Species on the Edge – Spring 2024 updates

The primroses are emerging, the mornings are getting lighter and the sun has started to appear on the west coast bringing promises and excitement for the summer ahead. And do we have a summer planned!  

The last few months have been spent collating and submitting our 2023 survey data on our species and planning for our surveys this year. We have been talking to and working with farmers, crofters and land managers about managing for our species and celebrating how Hugh Nature Value farming and Crofting can support biodiversity. As part of this we have produced updated guidance on managing for our Marsh Fritillary and Burnet moths, and have worked with SAC Consulting and the Farm Advisory Service to produce various documents and videos showcasing the benefits of this High Nature Value farming. We have also been producing bespoke reports for landowners who participated in our bat monitoring efforts in 2023 and creating a monitoring summary report to share our findings more widely. 

We’ve made great strides in our work to conserve the medicinal leech, a fascinating species that is known from only three areas in Scotland. One of these three areas was only discovered back in September, when the presence of the rare leech was confirmed in Dumfries and Galloway for the first time! Additionally, our conservation breeding programme for Medicinal Leech is now underway! During surveys last year, 14 leeches were collected from one of their known sites (under license from NatureScot) and are now in their new home in a specially designed facility at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Highland Wildlife Park. There the conservation team staff will care for them and attempt to breed as many leeches as possible to then be released back into the wild. 

We have been out and about in the community too! Together with RSPB and Ionad Chaluim Chille Ìle, we ran Islay’s first Winter Birdlife festival / Fèis Eunlatih Geamhraidh Eilean Ìle – a celebration of Islay’s winter wildlife and an opportunity to connect people with nature and the Gaelic medium. Thank you to all that came along to celebrate and birdwatch with us!

We have also been visiting schools, building bird and bat boxes, and are excited to see what we can spot inhabiting them this spring. Local community groups have been learning more about bats through our bat ID workshops including the ‘Way forward Group’ on Skye, a group which supports adults with chronic illness and disabilities.  

This year we will be surveying for our target species including marsh fritillary, burnet moths and waders and we will be extending our bat surveys to new islands including Mull and Islay. We will also be looking out for the return of our little terns in May and searching for our short-necked oil beetles which should be emerging soon. You can help us with our short-necked oil beetle work by keeping a look out for them and reporting any sightings. Find more information on how you can get involved on the Buglife website:  Scottish Oil Beetle Hunt. We have also been busy creating signage so you can find out more about the beetles and where to find them. 

On Skye, we are working with RSPB, SAC Consulting and Bat Conservation Trust to monitor trial crop sites on crofts and farms which could benefit both waders and bats. Additionally we will be continuing our discussions with crofters, giving a talk through the Farm Advisory Service in June on creating bat friendly habitats and how managing land for nature can help productivity on your croft.  

We are also providing training and in-field opportunities for people volunteering with us to survey for our species – so do get in touch if you’re interested in helping us out!  

Upcoming events  

The Species on the Edge team in Argyll & Inner Hebrides are gearing up for a bumper year of surveying, work parties, events, talks and training. We are hoping you will agree there is something for everyone. Over winter, our events have included practical conservation days, for example helping to manage marsh fritillary habitat, and as we go into spring and summer we will be focusing on surveys, collecting vital data on our species. We are excited to share our programme of events with you which you can find by heading to the upcoming opportunities page and selecting Argyll and the Inner Hebrides.

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity in Argyll and the Inner Hebrides or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Lucy Atkinson, Project Officer, RSPB: [email protected]

Cathryn Baillie, Project Officer, Bat Conservation Trust: [email protected]

Elizabeth Peel, Project Officer, Butterfly Conservation: [email protected]

Sally Morris, Project Officer, Buglife: [email protected]

Well, who ever said that winter was a quiet time for conservation?! This winter has been a whirlwind of activity on the East Coast with habitat management, aka Work Parties, taking place from Easter Ross to Moray all the way down to Angus. Northern brown argus butterflies like to live right on the edge of some of our steep coastal sites making for hard physical days out trying to clear scrub from coastal cliffs. It does however mean we are treated to some stunning scenery and are often watched over by wary shags and beautiful long-tailed ducks.  

