Forsinard flies!

What am I doing?

Oh yeah, I'm up in the far north of Scotland volunteering for two weeks at the RSPB's Forsinard Flows reserve!
The majority of the work involves transforming areas of forestry back into bog by cutting trees and damming drains to allow the water to collect in the peatland. The bog is an important habitat for many species of wading birds such as Golden Plover, Dunlin and Greenshanks as well as the rarer Common Scoter (a type of duck). You can read more about the reserve and plans for it here.

So far I have checked camera traps by the lochs, set stickleback traps (and caught none yet) and taken water and area temperature and depth measurements, and had a visual scan for any invertebrates. On my travels over the bog so far I've seen toads, common lizards, greenshank, meadow pipit, merlin, raven, frogs, wheatear, different species of dragonfly, ground beetles, and a shrew. It looks a bit bleak but it's a great place for nature. At the volunteer cottage ('Keepers') we've also been dealing with a lack of water due to a long period of drought up here over the past few weeks, so here's hoping it rains for once!

I've leave you with a few more photos for now while I'm happily getting my face gnawed by midges :)