Author: Reindeer

Reindeer herding and running, a sequel

 

Remember that blog I wrote about a year ago about how everyone started running up hills and mountains as soon as they arrived to work at the reindeer centre? Well I’ve got reasons to write a second blog about the same topic, so here goes!

At the end of my last blog about running reindeer herders I wondered if my running would become more like the long distance running described in the ultrarunner Jan Knippenberg’s book. A quick recap in the form of a quote from my last blog:

 

“Running for the pure joy of it or because our lifestyle demands it, without the faff of getting involved in fashion and hype, or keeping track of time per kilometre, heartbeat, acceleration etc. seems to be closer to the old type of lifestyle than what is currently in fashion.”

I think I can safely say I’m getting there! Since that blog I’ve participated in lots of hill races, slowly building up distance until I did the Lairig Ghru race, slightly over marathon distance. The fun aspect of it is that most of the races I did, I didn’t do for getting a good result, or the competitive aspect of it, but more for seeing a different part of Scotland and enjoying the scenery whilst running with a lot of other crazy hill running people. I also continued chasing reindeer on the mountain plateaus and thoroughly enjoyed it.

All of this is very much in line with running the way we used to in the history of mankind, in the sense that it’s not necessarily a way to stay fit, but a way to get around in life. One step closer may be what I have planned next. Whilst this blog is being posted, I’m on my way to the Netherlands. Over the past few years I’ve become more aware of the damaging impact of flying on our environment. I think in many cases, if you don’t prioritise money and time over the environment, you’ll find there are loads of alternatives to air travel. For going to the Netherlands, there are lots of forms of public transport you can take, along with using either the ferry or the Eurotunnel to get to the European mainland.

 

So with this in mind I came up with the idea to run to The Netherlands. Admittedly, I’d not gone for a long time (money and time and resolution to avoid flying as much as I could). In the mean time I’d really started missing my friends and family back there. It seemed like a nice gesture to them as well – missing them so much I’d come and run all the way! Besides that I find that the Scottish darkness in winters gets me down a bit, with on Winter solstice there only being sunlight from 8.53am to 3.32pm (that is 6 hours and 38 minutes of daylight). Being outside as much as possible and exercising regularly both help me a lot in beating seasonal sadness, so it seemed like a great way of getting over that too. So there I was, finding myself yet again planning a run longer than I’ve ever done before!

At the moment this blog is posted, I’m supposed to be just over one third of the journey. I’ve set off from Newtonmore on Monday the 6^th of January, early in the morning. I’m pulling a two-wheeled cart, carrying my tent, sleeping bags, stove & freeze-dried food, snacks, a reindeer skin to keep warm at night, and lots of first aid stuff and other needs. I’m staying at a couple of friends’ places (thanks hill runner and blogger Ross Brannigan (@up_to_summit), hill runner Adrian Davies (https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/5939626?s=67&shared_item_type=1&virality_entry_point=1&sharer_id=29161035)& reindeer herder Julia Kenneth!) but otherwise I’m camping. My route is 250 miles (roughly 400km) to Newcastle, then I’ll hop on to the ferry, and it will be another 18 miles (roughly 28.5km) to my mother’s house in Amsterdam, where my friends and family will be cheering me towards the finish line.

So if you’re reading this it must mean I’m getting on all right, as I gave Chris permission to post it only if I managed to get that far! If this is the case, then I think I can safely say that my change in lifestyle from being a student/academically-minded person to being a reindeer herder in the Scottish mountains and hills has changed my way of running. I now run for the sheer joy of running and for the necessity of getting round (be it chasing reindeer or a self-imposed ban on flying) and no longer for ‘staying fit’ or ‘getting a decent time’. And I love it! But maybe don’t ask me whilst I’m actually on my run, as it’s definitely mostly type 2 fun*.

I didn’t want to finish this blog without saying thank you to Chris Shute (Chris’ dad), who helped massively in designing and building the cart, and reindeer herder Chris, without whom my route of choice could have been disastrous, as would the rest of my preparation. And hopefully he will have added some pictures of my journey so far below!