With Species on the Edge being a multi taxa programme, it has been great to work on some areas of the Old Shandwick – Rosemarkie SSSI where three of our species exit in close proximity to each other: small blue; northern brown argus; and purple oxytropis. The habitat management we have started will benefit all three of them, and excitingly after clearing one area of gorse we discovered over 20 purple oxytropis rosettes emerging!  

Some of our small blue sites have been badly affected by flooding this winter, with several submerged under water for several weeks at a time. Only time will tell how this has impacted both the caterpillar foodplant (kindney vetch) and the caterpillars themselves which should be overwintering just under the soil at the base of the plants. This year’s upcoming survey season will be crucial as we build data on how winter storms are affecting our species. 

We were part of the inaugural Fort George Conservation Group, set up with the Ministry of Defence to help ensure there will continue to be sustainable conservation outcomes after the Species on the Edge programme finishes in 2027. We have also been making new contacts with several golf courses along the East Coast and we are looking forward to working with them in the coming months. 

It has not all been about practical labour though; we have made super links with some communities and linked in with other existing groups creating exciting partnership opportunities. One such group is a fantastic craft group up in Dornoch who have been busy creating a mobile fabric display of our East Coast species which we hope to unveil at the Sutherland Agricultural Show in July - watch this space! We have also been working with the Young Curators group from Dornoch Museum, who have been showcasing some amazing caterpillar and butterfly works of art. 

To see what we events and opportunities we have coming up on the East Coast, head over to the Species on the Edge Upcoming Opportunities page and select East Coast.

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity on the East Coast or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Tracy Munro, Project Officer, Butterfly Conservation: [email protected] 

Caitlin McLeod, Project Officer, Buglife: [email protected]

Students supporting butterflies

Our team up on the North Coast, Sarah and Louise, are delighted that the Learning for Life and Work Skills group at UHI’s Thurso campus have agreed to be our Ambassador School for the small blue butterfly in Caithness!

Supported by Caithness Environment Volunteers, we delivered an interactive session for them at the end of last year all about the threatened small blue butterfly. They loved the butterfly so much that they’ve been spreading the word about it ever since! They made keyrings, posters and information blocks and held a sale of what they've made, raising £200 to donate to Dunnet Community Forest to support their work on small blue habitat. They’re currently designing and creating signage to help protect the new butterfly banks that are being installed at the forest and they’ve also come up with an idea to leave painted rocks around Caithness to raise awareness of the small blues. We are so impressed and pleased with their enthusiasm – just imagine if everyone was so enthused about our wonderful biodiversity?

Following on from the success of our visit to UHI, we’re putting together a lesson plan and resource pack for use in primary schools and we will be training some of our volunteers on how to deliver it. It’s all about small blue butterflies in Caithness, so please do get in touch if this is relevant for your class and you’d like us to visit your school.

Dunnet Community Forest butterfly bank

The idea for butterfly banks came from our Small Blue Task Force event in October 2023 and grew out of the amazing work that’s been done for this species over the last decade and more by the Caithness Environment Volunteers.

Approval for two banks at Dunnet Forest was granted by NatureScot in December and work on the first one is due to start this month. If you are walking in Dunnet Forest over the next few months you may see a big pile of quarry waste and wonder what’s happening! We are making our butterfly banks out of quarry waste because we know that’s what the butterflies like over at Castlehill. Keeping the banks stoney with little soil will hopefully allow kidney vetch, the food plant of small blue caterpillars, to grow there without too much competition from grass and other plants. Duncan McLachlan made us an image using a photo from the small blue habitat at Castlehill to show what the banks could look like at Dunnet Forest (below).

Do stop by and see what’s going on if you are passing. And if you see any butterflies please let us know! Contact [email protected]

Good luck growers - spring is coming!

We are excitedly waiting for spring to arrive and have fingers crossed for our green-fingered growing volunteers to whom we sent seeds last year. If you have some of our seeds we are really rooting for you (pun intended) and would love to see photos of seedlings and plants as they grow. It’s been a wet and snowy winter so we know that conditions haven’t been the best and some seeds may not germinate – but we still appreciate your efforts.

