I was out and about again this morning with Dan, our regional archaeologist and some of our volunteers. Storm Doris made it impossible for us to continue with our topographical survey of Nunnery Point, so we went down to the Boat House at the Mire Loch and surveyed that instead. Today we were working on a hand drawn plan of the building as well as using the electronic theodolite. It was beautiful down there, blue sky, sun and we were pretty sheltered from the wind in the woods there. Here's some photos to give you the gist. Liza.

Dan explains to Bill the finer details of how to do a hand drawn plan of the building.

Painstaking work, Bill is a retired engineer, so he's used to working to such a level of detail.

Ernie and Margaret using the theodolite - a serious business it seems.

Well maybe not serious all the time!

All though this picture looks posed, it wasn't, I just managed to catch everyone in action in one shot! Left to right - Ernie, Margaret, Dan, Bill, Ed and Jean.

Another morning out on the reserve with our Regional Archaeologist, Dan, and our local volunteers.  This week, half of the team were carrying on the work at Nunnery Point, taking the measurements required for producing a topographical map of the headland and its archaeological features of interest.  The other half were using the tablet based system for monitoring the condition of all of our archaeological sites on the reserve - there's a lot of them about, so it takes a while!  We were supremely lucky with the weather again, and it was great to hear the fulmars cackling on the cliffs and guillemots gurgling calls from the sea.  That's what you call a grand day out! Liza.

Margaret, Bill and Dan carrying out a topographical survey of Nunnery Point.

Ed takes Ernie, Jack, Margaret and Bill through how to use the tablet based archaeological condition monitoring system, whilst Lizy gives advice from the sidelines!

 

We've had a fantastic day out on the head this morning with our volunteers and National Trust for Scotland archaeologist Daniel Rhodes. We were mainly investigating the mystery building at the end of Nunnery point (see picture with kite). Using a special kite and camera kit we took some aerial photos of the site, and also mapped the outline of the building using a laser range finder. It was a very fun and interesting day so we're looking forwards to our next archaeology session in a couple of weeks' time.  Lizy

Jack flies a kite over the site of the mystery building on Nunnery point

Daniel shows Ernie, Margaret and Jean how to use the laser range finder...

...while Jack provides a target for them to mark the corner of the building

 

 

It's been a cold few days here at St. Abb's Head with temperatures falling below zero for the last 5 nights in a row. As a result the Mire Loch has nearly completely frozen over, with most of our waterfowl concentrated into a small area of open water near the middle of the Loch. Today I spotted Mallard (pictured), Wigeon, Tufted Duck, and Coot. Lizy

View of frozen Mire Loch and boathouse

 

Two male Mallards, Anas platyrhynchos, one in the water, one standing on ice

St Abbs has had great media coverage in the last week or so.

A piece about breeding seals on NTS land up at Lumsdaine on ITV Border Life http://www.itv.com/news/border/topic/border-life/ on Friday 20th (the bit about us starts at c 12 mins 30 secs, although the rest of the programme is interesting too!).

Then there is BBC Radio Scotland's Out Of Doors, a programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08908r5#play that was due to be aired on the 14th Jan but ended up being aired on the 21st, so kind of back to back with the TV piece.  Myself and Sarah Russell from St Abbs & Eyemouth Voluntary Marine Reserve talk about what makes the area such a fantastic place to enjoy being Out of Door (starts at about 20 mins); David Wilson and Paul Crowe talk about St Abbs Independent Lifeboat (about 36 mins); and Jim Evans talks about the 125 Memorial Sculpture in Eyemouth commemorating the Black Friday fishing disaster (at about 64 mins).  There's also an interesting piece on harbour porpoises at about 49 mins.

Why not check them out?  Liza.

This winter we have really been making inroads into the gorse that is invading our species-rich grasslands.  But what does gorse-bashing, as its affectionally known, really involve?
Firstly, you have to decide which areas of gorse are causing issues and which are not.  Gorse, is a native plant, and is attractive to wildlife of all kinds, so is not bad per se, and we certainly do not want to get rid of it all.  But as gorse is pretty well protected by its prickles against all but the hardiest grazers, if it were left unchecked, we would have a monoculture of gorse and no meadow species.


We are starting on the smaller areas, and working from the outer edges of the "area of invasion".  This is because these are the areas that will have been under gorse cover for the least amount of time and so will have been less effected by the presence of gorse (nutrients increased by rotting foliage and a bountiful seed bank) and so we are likely to get a faster recovery to a species rich grassland.


