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Make Space For Nature
Make Space For Nature
Life at Loch Leven: exploring work and wildlife on the nature reserve
In this episode we head to Loch Leven National Nature Reserve to meet with Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire and Reserve Officer Sally Reay to learn about the area's vibrant ecosystem and the huge variety of wildlife that thrives in this habitat.
Discover the seasonal spectacles that make Loch Leven a critical sanctuary for numerous species. With each season offering its own unique wonders, you'll learn what to look for and when to visit for an unforgettable wildlife experience, from courtship displays by great crested grebes and the dramatic arrival of pink-footed geese, to tornado-like swarms of non-biting midges.
Jeremy and Sally share the importance of balancing conservation efforts with public access, ensuring that both wildlife and visitors can benefit from this stunning landscape. Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the tireless work of the reserve staff and volunteers, and be inspired to visit this special place.
Hi and welcome to Make Space for Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature, landscapes and species. I'm Kirsten Guthrie and in each episode, my guest and I will help you learn more about our amazing natural world. In this episode, I head outdoors to Loch Leven National Nature Reserve to meet with NatureScot Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire and Reserve Officer Sally Ray. We hear about the unique biodiversity found at Loch Leven National Nature Reserve to meet with NatureScot Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire and Reserve Officer Sally Ray. We hear about the unique biodiversity found at Loch Leven and the important work being carried out by staff and volunteers to protect these precious habitats.
Speaker 2:So we're here at Loch Leven National Nature Reserve. You may be able to hear the birds and possibly a bit of wind in the background here. It's such a beautiful place, a unique habitat and home to many different species of wildlife, and we've been joined by Reserve Manager Jeremy Squire. So hello, jeremy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you tell us about your role with NatureScot please?
Speaker 3:I started with NatureScot in 2001 when I had a short contract for three months and still here after a couple of little breaks over 20 years later. I've also worked on the Isle of May and done little bits of area work and things like that. So I've done quite a bit with Nature's Scott in the past.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a long time you've been here after that initial three months, so it's great to have you with us, and can you just tell us about the local area and what's the habitat like here at Loch Leven, please?
Speaker 3:Well, Loch Leven's a sort of unique habitat. It's a big freshwater loch, it's eutrophic, which means it's nutrient rich, which means that we get the plant life, and with the plant life then we get the insect life and then that attracts in the uh the bird life, uh, so Loch Leven's sort of pretty famous for its wildfowl. If you imagine somewhere like uh Loch Ness, which is a big open water that's now very, very deep and so you don't get the plant growth. But here at Loch Leven's average sort of water depth is about four meters, so you get uh tons and tons of macrophytes growing, and this is the sort of the basis of the sort of life here at Lochleven and why we get so many birds.
Speaker 2:We've been out looking at nests this morning and there's a fascinating diversity of birds here. So can you just tell us about some of the birds that are here all year and also the ones that perhaps arrive over winter?
Speaker 3:So right now we've been looking at breeding birds here and we've been looking specifically for tufted duck nests. At one point there were over 400 tufted duck nests on St Surf's Island, where we stood, and that represented 13% of the breeding population for the United Kingdom. There aren't as many nests here now, but there's still probably a couple of hundred nests out here. So the other main breeder breeding duck that we have here is Mallard. There's probably 200 nests around St Serfs Island here, and then we also have lesser numbers of Gadwall, which is a duck that's very similar to mallard, and a few shoveler nesting as well. Historically there used to be uh, widgeon, uh and pintail nesting here, but we haven't seen those nests for quite a long time that's great and we we've.
Speaker 2:Um, you might be able to hear in the background there's quite a lot of gulls, and what kind of gulls are here?
Speaker 3:There are lesser blackback and herring gulls.
Speaker 2:There's also a small colony of black-headed gulls out here as well. Brilliant, it's actually fantastic we. Just the noise they make is amazing. Actually it's been lovely to hear it and just the kind of location and geography of Loch Leven and we're near, quite nearross. It's quite an accessible nature reserve. There's a path that goes all the way around the loch, isn't there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, traditionally there was very little access to Loch Leven in the past the estate was run as a sporting estate but there were three access points around the loch where people could come and visit, three access points around the lock where people could come and visit. A local charity that were into improving access around the kinrossshire area got together and came up with a plan to link all these access points with a path which is about 13 13 miles in total and links up the local villages as well no, that's great.