The seeds of oysterplant, Scottish primrose and purple oxytropis were provided by the Millenium Seed Bank, which is part of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and we are thrilled to be working with them. These seeds will, we hope, produce plants for local awareness raising. Some will be planted in community gardens along the north coast, and we will take others to events for people to see and talk about.

Kidney vetch plants grown from seed collected locally in Caithness will mainly be planted on the butterfly banks (see above), as kidney vetch is the food plant for small blue butterfly caterpillars.

Wellbeing + Nature

This year, we’re exploring the relationship between nature and wellbeing. We want to emphasise that the restorative properties of the natural world aren’t just for the citizen scientists and wildlife recorders amongst us; nature is for everyone. We all relate to and value nature in different ways. We’re delivering several projects that offer participants different ways of connecting with nature:

• For many people, a garden is their closest green space and the place they are most likely to observe and connect with nature. We plan to work with artist Joanne B Kaar, the Strathnaver Museum and Tongue Gardening Club to experiment with traditional botanical methods of recording plants, collaboratively producing a community herbarium of our gardens.
• On the north coast our summers are short and our winters are long. It can be difficult to get our dose of nature therapy when the wind is howling, the rain lashing and it’s dark for most of the day. We’ll be working with Iain Black of Flow North Yoga over the summer to produce a nature on the north coast guided relaxation film that can help us connect with nature even when we can’t get outside. Iain will be using the film to bring nature and relaxation into all sorts of spaces over the winter. Please get in touch if you would like to host a screening for your group.
• We’ll also host a series of one-off events in Durness: connect to nature through wellbeing practices with Klara Morrison; creativity with Joanne B Kaar; and foraging with Amanda Greig Williamson of Natures Path Natural Ways.

We'll keep you posted on the dates for these events when they're finalised.

In addition to the above, we have a whole host of events planned, details of which can be found on the Species on the Edge Upcoming Events page. Included are: bumblebee walks; wildlife wanders; meadow management training; and a small blue celebration day. We hope you’ll be able to join us!

We also have opportunities for you to volunteer with us. Details of this can be found on the Species on the Edge Volunteer with Us page: [link to volunteer with us page]

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge on the North Coast or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Sarah Bird, Senior Project Officer, Plantlife: [email protected]

Louise Senior, People Engagement Officer, Plantlife: [email protected]

We had a great first year starting species and engagement work to safeguard nine target species in Orkney - Arctic tern, common pipistrelle bat, curlew, great yellow bumblebee, lapwing, little tern, oysterplant, plantain leaf beetle and Scottish primrose. 

We completed over 40 target species surveys with the help of volunteers at over 30 sites across Orkney for terns, waders, bats and bumblebees. Excitingly, last year, for the first time ever, local naturalists found the larvae stage of the plantain leaf beetle and we look forward to discovering more about this secretive species and how we can protect it here.   

Helen established an Orkney Conservation Verge working group in partnership with Northern Isles Landscape Partnership Scheme, Orkney Islands Council and the county plant and bumblebee recorder. This group has been meeting to share good practice and work together on plans to enhance roadside verge habitats for wildflowers and pollinator species. The group is delighted to have been asked to consult on the Orkney Islands Council 2024 verge management plan along with county councillors and community councils, giving us a great opportunity to influence habitat management, which will particularly benefit great yellow bumblebee, one of our Orkney target species.   

Early this year our first land enhancement project started taking shape at RSPB Scotland Rendall Moss nature reserve where the Orkney reserves team have been transforming homogenous grassland into valuable foraging habitat with a diverse mosaic of pools for waders such as Curlew and Lapwing. Creating a series of scrapes, reprofiling drainage, grazing management and removing encroaching scrub with help from volunteers is helping to ensure the site stays in tip-top shape for breeding birds and future chicks.   