Then you need to cut down the gorse, as low to the ground as possible, so as not to leave trip hazards.  The stumps are then treated with herbicide to prevent regrowth, this has to be done within minutes of the stems being cut.  After that, the cut brash needs is put into big dumpy bags which are dragged to a fire site and burned.  Burning is not done directly on the ground, but is on sheets of corrugated tin raised on concrete blocks.  This prevents the fires from scarring the ground (which can cause erosion of the bare, thin soil) and fertilisation of the ground by the ashes, which we take off site once they are cold.


So its all very hard work and time consuming.  Luckily we have received a generous private donation this year, and this has meant that we have been able to employ Lizy, our Ranger, for the full twelve months.  In turn, having Lizy here full time has meant that we have been able to take on an Assistant Ranger, Ed, for 4 months this winter, and he and our weekly gang of local volunteers have been helping with the effort.  Lizy's presence has also meant that we have been able to have a dozen or so of the NTS Lothain Conservation Volunteers out on site for two weekends over the winter, and that has had a tremendous impact. 

Here's a series of images to help put you in the picture.  Liza.

Photo taken May 2016 - gorse in flower so showing up well

Photos taken January 2017 - areas removed highlighted

NTS Lothian Conservation Volunteers working hard in the wind and rain in October 2016

Ed and Lizy hard at work bag dragging and fire loading

Regular readers might remember that I went out to our land at Lumsdaine with a film crew last November, to film the breeding seals. Well, the fruits of our labours will be being aired on ITV's Border Life this Friday (20th January). If you aren't able to watch it live, you can catch up online at: www.itv.com/news/border/topic/border-life. Worth a watch, there should be some great seal footage. Liza.

Out and about last week with Mark Stephen from BBC Radio Scotland's Out of Doors programme. He was doing a piece on the importance of the new St Abbs Independent Lifeboat to locals and visitors to the area alike. We at the National Trust for Scotland have been staunch supporters of the campaign to make sure St Abbs retains a lifeboat, right from the start. 50,000 people visit St Abb's Head National Nature Reserve each year, so it is inevitable that some will need emerge...ncy assistance on ocassions. With a lifeboat based at St Abbs, and it being capable of 45 knots (its the fastest rescue vessel in the country) help can arrive literally within minutes.

Unexpectedly we got to go out on the boat and experience what it can do first hand - a fantastic experience. With the state of the art vessel, and the highly trained crew, who, as fishermen, dive boat operators and dive instructors, know this stretch of coast like no one else, we are all in safe hands.
The programme is due to be aired at 6.30am this coming Saturday, 20th January.
Pictured below, Mark Stephen and Sarah Russell from St Abbs and Eyemouth Voluntary Marine Reserve.
Liza.

We had a great day today with the National Trust for Scotland's Lothian conservation volunteers who came out to help us with our gorse bashing. Behind them you can see the enormous mountain of gorse which they cut down and dragged to our fire site. Normally there are only two of us who work on practical tasks, so having 11 people makes an enormous difference in the amount of work we can get done. Thanks very much to everyone who came out and helped. Lizy

NTS Lothian conservation volunteers

I went for my New Year walking the bounds this morning (it was a tad too breezy to be out on the cliff path yesterday). I am pleased to say that everything seems to be as I left it before the festive break! It was stunning out there - frosty, sunny, blue sky, hardly a breath of wind. Glad to see a few other folk out on the reserve too. Liza.

Happy WInter Solstice everyone - into the light!

Thanks very much to our volunteers Jean and Ed who helped this morning with clearing up the car park. We raked up the fallen leaves, pulled up weeds and cut back brambles, all whilst enjoying the beautiful sunshine. Lizy

Jean and Ed tidy the car park

I brought a friend up to see the breeding seals at the weekend. We spent a good half an hour watching a pair of seals mating in the shallows, gently being wafted in and out by the waves. Soon after they had finished, another female seal started making advances on the male, swimming round him, calling and slapping her flippers on the surface of the water. Its all go! My pictures were taken from up by the car park too, but with not such a snazzy camera as Margaret's. Still, not bad though! Liza.

Mating involves the male and female being coupled for up to 45 minutes. Its usually on land, but sometimes it occurs in the shallows.

Luckily seals can hold their breath for 20 minutes or so if they need to!

