Roaming freely since 1952
June is the scruffy reindeer month! Perhaps, not their most photogenic season but still a wonderful time of year and I still managed to take lots of photos of course to fill the monthly photo blog . The cows and calves are all free ranging in the hills and we have around half our males in our hill enclosure here, growing lovely antlers and meeting our visitors.
Ruth
Every reindeer herder looks forward to May – it’s pretty much the best month of the year for us with calving time for the reindeer dominating it. But May is also one of my absolute favourite months for other reasons too, the trees are coming into leaf, the plants in my garden are growing like mad, the weather is generally fairly amenable, and the migrant birds are back.
Mention May to any reindeer herder and calving is – I guarantee – the first thing that pops into their head. Reindeer are very seasonal with their breeding, and whilst the occasional calf might be born in the last few days of April, the vast majority arrive in May every year. Calving is a wonderful time of year for us – who can resist the cuteness of a a newborn reindeer? – though it comes with a fair amount of stress too, as we do our best to keep everyone happy and healthy. You’ll find lots of blogs about calving if you use the search function on the blog page here (only visible on a laptop/desktop) if you’d like to know more. Plus lots of lovely photos – of course!
But I have other connotations for the month of May. The second one are the cuckoos. We’re lucky enough to still get plenty of cuckoos in this area, although nationwide they have declined by about 65% since the early 1980s. Even the least ‘birdy’ person in the UK surely knows their iconic call, and I associate them so much with May. They call from the forest below the reindeer’s hill enclosure all through the month, and the far-carrying sound is so reminiscent of all the early mornings over the years that I have trudged about on the hill side looking for cows with their newborn calves. Cuckoos seem to stop calling earlier than some species, I’ve noticed, and already as I write (early June) I realise that I’m barely hearing them any more. Such a short season, and yet they are utterly ingrained into our conscious in spring! Read more about other migrant species who are summer visitors to us in one of my previous blogs here.
The third thing I really associate with May here in the Cairngorms is the cotton-grass (Hare’s-tail Cotton-grass, to be precise), which grows on acidic moorland and is familiar to many, with it’s bobbing cotton-wool like flower heads.
It’s not actually a grass but a sedge, and some years give particularly good displays, where it can almost look like it has snowed. It comes into flower in May, and grows particularly well in the bottom of our hill enclosure on the flatter areas there, which tends to be where the cows and their calves hang out during the month.
So there we are – the three ‘c’s that are incredibly strongly associated with May to me. The fourth would be ‘chaos’, but that’s part and parcel with calving so can be combined into one!
Hen
The longer we work with the reindeer the more we see their individual personalities, this is one reason I love working with these incredible animals! They are all so unique, and learning all their quirks and characters means we can work with and handle the reindeer better. This wee blog shows a few of their character traits…
The one with the puppy dog eyes…
Bordeaux has a sweet-natured soul with big, beautiful eyes which she likes to use on weak-willed reindeer herders. At the end of each Hill Trip she likes to wander up to the herders and batter her eyelashes at them in the hope she gets to put her head in the white bag containing tasty treats! To be fair to Bordeaux this is most likely a learnt behaviour. A couple of years ago she had a bad summer and came in off the free range in poor condition. We spent a couple of months carrying a special bag of food on to the hill for her containing an extra extra-calorific food mix in order for her gained weight before the harsh winter months. She clearly got used to this special treatment and now can’t understand why she’s not allowed any extra!
The labrador…
Busby is a very lovely and very friendly lad! When he was a calf he was actually rather shy and took a little while for his cheeky nature and fairly outrageous levels of greediness to really shine! The photo below sums his character up well: Isla trying to get past him and Busby making sure that he’s 100% been seen so surely there’s some food in that white bag for him. Reindeer don’t like to be stroked and patted but if there’s a bag of food around, Busby will tolerate most things! He’s also a great poser so often appears on social media especially over the summer months when he’s often in our hill enclosure here on Cairngorm.
The ‘Danger Reindeer’…
Pumpkin is a feisty girl with bags of attitude! She’s dark in colour and very beautiful so people often want to take photos of her or with her. She’s not shy around people and loves hand feeding from our visitors. BUT if you catch her in a bad mood then you may know about it, she’s well known for waving her antlers at people and even snorting! This means herders on Hill Trips are constantly keeping a wee eye on her and often have to apologise for her bad behaviour – “please don’t take it personally, that’s just Pumpkin!”
