In Orkney, Helen (Project Officer) and Sam (People Engagement Officer) have had a great year working on their species recovery projects for Arctic tern, common pipistrelle bat, curlew, great yellow bumblebee, lapwing, little tern, plantain leaf beetle, Scottish primrose and oysterplant. Let’s have a closer look at what they got up to.
People power for the win 💪
Our events and activities in 2024 have been connecting over 2000 people to nature, helping raise awareness about our nine Orkney species on the edge with school classes and teachers, young people, families, and community groups across the county. During the Orkney Nature Festival in May, we ran early-morning wellbeing walks, seeing 27 bird species, 12 plant species, two bumblebees, two butterflies and two mammals as well as enjoying many mindful connections to nature.
We set up a new volunteer group to help protect little terns during May and June at a site where little terns are known to nest, and two local schools made posters as part of their RSPB Little Tern Schools Project to display at the nest site to help people know how to minimise disturbance. In September, we went bats about science at Orkney International Science Festival and between March and October we teamed up with Historic Environment Scotland Ranger Service on their Ring of Brodgar guided walks to tell visitors about curlew, lapwing, and great yellow bumblebees.
Prescribing nature
A highlight for the Orkney team this year was working with RSPB Scotland and NHS Orkney to produce an Orkney-specific RSPB Nature Prescription calendar. The idea of a Nature Prescription was originally created and piloted by RSPB Shetland, followed by a pilot of GP practices in Edinburgh. The results showed connection to nature made a difference in improving patient physical and mental health and now RSPB Nature Prescriptions are being widely used across Scotland, England, and Wales. The Orkney calendar was adopted in March 2024 by all six NHS Orkney GP surgeries with all 24 GPs now able to prescribe nature connection to their patients. The calendar activities are accessible for a range of patients and conditions which may include mental health, chronic pain, and long-term health issues. Activities can be done simply from a window, a small garden, or in a local area and include listening to bird calls, keeping a nature diary, noticing seasonal changes, and observing clouds, light and shadows.
Feedback from GPs and patients has been incredibly positive so far with prescriptions helping conditions such as smoking and alcohol cessation, depression, and occupational health recovery. In October 2024, two medical students contacted the Orkney SotE team about using the Orkney RSPB nature prescriptions as the focus of their practice placement projects. So, we are now going ‘beyond the calendar’, supporting the students to deliver a fortnightly Stromness Surgery social walking group and a waiting room display at Dounby Surgery promoting the calendar and encouraging patients to request a nature prescription.
Our action for species
Our species work has seen a team of 17 keen and enthusiastic survey volunteers receive training at 11 training sessions across the county and then heading out to sites within their local areas to survey bumblebees, terns, oysterplant and bats across Orkney this year. Wader surveys were also carried out by Helen and the RSPB Orkney reserves team. Here are some species-specific updates:
Bumblebees
Despite it being a difficult year for bumblebees, with a very cold and wet summer, our surveyors persevered and we are delighted to say that we have we now set up and are monitoring 10 BeeWalks (Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s national monitoring programme) across Mainland, Sanday, Stronsay, and South Ronaldsay. We were delighted to see and record a great yellow bumblebee both in Sanday and on our Stromness transect during a training session. Jean, one of our volunteers, has written a lovely blog which beautifully outlines a year in the life of a bumblebee surveyor in Orkney. The data from these surveys goes to Bumblebee Conservation Trust and to Orkney’s local bumblebee recorder as well as going on to be submitted to the National Biodiversity Network database too. The data is also used by Helen locally to inform future work for Species on the Edge, including management advice given to land managers she is working with to support the management of land for our species. Land managers so far have included Orkney Islands Council and their conservation road verge programme (more details on this to come – watch this space), Arcadia Park, NHS Orkney at the Balfour Hospital and Happy Valley. We have also been approached by some other organisations and private landowners and managers and we are looking forward to working with them to provide advice on managing their land in a way that benefits our species as well as their own land needs.