By the end of 2023 we had engaged with over 1000 people in Orkney to raise awareness of our species and projects by connecting people with nature at events, school visits, talks, walks and festivals. 2024 is going to be another exciting year as we begin to develop and deliver specific engagement projects with community groups who may not have connected to nature much before. We are currently working with NHS Orkney and RSPB Scotland to produce an Orkney nature calendar for GPs to prescribe nature connection to patients to improve health and wellbeing.   

This year we will also be continuing our guided walks at the ring of Brodgar with Historic Environment Scotland. The landscape in which the Ring of Brodgar sits is surrounded by the RSPB’s Brodgar reserve, making it an ideal place for people to see plenty of bird life. Here you can see curlew, oystercatcher, lapwing, skylark and meadow pipit to name a few. The ring is surrounded by an amazing wildflower meadow which is also home to the great yellow bumblebee.

Our Orkney People Engagment Officer, Sam, was delighted to join Historic Environment Scotland (HES) Rangers on these walks last year, and it sounds like they were too! Sandra Miller, an Orkney Ranger at HES, told us: “We have loved having Sam join us, adding a great new dimension to the walks and highlighting the importance of the project. We very much look forward to continuing these walks.” So do we, Sandra!

In 2024 our joint walks will be taking place on the first Thursday of the month between April and October.  Do join us to explore this important world heritage site and discover how important it is for some of Scotland's most vulnerable species.  Our walks are free with no need to book – just meet us at the sign in Brodgar car park at 1pm.  For more details contact [email protected]

To see everything else we have coming up over spring and summer, head over to the Species on the Edge Upcoming Events page and select Orkney.

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity in Orkney or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Samantha Stringer, People Engagement Officer: [email protected]

Helen Cromarty, Project Officer: [email protected]

We have had a busy few winter months with site visits to crofters and community groups, advising on how they can help bees on their land. And now, with the weather turning, flowers are starting to poke their heads through and the first bumblebees are starting to appear!

In March we attended and ran a number of events, including the Stornoway Science Fair, which was attended by over 400 children and adults. We also recently ran BeeWalk and Bee ID events in Barra, where we talked about the bees that are special to Barra and the Outer Hebrides and how to identify them. We did go out to look for bees, but, with 50m/h winds forecast for the following day, they were sensibly still underground – we don’t blame them! We will be returning to Barra over the summer and will also be running similar events in Uist, Lewis and Harris soon.  

Preparations are underway for a busy survey season across the Outer Hebrides, starting with wader surveys in the coming weeks and continuing with bees, bats, terns and Irish ladies tresses over the summer.

We have also been working hard planning for the Outer Hebrides Wildlife Festival 2024! We are currently working on an exciting programme of events, activities and exhibitions with local groups and individuals. With plenty of opportunities for the local community to get involved as event organisers and as participants, this is an exciting time for us as every day brings fresh ideas and proposals for us to look at and see how we can best to support.

To find out more about the festival, including how you can get involved, head to: Outer Hebrides Wildlife Festival website.

We are also very excited to have a stand at this year’s HEBCELT Festival. If you’re there, do come over and say hi!

We are also currently developing a series of nature writing workshops focused on writing for wellbeing, delivered by local creative writers. More details coming soon!

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity in the Outer Hebrides or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Samantha Stringer, People Engagement Officer: [email protected]

Helen Cromarty, Project Officer: [email protected]

It’s been a long but fun winter up in the North; the mallies (fulmar) have been accompanying us through the high winds and tumults of snow. With the turn of the seasons, as celandine pops its head above the grasses, now is a fitting point to look back on the work that we've been busying ourselves with and the changes that have taken place since our last newsletter. A nice place to start would be to go through changes in our team. We have a new People Engagement Officer in Gareth Powell (me, yay!), who has got stuck into the project and is doing a great job (no bias here).  

