Away from the end of Voar1 and the gasping warmth of Summer as the sun attempted to bring some warmth to what was undoubtedly a confusing turn of temperature for most of our species, we have now been firmly caught in the grasp of autumn.
It’s been an exciting time in Shetland, with the entrance of our new Project Officer, Harry, and the growth of our crops for our Linties2 project. With crofts now from Spiggie in the south to Norwick in the north shining with the yellows and purples of the twite crop, this puts us in a fantastic position heading into the winter with volunteers ready to start counting our twite once more. Joining these counts will be an effort to ring and record twite at several sites giving us for the first time the chance to understand twite movement throughout the year.
Also in the fields this year have been our wader volunteers. In Shetland we are trying to improve the habitats of whaaps (curlew), tieve’s nacket (lapwing), and the peerie deuk (red-necked phalarope). To do this we need to identify areas in need of habitat enhancement, for example through the introduction of scrapes (shallow water-filled depressions), a fantastic resource for feeding. To identify these areas, surveyors have been recording wader behaviours and populations throughout the breeding season.
Our volunteers have been a crucial and amazing part of the team this year. A group of us were out planting oysterplant on the beach at Urafirth – we planted over 140 plants! This was a beach which population was struggling but now with these new additions, cultivated by Shetland Amenity Trust, hopefully we have turned this tide around, but we can only keep our fingers crossed as winter will decide whether the plants will survive or not.
Away from the beach, our volunteers have been out trekking the roads, carrying out verge surveys of plants for pollinators. With this data we will work with the Shetland Islands Council, aiming to identify verges where management changes are required to improve the diversity and frequency of these crucial habitats for bumblebees such as our Shetland bumblebee. With over 22km covered this year, it’s a fantastic start and we hope to go even further next summer!
The Shetland bumblebee has also been the subject of a lot of engagement work this year with guided bee walks taking place in Unst, Ollaberry, Lerwick, and Bressay. Catered talks and scavenger hunts have kept a myriad of groups engaged with the bright orange thorax of our very special bee, such as Ability Shetland. What has come out as a fun theme this year though has been gardening for pollinators, with a collaboration with Lerwick Community Council bringing about a garden competition aimed at raising efforts to help these bees closer to home. Up in Ollaberry, an enthused group arranged for a guided walk round their community garden focussing on pollinator-friendly gardens.
Engagement with local communities is crucial if we are to protect our species into the future and create a legacy after the project finishes; making sure we provide chances for people to directly impact the protection of our species is vitally important. Recently we had our oysterplant sign-making session up in Northmavine. With help and recycled wood from Northmavine Community Development Company, people designed their own signs which will go out on our oysterplant protectors next year. Our youth panellists in Shetland have also been crucial to influencing our work here, helping to improve our plantain leaf beetle survey methods and monitoring historic oysterplant sites.
Training is key to providing the people-power we need for species protection and one group that sorely needs it are our endemic hawkweeds. A difficult plant for even our experts, Tim Rich – widely recognised as the lead on northern hawkweeds – kindly came up and led a training workshop in August leading to the discovery of a previously unrecorded hawkweed in Shetland. For our volunteers, there have also been opportunities to join our wader workshops taking place in Clousta and Spiggie. At Unstfest, there was also the opportunity to dive into beetle surveying with a group of 23 smiling faces, eagerly searching the Keen of Hamar for our plantain leaf beetle with the help of local expert, Mike Pennington.
One group crucial for the future of these species is the next generation. Anderson High School and Aith Junior High have jumped at the chance to get involved. We have visited crofts, exploring the relationship between crofting and nature, and have also provided the resources for individuals to produce a project around our species. This year, Advance Higher Geography Students are producing works focussing on the populations of Shetland bumblebees and the identification of prime curlew habitats.
All in all, it’s been a great few months, and as we look into the cold of winter, the energy we have gathered up will carry us through and into the excitement of the new year, ready, once again, to get stuck into helping our eight species in Shetland.
Keep up to date
Keep an eye on the Species on the Edge website, on our social media channels, and make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list to keep up to date with all programme news and updates over the coming months.
And remember, you can find out everything you need to know about Species on the Edge in Shetland on our area page, including our local target species, what we’re up to and how to get in touch with the local team.