This year we also co-produced an article with Orkney Wildlife Records Group which was submitted as part of NBN’s Better Biodiversity Data Project. This article was displayed as part of an exhibition for MSPs at the Scottish Parliament. 26 MSPs came and spoke to NBN staff at the exhibition, including Alasdair Allan, MSP and Nature Champion for the great yellow bumblebee. The NBN team said, “the exhibition successfully helped raise the profile of the importance of biodiversity data, and the infrastructure that supports it with Scottish MSPs”.
Terns
This year saw five potential little tern breeding sites and six Arctic tern breeding sites monitored across Orkney. Little terns sadly had a bad year with no colonies present on Orkney and no confirmed nesting attempts. Arctic tern sites did see colonies return and did produce some lovely fluffy chicks for us to watch and record bouncing around. Numbers however were also down and nesting was later this year again, likely due to the weather among other reasons too. On a more positive note, we trained nine tern volunteers this year and most went on to survey a site for us this year.
Plants
Plantlife produced a new app this year to be used for recording oysterplant. This proved a really great way to collect information on this species and we enjoyed being part of the trial for this. Helen delivered three training sessions on three different islands and in total six sites were recorded on the app. Thank you to all who replied to our online surveys asking about oysterplant locations; we learned of a few new sites through this. We are also due to do some advisory work on this species so if you have this plant on your land please do get in touch with Helen.
We also received a survey report from Plantlife who contracted out a survey of Scottish primrose across Orkney last year which was completed by Direct Ecology. This covered a large number of sites across the islands which showed some worrying declines in some areas when compared with other past surveys.
Bats
We have been working closely with Orkney Bat Recorder Tim Dean to carry out our bat surveys in Orkney. We provided training to volunteers and then focussed on surveying Binscarth woods where we confirmed up to four bats feeding regularly. In addition to survey work, Helen has placed an audiomoth (sound recording device) out for three nights in three different locations. Results are yet to come back for these however we do know one of these has recorded a bat in Stromness. Trialling these has been a lot of fun and we are delighted to have a result.
Waders
Nine RSPB Reserve areas were monitored for waders by Helen and RSPB reserves staff and Helen was given permission to monitor a private landowner’s land too. Surveys involve three visits between mid-April to the end June. Generally we saw an increase in all species recorded (curlew, lapwing, oystercatcher, redshank and snipe), including at a site where Species on the Edge funded some habitat creation last winter. Helen is looking forward to working with landowners next year to provide wader management advice and help create wader friending habitats on their land.
What’s next?
Winter can be a tough time in Orkney with our shorter daylight hours and stormy weather. So, to help brighten up the season, we are launching a series of ‘wintering well walks’. These are designed to help people get outdoors, get moving, explore nature, and connect to each other – another way we are going beyond the nature prescription calendar. View our upcoming walks on our events page.
We can’t believe that next year the Species on the Edge programme will be nearly half way through! In 2025 we will continue to create more opportunities to help people connect with nature in Orkney, through walks, talks, festival events, school sessions and community group activities. We are also particularly looking forward to working with more young people aged 16-25 to hear about and support their ideas for taking longer term action to protect nature in Orkney.
Our volunteers are looking forward to monitoring our species again next year and Helen is looking forward engaging with more land owners and managers, focusing particularly on bumblebees, waders and oysterplant. We will be running events demonstrating how to survey and manage land for wildlife as well as assisting individual land owners and managers with management plans. We hope to do more work for Scottish primrose and we are also looking forward to joining up with the Species on the Edge Shetland team to get going with our plantain leaf beetle monitoring work – a species not much is known about!
To keep up to date with all that we’ve got going on in Orkney and to receive notifications of new events and opportunities, sign up to the Species on the Edge mailing list, keep an eye on the Species on the Edge social media channels, or get in touch with Sam: samantha.stringer@rspb.org.uk.