Speaker 2:I've cycled it myself. It's a lovely, lovely cycle and you see so many different species and habitats as you go around. It's a fascinating reserve Nature. Scott, we manage one part of the reserve. How is the reserve split? Why does it need to be split like this?
Speaker 3:I think it's back in I would check the year here but 1964,. The RSPB were looking for a site in Scotland and there was a choice of a few of them. I think Karsperek Loch was one of them as well, up in Perthshire. This site was for sale. I believe there was interest in there being a waterworks on the site, but the RSPB bought the farm and created wetlands slowly over the years. It was mainly an education centre rather than a nature reserve, but then that's expanded over the years. So in 2004, when the nature reserve agreement was re-signed, the RSPB took control of the land that is in front of their area. So it's a short patch of shoreline, probably two and a half to three kilometers, which they manage for their purposes. They're more interested in breeding waders breeding farmland waders, so we manage for ducks. So they took over that part of the shoreline as part of their. Something fell more under their remit.
Speaker 2:And are their facilities. They've got a centre open there, haven't they? They've got a cafe and a viewing area and whatnot.
Speaker 3:They have a very good cafe, good coffee, and they have hides there where they can overlook their wetlands that they've created. Okay brilliant.
Speaker 2:So certainly I. You know there's a lot, lots to do here and lots to see, and you've also got your own hides dotted throughout the, the kind of path around the the loch and what. What would you say are kind of some of the best things that people can come and see if they decide to come around the the loch at these hides uh, this time of year it's brimming with uh, brimming with life.
Speaker 3:We're, uh, we're just seeing lots of ducklings hatching now. You can get quite close-up views of them from our viewing screens. That uh that are dotted around the uh sort of west side of the the loch. Also, you can hear all the sort of bird song that's around us at the moment. We've got reed buntings and willow warblers and lots of, lots of birds uh singing around us. Uh, things like dragonflies are starting to emerge as well. It's also worth visiting. We spend a lot of time managing our sort of shoreline meadows. We don't have great tracts of land to to manage our roles, mainly open water and uh, but uh, there are. The meadow at burley sand. Is is quite popular with uh and it is a good diversity of plants. We have managed it well over the last few years, managing to cut it and lift the grass off, which is a great way of improving the improving meadows.
Speaker 2:And so you know Loch Leven is a unique habitat. Why does this specific area need to be managed by NatureScot? I mean it does have. It overlaps with several protected areas, the special protection area, ramsar site, site of special scientific interest. So you know what, what is the kind of work that goes on there that NatureScot manages?
Speaker 3:It is a unique site, as explained before, about the sort of general wildlife that we do have here, but we also. It's a great way for NatureScot to showcase the Scotland's nature, and we've got this now got this path that will take you through a variety of habitats, and it's also a good way of showing really high level gold plated management that we do here as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's brilliant, and I mean, there is such a lot of work that goes on and it's so varied too. So how do you manage all this work on the reserve? Who else helps it? Obviously is not just yourself, you know. You must have a team and possibly volunteers as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's two full-time staff that will do the day-to-day stuff. I'm unfortunately sat in the office more than I'd like to be. I've got my assistant, sally. She'll do a lot of the maintenance work, and I've also got a group of volunteers that come in on a Wednesday as well. They've been one of the first really established volunteer groups that SNH as was bought in back in when they bought in a new volunteer policy in 2007. We've pretty much meet every week. There's very few weeks where we we don't have any volunteers. Volunteers in and uh. They're doing a lot of the, the tidying up and, as well as maintenance. They will help us with um survey work as well. Uh, and so we do, and we do have a two groups of volunteers that come in on a monday and a friday as well who will, uh who come in and survey insect areas for us as well.
Speaker 2:So we've got a lot of long-term data that's collected on the site just by volunteers alone that's great, and you were talking to me earlier about the kind of corporate groups that come out sometimes, and is that on the increase, or are there more people actually beginning to kind of look after the environment, perhaps having a volunteering day from from out, from the office?
