After the dust has settled...

It's now the end of May and I have been in my new role as Capercaillie Project Assistant for nearly five months now, a busy few months indeed! My first few weeks invovled getting to know the role and all of the beautiful conifer forests that I would be spending most of my time in, then came the survey work. 

Surveying for capercaillie is a bit different to most other bird surveys, in that you actually don't see the birds that often. Mostly, my survey work at the beginning of the year involved a lot of walking around forests and looking for capercaillie poo, feathers, footprints, dust baths, or any other signs that they have been using an area. Once we know where they're using, we can survey the birds! Of course, since this project has been going for many years now, we're fairly sure that we know all of the areas that have any serious activity going on in them, but you never can be sure until you've checked... Anyways, for the first month or so of my contract, this is what I was doing -  walking around forests that have birds in, looking for areas where the activity it centered, so that we can come back and survey them in the lekking season, when cocks do a little display dance to attract in hens to mate with.

Capercaillie droppings

For capercaillie, the lek season doesn't last long at all. Black Grouse, for example, will lek for a couple of months, allowing each lek site to be counted multiple times, at least twice. Capercaillie on the other hand, lek for a couple of weeks in April. So we have to survey (an co-ordinate others to survey) all of the leks in Scotland in the space of just a few weeks. And within those weeks there is a peak of activity when all of the hens come down from the trees to be mated, before going off to nest. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough resource to visit all leks within the peak, let alone twice! But they do all get one count, and this, combined with other survey data, is good enough to get an idea of the size of the breeding population. 

Lovely bit of Scots pine forest

The lek surveys are pretty intense, having to fit so many surveys into such a small window is not easy! So we have to search the forests before-hand, so that we know we're going to the right place when it comes to the lek surveys and we don't waste valuable time wandering about. In addition to this, the birds only display very early in the morning, so our surveys involve hiking into the forest, camping overnight in a hide (pretty cold in early April!) and getting up at the crack of dawn to survey the number of males displaying and the number of females watching this display. This all requires special licences from SNH, as capercaillie are a Schedule 1 bird and highly protected under law from any disturbance while displaying, nesting, or with chicks. We take every precaution possible to ensure that the birds don't know we're there, as we want them to have a successful breeding season! So after the cocks have finished displaying, we pack up, search another area, and set up the hide again in a different forest ready for later that night! Very intense, but worth it to know how these birds are faring.

One benefit of lots of late nights and early mornings is seeing the sunrise through the trees

That's all over now, and currently I'm working to collate all of the data from these surveys, a rather large task! Once we've got the data in we can compare it to previous years and see how the birds are doing. In addition to this, I'm visiting forests that have had capercaillie in the past, or new forests that may become suitable habitat in the future, to see if birds are starting to use and re-colonise these areas. There's a lot of woodland to check though! And hopefully there will be even more areas of forest in future years as people continue to plant up areas. Capercaillie are big birds, and they need big areas of forests (preferably Scots pine) with lots of blaeberry and boggy patches in order to survive. If we want their numbers to increase, we need to increase the area and quality of suitable habitat!

I do get to visit some beautiful places

Although the lekking season is over for the capercaillie, it doesn't all end there. The hens should be on nests now and are very vulnerable. Even after the eggs hatch and they can move away from the nest, the hen and her chicks are vulnerable to predation, bad weather, and human disturbance. Human disturbance is a major issue that we're trying to tackle through education and information, ensuring that signs are put up in capercaillie-sensitive areas asking people to stick to the paths and keep their dogs on leads. Dogs can kill capercaillie adults and chicks, and with such a small population, we need every bird we can get! Hens can get separated from their chicks if flushed from the ground by a human presence, and won't come back to chicks if you're still in the area, making them even more vulnerable. So if you're out walking in the forests up in the Highlands (and let's face it, why wouldn't you be?), please keep to the paths and keep your dogs on a lead, and adhere to all signs regarding capercaillie. And if you see any capercaillie poo or any birds, please report it!

All in a day's work for CaperGirl!

