Kicking things off with our Small Blue Film 🎥
For our team on the North Coast, 2026 begun in Dunnet Community Forest with an outdoor screening of our beautiful Small Blue Creative Evaluation film. Produced by artists Sinéad Hargan and Laura O’Kane, the film is a response to our work with Small Blue butterflies in Caithness. The film is comprised of interviews with local volunteers, field recordings taken at Castlehill and Dunnet – both key sites for Small Blues – and images and paintings created through reflective mark-making sessions with volunteers.
The care and attention with which artists Laura and Sinéad approached their evaluation task has translated into a film that explores what it means, on a deeply personal level, to protect, cherish and advocate for the natural world. It creates an archive of connection, reflection, and collaboration between community, art, nature and habitat. Watch it here:
Wick Men’s Shed collaboration
Species on the Edge is working with Wick Men’s Shed to develop the garden at their new premises to be a haven for wildlife, as well as a sanctuary for people, and to encourage a closer connection with nature.
Plans include a giant bug hotel, bird feeders and boxes, a hedge, dead hedging, a compost pile, an accessible planter for Great Yellow bumblebee-friendly plants, and a butterfly bank. The group are even planning to attempt to grow Scottish Primrose in a pot. Service users will receive training to provide them with the skills to build these items, as well as bumblebee ID training, and they will set up their own in-house, simplified wildlife recording scheme.
Documenting spring in Tongue
Spring has triggered a flurry of activity in the Tongue Gardening Group as they have started collecting and pressing spring flowers for their ‘Documenting Our Gardens’ community herbarium project. The group recently made a list of the plants they have collected – there are over 60 specimens in the herbarium now! However, the list highlighted the fact that all the plants were collected in summertime, and there were no spring flowers included at all.
So, the gardeners have been looking around their gardens again and pressing spring flowers such as daffodils, snowdrops and tulips. The group met in Tongue to lay out the new spring plants and work together to remember how to mount and label new herbarium sheets. Artist Joanne Kaar, who’s idea inspired the whole herbarium project, suggested some useful online video clips to help the team remember what to do.
As another exciting adventure the group have been invited to visit the House of Tongue to collect specimens from the historic garden. They hope to find some really special plants, and gather garden history and memories from Rachel Sutherland, who spent her childhood there.
Lucas brings bees into local primary schools 🐝
Our North coast youth panellist, Lucas, has been busy organising his school-based community engagement project, set to take place from May to June, offering free bumblebee education sessions to local primary schools in collaboration with the High Life Highland countryside ranger service. Miller Academy, Mount Pleasant and Farr primary are all looking forward to learning more about our native bumblebees and we hope the sessions will help encourage the pupils to get out there and get involved in conservation.
Looking ahead
Over the winter we have been busy with coordinating our legacy plan and putting things in place for our final year. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to and supported this process.
Volunteers head to Stroma!
We’re planning a trip to Stroma with our experienced survey volunteers this August to investigate whether some of our priority species are present on the island. If you’re a registered north coast volunteer who has taken part in surveying for Great Yellow bumblebee, Small Blue butterfly, Plantain Leaf beetle, Scottish Primrose, Purple Oxytropis or Oysterplant, keep an eye out for your invitation to join us.
Durness Primary takes over knit and natter
Our conservation comic book, designed by artist Aimee Lockwood in collaboration with many of you, is almost complete and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you this summer! First up, Durness Primary School, who contributed their knowledge about Corncrakes, will be taking over their local knit and natter group at the village hall in June to launch the comic and tell their community about some of our special species.
We’ve been getting creative – new assets coming soon!
We have been working hard creating assets such as posters, postcards, signage, a comic book and a wildlife recording calendar to help sustain the work we have initiated beyond the life of the programme.
One project we’re particularly excited about is a series of four panels highlighting local species. Designed by Aimee Lockwood, each panel will link in with our comic book, whilst being informed by the needs and characteristics of the local area where each panel will be erected.
End of project exhibition
We’re in the early planning stages of an end-of-project exhibition. The exhibition will bring together and celebrate the artistic contributions that communities across the north coast have made through their participation in Species on the Edge.
We plan to “takeover” Strathnaver Museum for a fortnight in November, exhibiting material collected through Joanne B Kaar and the Tongue Gardening Group’s community herbarium project, Aimee Lockwood’s comic book, Marta Sienkiewicz’s stained-glass window, and Laura O’Kane and Sinéad Hargan’s Small Blue film.
We intend to launch the exhibition with a day of talks, workshops and activities. Thereafter, Species on the Edge officers will staff the display, providing an opportunity for deeper conversations with exhibition visitors.
Small Blue Day
Small Blue Day, Dunnet Forest, 30 May
This year we will be celebrating the Small Blue with a day of activity in collaboration with Dunnet Community Forest. Join us in the meadow at the forest on Saturday 30th May, 11am until 3pm, to learn more about how to create a butterfly bank in whatever space you have available to you, take part in craft activities, or explore a nature trail or treasure hunt. Refreshments will be available. Project Officer, Sarah Bird, will host a short talk at 11am and at 2pm about the Dunnet Forest butterfly bank construction.
