The Bog Squad ventured north at the end of March for a return trip to the stunningly beautiful Glen Affric. We last visited in November 2015 when alongside Trees for Life volunteers we installed some plastic piling dams. Since then the British Dragonfly Society has started its own local team of volunteers who are carrying out peatland restoration work in the glen to aid the local White-faced Darter colony. And so we traveled north to join them at their monthly work party.
And what a day we picked for it! Stunning weather with barely a cloud in the sky and temperatures pushing 18 degrees celsuis........not bad for March!
The site is a former pine plantation that has been felled and is now been deemed too wet to plant further trees on. It will therefore remain as a large open clearing providing good potential habitat for species such as Dark Green Fritillary butterflies and White-faced Darter dragonflies. We were creating peat dams in the many old forestry ditches in order to help keep the site from drying out to much and turning to rank scrub. It proved to be hot work digging in the sun for the volunteers, but their efforts produced eight new peat dams and five new pools.
Several moths were out enjoying the sun too and an eagle-eyed volunteer managed to spot a freshly emerged Yellow Horned moth.
And that evening we set up three light traps in the glen which yielded a good number of moths for the time of year including a total of 72 Rannoch Sprawler. This rare moth only inhabits mature birch woodlands in certain parts of the Scottish Highlands, so it was a pleasure to see it in such large numbers!
Many thanks to those who joined us and see you again soon!!