Scottish demonstration farm Auchnerran
Auchnerran: game and songbird counts Thrushes such as blackbirds are thriving at Auchnerran. © Marlies Nicolai/GWCT
BACKGROUND We have been monitoring game and wildlife at the Game & Wildlife Scottish Demonstration Farm, Auchnerran (GWSDF) since early 2015 when we took over the tenancy. 2015 and 2016 were our baseline years: changes to farm management were kept to a minimum to allow extensive monitoring to determine the variety and abundance of wildlife present before we began to make changes to the farm (see Review of 2016). This showed that the farm supported a wide diversity of wildlife, much of it at high densities. This almost certainly resulted from the historical low-intensity farming and high level of predator control conducted over the area. Core monitoring is now more focused on key species and groups to help illustrate how wildlife responds to management changes on the farm.
Conditions at GWSDF Auchnerran were challenging this year, with a late very cold spring (the ‘beast from the east’) followed swiftly by an unusually dry spring and summer. This created problems across the farm (see pages 24-25 for our farming summary), but also meant that our routine fieldwork monitoring the biodiversity on the farm was largely unimpeded this year. One of the first tasks Marlies Nicolai and the team face in spring is counting our game species. At Auchnerran this means searching mainly for pheasants and brown hares, while keeping an eye open for partridges and black game (which lek just up the hill from the farm). Grey partridges are scarce in the Howe of Cromar (the area that Auchnerran sits within), while red-legged partridges are released nearby and drift onto the farm quite frequently in small numbers. This year’s counts suggest that our pheasant numbers have probably stabilised after a period of decline since our tenancy began (see Table 1). This follows the steady loss of the huge number of residual released birds we inherited and suggests that our modest population might now be self-sustaining – good news for Merlin Becker who runs the farm’s small shoot, as is the increase in brown hares this year. Following hot on the heels of the game counts is our wader monitoring. From March/April, when the weather allows, we try to identify wader breeding territories, nesting attempts and how successful these are. This is a difficult task because with around 70 pairs of lapwing alone breeding on site (see Table 2), it is hard to keep up with them all, especially when first clutches fail and are replaced, and when chicks start to hatch and wander about. We are all very aware of how lucky we are to have this ‘problem’. In 2018 lapwing continued to increase in abundance at Auchnerran, whereas we recorded the first declines for the other three species monitored (see Table 2). Not only are lapwing breeding numbers steadily increasing, despite changes to the management of some grass fields where the birds breed, but they have also begun wintering on site. The birds move away in response to bad weather (we do not yet
TABLE 1 Lapwing breeding numbers are increasing despite the management of some grass fields. © GWCT
22 | GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2018
Review2018.indd 22
Game densities (individuals/100 ha) at Auchnerran
Species
2015 2016 2017 2018 Spring Autumn Spring Autumn Spring Autumn Spring Autumn
Pheasant, male Pheasant, female Black grouse Red-legged partridge Grey partridge Brown hare
24.3 14.4 0.4 0 0 3.7
42.0 25.2 0 3.1 0 1.0
22.7 5.8 0.4 1.3 0 1.7
9.4 0.4 0 0 0 0.2
19.0 4.6 0 0.9 0 1.4
18.8 9.4 0 1.0 0 0
18.4 1.5 0 0 0 2.5
11.8 10.8 0 2.7 0 4.8
www.gwct.org.uk
03/05/2019 14:24:28