Though the winter months can be quiet, it’s been a fun time to plan for the year ahead, with linties (twite) getting special attention. This has been the first year of our lintie winter surveys, with dedicated volunteers heading out to record their numbers around the island through the winter. Why are we counting? Lintie numbers have declined in recent years with the loss of arable farming resulting in a reduction in the supply of seeds, a valuable source of food in the winter months. How can we turn the tide? Well, first we need to understand where the birds are, and how many there are throughout the winter - thus, counting! Next, we need to get the people who can make a difference involved: crofters, farmers and volunteer surveyors. So, we brought them all together to discuss what’s the best course of action moving forward, planning together how we can help linties through the winter months in the future. The event went well, with support from Richard Shearer of William Shearers Agricultural Seed and RSPB Shetland outlining the methods and the tools that are needed to help these linties out. With opinions shared, we hope to go forward and provide the food source these linties need for the future. 

Remaining in the fields but a little more on the wet side, we are all set to start our wader surveys this spring! New scrapes have been dug out, creating more crucial feeding habitat for these birds. These new scrapes, plus sites where grass swards are managed through grazing to provide good nesting conditions, should create a mosaic habitat ideal for all wadery goings on.

The waders are no longer just in the fields though, in Bressay and Lerwick small woolly whaaps have been recorded squeaking into existence. Ability Shetland and Bressay Development have been helping to bring to life some wool-based waders and twiters, and they have also been giving some hawkweeds a new home. Speaking of re-homing hawkweeds, Shetland Amenity Trust have been helping us by propagating our endemic hawkweeds and oysterplant, ready to be transplanted in the future.

With the flowers out, it’s time for the bumblebees to emerge, and with Bee ID workshops lined up in spring, we hope to fully capture the scale and scope of the drummie bee’s (Shetland bumblebee) population. Their need for wintering hibernation sites in long grass and a variety of native flowers to feed on in the summer is leading us to work with Shetland Islands Council to identify future sites where we can provide more of this habitat. Lending a helping hand this summer will be gardeners in Lerwick who, with guidance from Species on the Edge, will be tailoring their gardens to best help pollinators in the Lerwick Community Council’s garden competition.

So, we have some exciting months ahead, and it’s all thanks to an amazing winter under the mirrie dancers in the northern realm of Shetland. 

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity in Shetland or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with Shetland People Engagement Officer, Gareth: [email protected]

The winter months seem to have flown by, and spring is slowly taking hold on the Solway. Although most fieldwork takes place during the longer days of summer, Solway Project Officer, Jack, has been monitoring the Greenland white-fronted goose population at West Freugh. These birds will soon start their migration North to their breeding grounds in Greenland and we will be sad to see them go! Numbers of these geese are slightly down again this winter, mainly due to the lack of juveniles arriving from Greenland. Additional winter fieldwork included surveying for Tipulid (cranefly) larvae, which are a key food source for red-billed chough. The results of this survey will help inform habitat management to encourage chough back to the region. 

As the days get warmer some of our target species will start breeding and our project officers are gearing up for a busy survey season. As part of the programme we will be running a series of training days to enable volunteers to get involved, so look out for these advertised in coming weeks. We are particularly excited that we will be using passive acoustic surveys, which involve deploying recording devices in the field to listen for our nocturnal species including bats and natterjack toads. 

We would like to thank the volunteers that joined us for habitat management days this winter, removing scrub such as gorse and willow to protect key areas for northern brown argus and natterjack toad. This is often demanding work in cold and exposed conditions, but can make a vital difference to species conservation.

In addition to volunteers, landowners are a key part of making Species on the Edge a success. So far on the Solway we have engaged with over 40 landowners enabling us to conduct surveys, carry out habitat management and make management recommendations.  

Our fantastic ambassador schools in Cummertrees, Glenluce and Castle Kennedy have enjoyed learning about Species on the Edge. This included a lesson about migration (a number of our species are migratory) and the kids had great fun making paper-model Arctic terns - which are the world’s longest-distance migrant! We look forward to working more with these schools as the programme develops. 

To find out what events and opportunities we have coming up on the Solway Coast, head over to our Upcoming Events page and select Solway.

If you have any questions about Species on the Edge activity on the Solway or you’re looking for more details on getting involved, get in touch with the team:

Liam Templeton, Project Officer, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust: [email protected]

Jack Barton, Project Officer, RSPB Scotland: [email protected]