Speaker 3:uh, yeah, we get a lot of inquiries about that. Um, most of them unfortunately in the summertime when we we're doing the sort of more boring tasks like non-native plant removal. But uh, I've had a couple of groups in recently that would have were, uh, very helpful to get our new viewing screen open as well, doing fencing and things like that. That was really helpful that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:I definitely think people would much prefer to be out here enjoying the outdoors than stuck behind a computer at a desk. So it sounds like a fantastic opportunity, and I mean it does sound like it is a special place to work and visit, and are there particular species of plants, animals, insects that are perhaps unique to this area, and when is the best time to visit?
Speaker 3:So from about late April onwards there's a good chance of. One of our favourite unique plants around here is holy grass, which is a very flowery seed head grass which has got a sort of sweet smell. It smells more like marjoram, but some people say it smells like vanilla. Another highlight of the spring if the water quality is good, we do get these sort of tornadoes of non-biting midges, these coronamids. This is all connected with abundance of food for ducks and these can be quite spectacular the height of the tallest trees. These sort of tornadoes of midges, itges, uh, it's a quite a hard sell, though, to people who visit, who breathe them in and aren't necessarily prepared to see them. But this can be quite a spec, one of sort of nature's spectacular things. This is billions and billions of insects flying around, and you've got to be sort of lucky depending on whether they're on the weather conditions, but uh, the shows can be very spectacular. Hopefully they're on nests by now, but uh, in the spring there's a few places around the reserve you'll see the courtship and dancing of the great crested grebes. There's, uh, approximately um 40 pairs around the loch, but slightly mysterious species which you uh because we don't the nests are quite difficult to find, tucked deep in reed beds and uh, they seem to wait to a certain time whether it's water level related or whether it's just food availability when they actually hatch their chicks and we don't see a chick all summer and then come into august suddenly they're hatching their chicks all around the lock. So in the autumn around the sort of shallow fringe around Loch Leven we do get many ducks migrating from all around Europe. So in September, early September, we will see huge numbers of tufted ducks. Last autumn there's approximately 12,000 here. Uh, now these uh ducks as far as the eye can see, on the sort of east side, the shallow shallow area, shallow side of the log, mixed in with those there.
Speaker 3:Uh, as as the autumn progresses we'll see up to 10, 000 teal, 4, 000 potchard, say teal, or a small, a small duck, half the size of a, half size of a mallard, with a green and chestnut head, a grey body. They like feeding in the sort of shallow water around the loch. We'll uh potchard which are related to the tufted duck. They're with a grey body and a chestnut head. These are another diving duck. We'll see up to 1600 of those, a bird that's sort of declined in number across the uk we've always had between four and a half thousand, five thousand most. Most autumns their numbers have dropped, but the decline isn't as steep as in other places. Yeah, so we'll see up to a thousand uh pintail as well. These are these are a gray duck with a long tail, nice chocolate brown head. They're another one that appears in the autumn, but unfortunately a lot of these birds will disappear. The food begins to run out in um in november and also the water level comes up as well, so the numbers, uh food accessibility gets a bit lower and so these ducks will start to disappear. Uh and in the in the winter they're replaced largely by golden eye. A large amount of golden eye will be present on the site.
Speaker 3:Something else to look out for in the autumn is uh brown trout migrating up the burns.
Speaker 3:You can see them in uh from the, the bridges across the burns that go around the lock occasionally.
Speaker 3:Uh lock leaving has uh a lot leaving. Trout has been transported throughout the world uh, to many countries canada, yemen, uh, lots of, lots of places over over the years. It's um, there is talk that it's actually a um uh species, a subspecies. Obviously these trout feed well on the uh abundance of food, that on the site, the obvious one lock leavens got a very good head of pink-footed geese, particularly in the autumn. It's one of the first sort of staging posts where we'll probably see 20 000 birds before they uh and then they start uh either migrating through to Norfolk or down to Lancashire. From here we hang on to a few throughout the winter but we start off with sort of 20,000 and uh in sort of September, october, and then the numbers drop through down to hardly any in the winter and then the numbers start to build again in the sort of springtime. It's a sort of uh familiar call in across kinross year in the autumn and winter the wink wink call the wink, wink, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the. Is that the pink-footed geese?
