and generally just seems like a nice place to live so I'm happy with that! I may have to get a bike, but that's no issue. I'm slowly working my way through a long list of things to do before I officially move up there next weekend, so wish me luck!





A Small Tribute to a Wonderful Nana.
I started writing this blog for my nana, to keep her up to date with all of my adventures as I travel around for conservation jobs. She got my grandpa to print off each new entry so that she could read them and show them around half of Bolton by the sounds of it! She was always interested in what I was doing and was really supportive of my choice to go running off across the country to do a job that I love. She's an amazing woman and I wish she was here to follow my next adventure. You will always be in my heart.

My beautiful Nana, you will always be missed.