Here's some great shots taken by one of our volunteers, Margaret, of some seal action on Petticowick beach. These were taken from the car park, admittedly with a zoom lens, but it gives you an idea of what can be seen from there, even just with the naked eye. Liza.

A mother and her middle-sized pup - much communication is done through smell, sound and touch.

The pup having a suckle - seal milk has 50-60% fat content. The pup will triple its weight from 15kg at birth to 45kg at weaning in just three weeks! The mother doesn't feed during the suckling period, so she can half her weight during the same time period.

Females will guard their pups fiercely from anything they see as a threat - here another female was just getting a bit too close! Mostly its just snarling, posturing and a bit of flipper waving, but it can escalate.

It's always a nice surprise at this time of year to arrive up at the clifftops and find them filled with seabirds! For the past week or so the Guillemots have been coming in from the sea to sit on the cliffs around Foul Bay in the early morning. They have always disappeared back out to sea, where they spend the majority of the winter, by lunchtime. Lizy

A great wee film showcasing St Kilda, but with a worrying message. The good thing is, though, you can help. Definitely worth spending 15 minutes watching this. Liza.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1_3XAebY84&feature=youtu.be

We've had beautifully calm weather here for the last few days, and the perfectly flat sea conditions are ideal for spotting cetaceans. On Sunday a local birdwatcher spotted 24 Bottlenose Dolphins in the sea near Fast Castle, and then today we spotted a group of about 7 just off Foul Bay and the lighthouse. They were moving pretty slowly so I even managed to get a photo. The calm weather should hopefully last until the weekend so keep a look out if you're up on the cliff tops! Lizy

Bottlenose Dolphins - Tursiops truncatus

We have had a couple of instances of people getting in contact and expressing concern about seal pups lying around in unusual places. Here's some info that might help - please feel free to share and spread the word. Liza.

Some of you may have noticed that the potholes on the road leading to the Nature Reserve car park are getting bigger and more numerous. Unfortuntaley, this is public highway, not road belonging to us, so there is nothing we can do about it apart from report it to Scottish Borders Council. We have done this, but they are working on a limited budget, and as it is an unlisted road, it is not top priority. With safety in mind, we have ringed the potholes with yellow paint, so hopefully you can spot them and avoid them. Fingers crossed that SBC manage to find some underspent money towards the end of the financial year to carry out repairs Liza.

After another hard day's work clearing gorse above the lighthouse road we were treated to these beautiful winter skies. Lizy

After finding a few more fresh Otter spraints on the spillway of the Mire dam we decided to see if we could catch a glimpse of this elusive but regular night visitor.  Leaving the trail camera out overnight rewarded us with this fantastic video!  Lizy

Today I have been out on our land at Lumsdaine filming a piece on the grey seal breeding colony for Border TV. We were incredibly lucky with the weather; its been a beautiful, sharp, frosty day, with lots of sun and not a breath of wind - perfect for filming! And the seals didn't disappoint, it was all going on - pups suckling, pups playing, females flirting with males, mating, fighting between females and fighting between males. Fantastic! Both Emma, the presenter, and Paul, the cameraman, were suitably impressed, and I think they will have got some stunning shots. The piece was for Border Life, which will be aired sometime in January - watch this space for a date nearer the time. Here's some shots to give you a flavour of the day. Liza.

Paul gets a wide angle shot of St Abb's Head from an unusual angle

Suckling and snoozing galore...

The dark animal in the centre of the picture is a male, he will hope to mate with as many female that he can on his stretch of beach, and defend his patch if threatened by other males.

This fairly new born pup (you can tell because its still pretty skinny) spent quite a lot of time following its neighbour (who is older an fatter) round in circles and biting its back flippers. A seal version of an ankle-biter perhaps?!



All life is here! Top right, a pup that has just about moulted all is white fluffy coat. Just below it is the body of a dead, fairly newly born seal - it may have been crushed by a bull by accident, or separated from its mother in last week's storms and starved to death. At the bottom of the picture there are two healthy looking white coated pups and a snoozing female. Centre stage are a pair mating - they couple up, and lie in this embrace for up to 45 minutes.

They just about got all the shots they wanted before they lost the light - this was Emma doing the last piece to camera.

We had a phone call from a local today, who had come across a seal pup in the grass right near the coast path at Burnmouth Harbour, at the bottom of the Wuddy slope this morning. After the weather we have had the last few day, he was, understandably, concerned about its welfare. Myself and Ed went out to check on it - it was very alert to our presence, it looked quite fat, and had no signs of injury or disease. So we have left it be, and will keep a bit of an eye on it to ...see how thing pan out over the next few days. If it doesn't move on and starts to lose weight, then we will intervene.

