Has Caerlaverock cracked the secret to achieving New Year's resolutions?
We have had a busy year at WWT Caerlaverock. As with any year, there has been ups and downs. The team has said goodbye to some valued staff as well as welcoming Dawn, Rhona, Rosie, Annie and our new placement students Meg and Ed to Caerlaverock. Overall we can agree that we've had a successful 2023. We even managed to remember our resolutions but did we stick to them?
1. Making things wetter closer in. We planted up our new pond, rain-water gardens and mini-wetlands in the courtyard. Watching them develop this year has been a joy.
Container pond with iris stems emerging from it, visitor centre in the background
2. Doing something for bees in the garden. Our bee posts have been a great success in the wildlife garden. We’ve seen leaf cutter bees using them all through the summer.
3. Start counting dragonflies. We carried out dragonfly surveys regularly in the warmer months. Some of the species we saw included common blue and large red damselflies, four-spotted chaser, emperor dragonfly and southern hawker.
Four-spotted chaser by Andrina Laidler
4. Getting a room for natterjacks. We built six new ponds for the toads to breed in. We also began clearing a 30 metre square area of gorse, reducing it to stumps. This will allow a digger to go in and create scrapes. The spoil from these is going to be built into banks at the back of the compartment creating hibernation spots for natterjacks.
Digger in front of Saltcot Merse Observatory with large scrape in the foreground under a gloomy sky by David Pickett
5. Safe places for our declining farmland birds. We built tree sparrow, barn owl and kestrel boxes this year with volunteers, some which were more successful than others. We didn’t have any kestrels occupying the boxes we put up for them but we did have 99 tree sparrows and three barn owls fledge. We rang the tree sparrows and the barn owls before they fledged.
Jake ringing a tree sparrow
An obvious highlight of our 2023 was achieving all our goals and getting all this fantastic work done. Here are some more highlights from our team.
Anna, Visitor Experience Officer: “A highlight of my year will always be the times when I find a moment to go out to the Back Pond Hide and wait for the kingfisher to show itself. I have only had a few opportunities this year to do this but every one of them was magical.”
Kingfisher resting on a branch amongst green foliage
Jake, Reserve Warden: “We are such a good team at Caerlaverock and that extends to include our volunteers as well. One of my best days in 2023 was when I installed kestrel, barn owl and little owl boxes at Powhillon with JC, Isaac, Charlie and Malcolm. It was such a long, hard day but as always, everyone pulled their weight – a proper team effort.”
JC and Isaac sat on a fence holding hammers with a barn owl up behind them
Annie, Reserve Warden: “One of the best moments of this year was during a swan talk when as well as the usual suspects of swans, geese and ducks, a redshank, a snipe, a ring-tailed hen harrier and a sparrowhawk showed up. Can’t complain about them stealing your thunder when they put on such a good show!”
David, Centre and Reserve Manager: “An exciting new record was made this year at Caerlaverock. Mosquito Scotland made the first ever record of Aedes dorsalis when they were carrying out their research this summer, a new species for Scotland. Something new for us to boast about! Of course, it’s also wonderful that we have a full team again and getting to watch our two groups of placement students develop throughout the year.”
Marianne, Engagement Assistant: “It’s been really cool to become a permanent member of the team. I’ve been developing my skills and learning loads while being immersed in some of the most amazing nature around. I’ve see my first hen harrier, kingfisher and avocet this year and am looking forward to 2024 and bagging some more lifers, as the birders say!”
Hen harrier by Andreas Trepte
We hope you have all had a joyful and fufilling 2023 and that the new year brings new challenges and successes! We will fill you in on our 2024 resolutions in January (if we're not too busy fighting it out in the Caerlaverock Bird Race!).
Words by Marianne Nicholson
Feature image by Alex Hillier
