Species on the Edge Outer Hebrides team: Emma Stobart (Bumblebee Conservation Trust) – Project Officer, and Mairi Robertson Carrey (Bumblebee Conservation Trust) -People Engagement Officer
In April we launched Species on the Edge programme activity in the Outer Hebrides with a talk and search for short-necked oil beetles in Uist. Since then, we’ve not stopped!
At the end of June and beginning of July we held the Outer Hebrides Wildlife Festival! We coordinated more than 40 community-led events over the eight days of the festival, across the length of the Outer Hebrides. Events ranged from talks-and-walks, to art exhibitions and workshops, to boat trips and opportunities to try new outdoor pursuits. One highlight was definitely the giant blow up whale!
We have had a very busy survey season, starting with wader surveys in April, followed by bumblebee, short-necked oil beetle, and northern colletes surveys throughout the summer. Car trouble meant that there were some issues with northern colletes surveys, but local recorders and volunteers helped us immensely. We had some glorious sunny days, which made getting out to do surveys extremely enjoyable, but it also meant that our species reacted differently to how we would normally expect and the habitat in certain areas was pretty dry, even at the beginning of the season. Our bees started off slowly, but by July we were getting decent numbers of great yellow and moss carder bumblebees.
We were less successful with our bat surveys, and our Irish Lady’s tresses were very early in coming out this year in Barra and Uist, so much so that we almost missed them! We worked closely with our RSPB Outer Hebrides partners to put up signs at little tern and arctic tern colonies, making people aware of ground nesting birds and ensuring disturbance to these sensitive birds was kept to a minimum. We’ll be planning to do more engagement work next year to encourage locals and tourists alike to look out for these precious colonies.
We have also started working with crofters and will be holding events with SAC over the winter months to get more people engaged with the work we are doing. Currently, we have topping underway on crofts in parts of Lewis and Uist to help control rush and improve habitat for breeding waders. We’re also looking forward to running more events on bee ID and will be teaming up with the Outer Hebrides Recording group to run ID training with the help of experts. Dates for these are yet to be confirmed but keep an eye on our social media and sign up to our mailing list for updates.
