Wildlife watch Dippers, strimmers and insects
Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Falls of Clyde Wildlife Reserve Ranger Laura Preston would like to tell readers how busy the reserve can be at this time of year We’ve had a busy time of it recently at the Falls of Clyde, so I thought I would give you guys a round-up of what has been happening.
At this time of year, the rangers spend an awful lot of time strimming paths to make sure they are easily accessible – it’s amazing how fast the grass grows, even in this hot weather.
Now that the school holidays are here, the reserve will be getting busier with people, and on the weekends we patrol the reserve each day to make sure it is safe for people and wildlife alike.
We also launched our Dipper Watches on Saturday, and we were not disappointed. We not only saw dippers and juvenile dippers, we were also lucky enough to see the quick blue flash of a kingfisher as it whizzed by!
We have already engaged with people as far afield as South America, which is just amazing!
Also, we have just finished installing some new sections of safety fencing, particularly at the top end of the reserve.
Many people are unaware that, because of the hydro-electric scheme on the river, it can be dangerous to go down onto the river bed.
There is the possibility of being stranded or even washed away.
To combat this, we have put up some fencing to hopefully discourage those people who haven’t read the signs or are unaware of these dangers.
We also do biological recording, and part of that is to carry out butterfly transects each week.
Our site is fortunately not the most exciting and we generally see most of the common species, but we had an exciting visitor that some of you may have seen before – we recorded a painted lady!
This butterfly is a long-distance migrant from south of the equator and is a less common visitor to Scotland than other parts of the UK, so it was really lovely to see.