Seal pups have cute faces, big, puppy-dog eyes and when they cry they sound like a human baby, so the temptation is to want to rescue them. However, lying about on beaches is what seal pups do. In the first three weeks of their life, when they are being fed by their mother, they do little else by lie about a feed. And then after that, when their mother leaves them to their own devices they then moult their white, fluffy coat (as the one is the pitcure is doing) and learn how to catch food. All quite exhausting, and somewaht bamboozling no doubt, and so no surprise that it involves quite a lot of lying about on beaches too! So, if you come across a seal pup - give it a wide berth so as not to stress it out (or ending up with you getting bitten), have a good look to see if it is looking skinny, if it has any injuries (they can get knocked about a bit in stormy seas), or any substance oozing out of its eyes or nose (which might indicate disease). If any of the above, call the SSPCA on 03000 999 999. If none of the above, then the best thing is to leave it be and enjoy watching from it afar.


Liza.

 

Yesterday we went out to carry out a grey seal pup count on our beaches up at Lumsdaine. The vast majority of them are on Lumsdaine Shore, pictured, and in order to count them, we take a series of photos and then count them back in the office. Smaller beaches we count out on site. I have not quite finished the count for Lumsdaine Shore yet...but I've got to over 450 pups in about 2/3 of the beach! Numbers have been steadily increasing over the last decade which is good news - the number of top predators is a great indication of the health of the wider environment. Lots of top predators means that there must be plenty for them to feed on.

We are right in the middle of the pupping season which means that there are pups at the two ends of the size spectrum on the shore. In the second photo, the one just below and to the left of the centre of the photo is about 3 weeks old. You can tell the age because it is beginning to moult its white coat. You can also see that its very rotund, their mother's milk has a huge fat content so a pup triples its weight in the 3 weeks that it feeds on its mother's milk. After this 3 week period, the mother deserts the pup and goes off to mate. The pup gets no more parental care, and has to learn to fend for itself, hence it need the large reserves of body fat to survive through this learning period. That's why you get so many pups aparently abandoned on beaches at this time of year.

The pup below the portly individual is at the other end of the spectrum - only a few days old, with plenty of growing yet to do.

If you fancy a walk, why not head out to the cliffs above Lumsdaine Shore with a pair of binoculars...its an amazing sight to behold, and noisy too! But please don't attempt to go down to the beach - its pretty inaccessible, and you will disturb the seals. If you want a closer look, here's a link to some footage taken down there by Trust staff last season.
http://www.nts.org.uk/Nature-Channel/View/St-Abbs-Seals/

Liza

We were setting up the siphon from the Mire Loch AGAIN this morning when we noticed this interesting lump of poo on the wall of the dam spillway. The location next to water, on top of a prominent feature, as well as the tiny fish bones and scales you can see inside the dropping tell us that this is an Otter spraint. If you're into advanced poo identification then you can also try smelling it! Otter spraint has a characteristically sweet scent, slightly like a hay meadow, while the similar Mink scat has a foul and very unpleasant odour. This is the third one we've found in recent weeks, which suggests that an otter is visiting us regularly at the moment. They are mostly nocturnal in this part of the world, so pretty difficult to spot, but keep your eyes peeled and you never know your luck! Lizy

Otter spraint

We had an exceptionally hard day's work with our volunteers today. Together me, Bill and Ed managed to shift over a ton of stone onto the path above Starney Bay, where it was starting to get a bit muddy. Thank you Bill and Ed for a morning of back-breaking (hopefully not literally!) work.  Lizy

Improvements to path above Starney Bay

Another big thanks to our volunteers Bill, Ed, and Ernie who came out today to help with some more gorse bashing. Because it was too windy to have a fire we have put all of the gorse we've cut into white helicopter bags temporarily, until we are ready to burn it. Pictured are Ed, myself and Ernie with the results of a hard morning's labour. Lizy

Ed, Lizy and Ernie with bags of cut gorse

I spotted this group of Eider Ducks on the old jetty at Petticowick the other day. Although they are elegant birds on the water, and excellent at swimming underwater, they were having a bit of trouble staying upright on the slippery jetty surface.  Lizy.

Eider Ducks Somateria mollissima