Trees for Life Lecture Tour during March and April 2012

LECTURE TOUR CELEBRATES PLANTING OF A MILLION TREES IN CALEDONIAN FOREST

Celebrations for the planting of the Millionth Tree by conservation
charity Trees for Life in Scotland’s Caledonian Forest will be launched in
March with a two-month lecture tour across Britain by the charity’s
founder and executive director, Alan Watson Featherstone.

From Ullapool to Devon, Alan will travel the length and breadth of the
country throughout March and April to inform and inspire audiences with
The Millionth Tree lecture tour. Trees for Life will plant its Millionth

What a wonderful day

I've not long been back from the forest where it's 6C, sunny and really feels like spring. Yeh, I know, we've still got March to come but I'm not going to let that thought spoil my mood.

Just relocated the trail cam to a Squirrel feeder for the day and will return it to the Badger sett tonight.

The night before last I had two Badgers on camera together and I've managed to convince myself that the one I see regularly is a sow with cubs underground.

I hope the second Badger is a male and they might perform on camera.

The view of the trail cam at left is to show the diode masking I've used to reduce the light in the middle of the image area. It was burning out all the detail because of uneven light distribution and this mod' seems to have worked pretty well.

I'll try and get the video footage from two nights ago sorted out and loaded later on today.

Talking of spring, I'd been to an outlying two hole sett
this morning to see if there was any sign of activity (non at the moment) and I was on my way back along a forestry track, when I nearly put my foot on a Common Newt.

This little feller is about 10cm long and must have just come out of hibernation, He looked like a bit of tree debris at a distance and was lucky I didn't put my boot on him.

The sun had gone behind cloud and with the ground still fairly cold he wasn't moving. I managed to coax him onto my hand and within a minute he was starting
to perk up. It's amazing how quickly they absorb heat.

I left him on the side of the track, out of harms way and waiting for the sun to come back out. I hope he has a good year.

So that's today so far. We'll see what the trail cam has to show later this afternoon.

The Highland Red Squirrel Group

The Scottish Highlands is now the only large UK mainland area where our native squirrel can still be found living in large healthy populations, free from the threat of competition by the introduced American Grey Squirrel.

There are plans for so called refuge forest areas to be created in the Highland region, consisting chiefly of small seeded conifers which, it is hoped, will provide a Red Squirrel friendly environment of little interest to Grey Squirrels as they continue their inexorable march northwards.

Part of this effort is the ongoing Scottish squirrel survey, the purpose of which is to accurately determine the true extent of the Highlands squirrel population. In the Highland region this is the remit of the Highland Red Squirrel Group which is a charity relying on volunteer surveyors. This method of attempting this task has an inherent problem in that it relies on the unpaid effort of people who have jobs and families to support with relatively little spare time.

I am in the fortunate position of being both active, retired and a bit of an anorak about the plight of our small red friends. Consequently I am able to devote a relatively large amount of time and effort to the task but I am only one person and there's a lot of forest which has never been properly surveyed.

New Squirrel Survey area

I've established presence and distribution over the area I've been surveying this last year and I'm moving on to the next section of forest.

This is an area of about 360 Hectares consisting of a wide mix of tree species with plantations ranging in age from approximately 5 to 30 or 40 years with some clear fell and also old Scots Pine forest.

Elevation is generally between 200 and 300 metres and presents a fairly wide range of habitat from a squirrels point of view.

The images to the left show an area at about 250 metres which is fairly open with a heath understory
and old pine remnants of the original Caledonian forest.

Other parts are dense with a mix of mainly Birch and a lot of self seeded conifers such as Sitka Spruce. This density of undergrowth makes it difficult to find possible feeding signs on the ground and I'm going to employ a new technique for establishing squirrel presence which I will elaborate on at a later date, when I have some early results.  

Trees for Life

I love trees and mountains, and trees are something there is precious little of in Scotland's Highlands, except for isolated remnants of the old Caledonian Pine Forest and modern plantations; but if Trees for Life is successful, then future generations may once again enjoy the Wood of Caledon.
Trees for Life's Vision