A Season of Surveys

Well, it has been a long, LONG time since I last posted anything! I've been keeping very busy up here in my new job in Perthshire (although I guess it's not that new any more, since I'm more than halfway through my contract!), but it feels like only a few weeks since I started! How the time does fly. This role is pretty much a bird surveying role, which often seems to involve lots of early starts and late finishes, as the birds that I'm surveying (and pretty much all birds, in fact) are most active at dawn and dusk. So I've been up with the dawn and asleep after dark, working some strange hours, with a bit of a break in the middle! I'm definitely enjoying it though and I've seen some beautiful birds and amazing sights! Unfortunately my camera's been playing up a bit (think I've dropped it a few too many times) so I've not taken as many photos as I would have liked, but here's a bit of an insight into the wide variety of survey work that I've been doing for the past few months, with a few photos here and there.

From the day I arrived I've been thrown into fieldwork, checking out sites, calling landowners for permission to survey on their land, and counting nesting birds! The first birds on the list were Black Grouse. Not quite so well known as the Red Grouse (also known as the Famous Grouse), which are shot regularly on sporting estates. Black Grouse are also classed as gamebirds and have an open season for shooting, although it is illegal to shoot them in the breeding season. However, as Black Grouse are declining in numbers across the country, very few estates actually shoot these birds. In early spring, the males (or cocks) gather in groups (called leks) to do a little dance and attract in the females (or hens), and this is how we survey them. The RSPB works closely with the Perthshire Black Grouse Study Group to survey as many Black Grouse leks as possible each year. These surveys involve a pre-dawn start, arriving at the lek site before sunrise to count the number of displaying males. But despite the early starts, these were definitely my favourite surveys, it was so amazing to see these birds in all their dancing action! I love it when they wiggle their little white powder-puff tails!

Searching the hills for lekking Black Grouse

4 lekking male Black Grouse, taken through a telescope in the rain so not the best quality photo!

As part of this role I've been given a licence by SNH (the environmental government organisation in Scotland), which allows me to monitor breeding raptors. Most birds of prey are Schedule 1 species, which means they have the highest level of legal protection and a licence is required to go anywhere near these birds in the breeding season. You may have heard about the struggle that Hen Harriers face in the UK due to illegal persecution, but other raptors are persecuted as well, including Peregrines, Buzzards, Red Kites and more, often by sporting estates, which want to stop these birds from taking the Pheasant/Grouse chicks on their estate so that they can raise lots of adult birds for the shoot. But not all estates are like this. Many sporting estates are happy to have these raptors on their land as it shows that they have a healthy ecosystem. The Langholm Moor Demonstration Project has shown that raptors can live and breed successfully on shooting estates without having a negative impact on grouse shoots, so it is possible for the two to work in harmony. The RSPB work closely with raptor friendly estates, and part of my role involves surveying raptors and monitoring any nests that I find to see how well they are doing. I've also been checking out lots of potential nesting sites for Peregrines, as part of a national survey organised by the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) this year. Hen Harriers and Peregrines are beautiful, amazing birds and I'm very lucky to be monitoring these and other birds of prey.

Sitting above the low-lying clouds, surveying for Hen Harriers and other raptors

Visiting some beautiful places looking for nesting Peregrines

The other big surveys that I do are lowland wader surveys. This involves walking through lowland farmland areas and recording any breeding waders that I see or hear, especially displaying birds, as well as any nests, eggs or chicks that I find. These surveys have to be carried out within 3 hours of dawn or dusk, so more early starts, but I do love my job so it's worth it! Especially when I find eggs or chicks! And there have been quite a few chicks around this year! I'm looking at 5 wader species; Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Curlew, Redshank, and Snipe, and surveying the breeding success of these species.

Beautiful sunset after surveying waders

One of my wader survey sites

Lapwing nest

Curlew nest

Lapwing chick!

I'm also surveying Black-throated Divers, and I'll be surveying a few other species in the coming months, so I've still got a way to go yet but I'm loving every minute of it! I've even managed to have a bit of a social life! It's much easier to go shopping or go out on the town when there's an actual town nearby! But more on that later...

P.S. Happy Father's day to a wonderful dad!