The greediest of all…
Aztec! Arguable, but surely most herders would agree?! In 2022 he was officially crowned the title after herders voted on it – read that blog here. He is very friendly, the class clown, and even though Aztec will be 9 years old in the spring he shows no sign of slowing down. Multiple times, I’ve witnessed him jumping over fences from a standstill at the merest rustle of a bag on the other side – he’s very athletic! Aztec during hand-feeding sessions on Hill Trips adds a bit of drama to the day. He has no patience and inhales the food from one pair of hands in milliseconds before heading to the next pair of out-stretched hands, and then the next… Thankfully he grows relatively small antlers so he’s not wheeling around huge headgear. If you foolishly allow him to get into a white bag, then good luck to you! He ploughs his nose to the ground making it almost impossible for you to remove his head and can be rather embarrassing in front of 50 people on a Hill Trip. What a boy!!
Sweet as pie…
Diamond – she’s so lovely! She’s an old girl now at 13. She’s had a permanent limp since spring 2019 and since then she’s been retired from breeding as we don’t want her putting additional strain on her body. As she now doesn’t breed, she gets to spend most of her life out free ranging in the mountains. I’ve had several lovely encounters with Diamond on the free range where she always seems genuinely pleased to see you, and very gently and politely takes some food! The photo below is of Cameron and Diamond casually walking across the Cairngorm plateau. We bumped into her by herself, and she decided to follow us all the way to a lovely safe spot, closer to home. We got some funny looks as we strolled past hill walkers who were doing double takes at our four-legged friend! Hard to believe, but she is the granny of the ‘Danger Reindeer’ above – how is that possible when Diamond is this sweet?!
The snorer…
Perhaps snoring isn’t a personality trait, but in the warmer summer months Clouseau loves to lie in the exact same spot, snoring away. It’s just off the boardwalk, right by the gate so all our visitors get to experience the sweet snores as he dozes off and waits for the next meal to arrive! He’s actually a rather cheeky chap but boy does he know how to relax!
The last one…
Vienna is a really sweet lass. She’s friendly, greedy, sweet-natured, and a beautiful, unusual colour. However, annoyingly she is most often at the back of the herd trailing along with no haste whatsoever! For other reindeer if they’re being sluggish at the back it’s a sign we may need to check their temperature as they could be feeling a bit under the weather. But we have learnt that for Vienna, that’s just her!
I could go on and on but I think I’ll stop there… maybe I could write a second instalment in the future!
Ruth
As the seasons change and we transition from spring into summer our female reindeer will start to move from the lower grounds where they have spent most of the winter, higher onto the hills. This is partly to stay cool as the weather will warm up but also to follow the grazing. In the middle of the winter there will be more snow higher on the hills, meaning further for the reindeer to dig but in the summer the tops of the hills are where the best grazing is.
For our reindeer this migration may be only a few miles but across the world, reindeer and caribou (which are genetically the same as reindeer but haven’t been domesticated) migrate long distances. In fact, caribou hold the record for the longest land migration of any animal, migrating a whopping 2,000 miles between their summer and winter-feeding grounds. The equivalent records are held by the humpback whale with the longest migration through water of 5,000 miles and the arctic tern with the longest migration through the air with a mind boggling 18,000 miles.
2,000 miles is still an incredibly long way and takes the caribou first to their spring calving grounds near the coast. The spring calving grounds are highly fertile, providing lots of food for the new mums and free of predators, which is important as the young are born. This sounds like the ideal location to spend the summer and perhaps it would be if it wasn’t for the swarms of mosquitoes that arrive at the start of the summer. These mosquitoes, as well as the warmer weather, drive the caribou to migrate higher onto the hills. They spend the summer grazing on a plethora of different plants and lichens. Summer is a time of abundance in the arctic and sub-arctic regions.
With long hours of light, the plants grow quickly, and the reindeer will graze on over 200 different species. This allows the reindeer calves to grow quickly, before the winter. It also allows bulls, cows and calves to all grow a set of antlers. The antlers grow over roughly 5 months and can reach a massive size. The largest set we’ve had in our herd weighed 8.9kg for the pair. It is also important that reindeer gain weight in the summer in order to survive the harsh winter.
As autumn approaches the reindeer will migrate yet again. As the temperature drops, there will be less to eat high on the hills so the reindeer will move to the lower hills in search of better grazing. It is also the time of year that the mushrooms emerge so many of the reindeer will come into the edge of the woodland to forage mushrooms. They eat many varieties, but the boletus family are their favourite.
In our herd the female reindeer spend the summer months free-ranging and the males spend it in our hill enclosure. This means there is another drive for the females to come to the lower slopes and into the hill enclosure, the boys! The cows know that the rut is held in our hill enclosure each year so when their hormones tell them it’s time to find a mate, they know where to come!
The migration of the Cairngorm reindeer may be much smaller than reindeer and caribou elsewhere, but it is equally important. It allows the reindeer to move to the best location for each season, following where the best food and climate is.
Lotti