Speaker 3:yeah I would say the pink-footed geese are uh, wink, wink and um.
Speaker 2:Grey-legged geese are ang, ang that's a good description, actually, so the geese largely use itang.
Speaker 3:That's a good description actually. So the geese are largely used as a safe roost site. There's sort of shallow edges to the loch and there's islands for them to sit on. But life's not as simple for geese, where they come in in the evening and then fly out during the day to feed on the local farmer's fields. They'll actually come back and use the site to preen and wash themselves and they sort of go back and forth during the day, come back to drink as well and some actually will feed on the sort of macrophyte growth around the loch as well.
Speaker 2:That's great. It's absolutely teeming with wildlife and biodiversity here, and you know I'm going to ask you this question and I know you'll probably say, yeah, you can't answer this. But what is a typical day like for you here? Is there such a thing as a typical day here at lochleven?
Speaker 3:I think. I think no two days are alike. Um, I used to be more outdoor based, uh, but these days I'm a little bit more office based, so the days can be quite similar. So the last few days I've been catching up because I've been serving bonksies on St Kilda, so sometimes can be rescuing swans. Or some days I'm on machinery and we've inherited a fen cutting machine so I've been doing a lot of work with that. Some days we've got to be a bit reactive with the weather We've had trees blown down and then some days just doing habitat work. So yeah, there is no two days alike really.
Speaker 2:That's quite exciting, I think, for your kind of job. And what's your favourite thing about the Nature Reserve? What makes it so special for you? Is there a certain area or a certain species? What is, or a certain type of work that you like to do? What? What do you love about it?
Speaker 3:I just do like to see um in the autumn, the, uh, the, the large amount of ducks that are um around the the loch shore. That's what it's all about to me, that's seeing um,000 worldfowl just in one view is quite spectacular and probably quite underrated as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, that's brilliant. Thank you so much for chatting to us today, jeremy, and we're now going to head to a different part of the reserve where we're meeting with Nature Reserve Officer Sally Ray. Hi, sally, nice to meet you. Can you tell us about the work you're doing here, please?
Speaker 4:Yes, so this time of year I am focusing on some tufted duck monitoring on St Serfs Island. So what we're doing is we're coming out and I'm trying to find as many nests as I can and then I'm marking them and I'm monitoring them by keeping track of their clutch size, visiting the nests once a week or once every other week and then finally establishing whether the nest has been predated or they have managed to successfully hatch.
Speaker 2:Okay, and when you're heading out to the St Seraph's Island to find and mark the nest, what are you actually doing when you're out there?
Speaker 4:So, as well as just marking the nests, we're also putting cameras out, because part of the idea of doing this is to see what might be predating them, because there's never been a lot of information on that. People have just always had suspicions.
Speaker 2:Okay, and the results from the work you're doing. What does it? Well, obviously, it tells us the predators. But how else does this work in form decision making at the reserve?
Speaker 4:well it'll. It'll give us an idea of um how, how well the birds are doing basically. But also, you know, we do, we do manage, since serfs uh, so we get the sheep on um the end of summer and into autumn. As to graze the the grass, at the minute it's really, it's really tall, um, and you know where, where most of the ducks have nested, it is a bit shorter than where we are and that's like the ideal, ideal height for them. Um, it's just not too tall. So that's why the the sheep come on the graze it. We do other stuff um out here as well, but that's that's the main thing. So, looking at, looking at things like that, that's what I'm going to come out and do next week. I'm going to actually measure the height of the vegetation where these nests are and, obviously, if they are favoring lower stuff, maybe we'd want to alter how we have the sheep come on a graze. It's.
Speaker 2:It's just part of one of the things we would look at and so you mentioned that you come out to st serf's island, but there there are a couple of islands um Loch Leven. Are they accessible by the public?
Speaker 4:No, we ask that if anyone is on the water, they don't land on any of the islands. All of them are covered in breeding birds. Even the small ones will have breeding birds on them. So, yeah, from April to September, people are allowed on the loch in paddleboards, kayaks or canoes, but, yeah, we ask everyone to stay 200 metres away from the shoreline and not land on the lock in paddle boards, kayaks or canoes. But, yeah, we ask everyone to stay 200 meters away from the shoreline and not land on the islands. And if, if you really want to historic scotland, do run boats out to castle island, um, but yeah, otherwise, we ask people to just, uh, keep away and, yeah, give the wildlife its space.
Speaker 2:Brilliant okay, that's april to september, and what about the rest of the?
Speaker 4:year. Um, yeah, from september until the end of march. Um, we ask for no water access whatsoever. As I said, there are it can be tens of thousands of wildfowl on the lock at that point and this is like a resting spot for them over winter. So, yeah, so as to not disturb them, we want no access at all.
Speaker 2:And again, your job sounds pretty varied, and what is a typical day like for you here? Is it as varied as Jeremy's?
Speaker 4:It's probably a bit more varied. I'm quite lucky I'm not stuck in the office as much as Jeremy is, but yeah, it can. It's different, different times of year, so I've I've only been working here since October, um, so over winter I think I feel like the main thing I did was a lot of chain sawing, um, whether that was trees that were already down or part of how we managed the. The side of the lock for the breeding birds come spring is to fell willow into the lock not fully, so they're still attached to the tree and it'll still grow, but it creates a perfect habitat for bruiser ducklings and stuff to hide, and so that's one of one of the habitat management things that we do.
Speaker 4:And then this time of year, yeah, I get to do more, more monitoring, which is perfect for me. I, that's, that's one of the things I really enjoy doing. And then still lots of vegetation management, so we try and keep the paths, the paths maintained for the public, um, and, yeah, it's been, there's been a lot of rain and there was some sun, so everything is huge, so it all starts to collapse on the path, so I have to keep that clear and, yeah, things like that yeah, that's some job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 21 kilometers of path, yeah, yeah yeah, it is some bits.
Speaker 4:Some bits we don't really have to do if they're in like woodlands and stuff, but yeah, there's. There's a lot of different stuff. There's other, there's other management that I do. That's like species specific. Um, I'm also lucky we get. We try and do stuff with local communities.
Speaker 4:So one project that's been going on locally for a long time is something called trout in the classroom, where we get in touch with local schools and one class from each school will get given a fridge with trout eggs in and they raise them until they hatch. So you know, they all make their little rotors, they clean out the tanks, they check the temperature and then we take the kids to one of the bins that runs into the lot where they release them. And then next week actually we're going back out and someone from the fourth rivers trust is going to do some electrofishing so the kids can see their trout. Their trout it's not, it's not actually their trout, but they can see the trout at the next stage in the life cycle. Um, so that's been quite enjoyable. I've been. I've been overseeing that this year brilliant way to teach the kids.
Speaker 2:You know what actually goes on, how it goes on, outside of the classroom as well, which is fantastic, and you know what makes it so special for you. Um, here at local even, what would you recommend our listeners do or look out for when they, when they visit the nature reserve?
Speaker 4:um, there's a, there's a lot of nice things. Um, after spending the last three summers in shetland, I've already been enjoying the wider variety of uh, insects, you know, like butterflies, damselflies, bees, but yeah, the birds are lovely as well. But I I do agree with jeremy that in winter the huge numbers of wildfire that we get is quite spectacular. Um, yeah, in into autumn it's the numbers start building up. We do, we do web scans every other week and, yeah, sometimes, sometimes it's just click, click, click, click, click, click, click, because there's just so much, so much stuff. So, yeah, I'd say those things. You know we've got specific places that are really good for insects. So I'd say, if you like them, come in the spring and summer and then. But if you like huge numbers of ducks to look at, then yeah, autumn and winter is a good time to come, brilliant that to look at.
Speaker 2:Then yeah, autumn and winter is a good time to come. Brilliant, that's super. What a fascinating insight into how a reserve is managed, and we want to say a huge thank you to Jeremy and Sally, who've taken time out of their busy day to give us an insight into the work that goes on here at Lockleven NNR, and if you haven't been, we definitely recommend a visit. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed this special episode. National Nature Reserves are some of the best places where we to enjoy the magic and beauty of Scotland's nature. To find a reserve near you and for more ways to connect with Scotland's natural world, go to naturescot.