Manouk

* type 2 fun: the type of fun where you’re not enjoying something whilst doing, often wondering what the heck you got yourself into, but a while (could be minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even longer…) after the activity has finished you start thinking back on it and reconsider it as fun.  Opposite of ‘type 1 fun’ where you just constantly have fun all the time whilst the activity lasts, and possibly afterwards as well. Example: skiing holiday where you take lifts up and ski down, 100% at all times.

 

Quick update from Chris plus some photos:

Manouk’s first two days crossing Drumochter Pass were pretty awful weather wise. 40-50mph wind and torrential rain in a big storm left her completely soaked and a tough start indeed. She got the train home on the evening of day 2 from Blair Atholl to dry her kit  and tent out (and cook me dinner for my birthday!)

Knee pain slowed her down to a walk for the early part of Day 3 but Alan turned up to pull Manouk’s cart down to Dunkeld for her! They were also joined by friend of the Reindeer Herd  Adrian Davies and his dog Jasper and Adrian put Manouk up in his B&B for the night.

(https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/5939626?s=67&shared_item_type=1&virality_entry_point=1&sharer_id=29161035)

One of the wheels on the cart was struggling even more than Manouk’s knee so on Day 4 Manouk was planning on getting it looked at in a bike shop whilst passing Perth. Hopefully it will hold up to allow her to make it all the way to Newcastle

Brief update this morning on Day 5: Cart has new bearings in the wheels and Manouk’s knee is holding up.

 

At the end of Hill Trips, we often get many questions about climate change and how it affects the reindeer. For those interested, here’s a blog on how we think it affects our reindeer, how reindeer are affected worldwide and things people could do individually to help fight it.

Weather records of the past decades clearly show that the Cairngorms have gotten milder and more moist. There have always been fluctuations in temperature with periods of warm winters and periods of colder ones, as well as periods of hot dry summers as well as periods of cold and wet ones. However, the overall trend is moving towards warmer and wetter. This of course affects the plants, trees, and wildlife. As warmer and wetter conditions are suitable for ticks, we’ve seen an uprise in tick-related problems. Luckily we are quite savvy in finding ways to battle this, and granted that we spot the illness, are usually able to treat the reindeer.

Other than that we see a problem with winters not finishing ‘cleanly’ and spring showing its face for a few days or a week and then disappearing again. This affects the growth of plants. Once plants start growing but freeze mid-growth, this changes their structure and if reindeer eat these plants this can cause problems with their guts. At the moment we are working on a way to prevent and to treat this, and have managed to succeed in some cases with new vaccinations.

Worldwide, there’s a different story, as reindeer numbers have always fluctuated hugely and it’s difficult to pinpoint whether or not climate change is affecting these fluctuations at all. We do know that over the past two decades, reindeer numbers have more than halved, leaving the current population at about two million. This number is lower than usual lows and the decrease has gone on for a longer period of time than other periods of decline. Problems that may have arisen with global warming are numerous, here are a few to consider. (1) Warmer climates enable other plants than lichen to grow, out-competing lichen. This is the main plant in most species of reindeer’s diets, so as a consequence there may be a shortage of food leading to the starving of part of the population. (2) Warmer weather does not only encourage ticks to multiply, there are more other insects around as well. As the reindeer hate biting beasties, they’ll spend time and energy getting away from them (often going to mountain tops where there’s still snow) rather than staying down spending most of their summer time eating. This means they don’t store enough body reserves to survive winter later in the year. (3) The last major problem is that there’s more rain near the end of winter rather than snow. Whilst reindeer can dig through snow to get to lichen, they can’t dig through frozen rain, again causing starvation.

Reindeer are known to be adaptable, being able to survive temperatures as low as -70 and as high as +35 Celsius. Though their numbers are at a low just now, we can only hope that they up again. And we may still be able to stop global warming too, which would, we assume, benefit reindeer. Of course it doesn’t stop at reindeer though, as global warming is already affecting both animals and people in huge areas all over the world.

Now there are big discussions going on about how to stop global warming, with people even calling Greta Thunberg a climate denier as she advocates that people should make lifestyle changes, thereby indicating that we individuals can still turn it around. To most scientists this seems highly unlikely, and change needs to come from higher up (big businesses and governments) in order to have an effect. However, for a message to come across the messenger needs to be trustworthy and reliable too, which goes hand in hand with Thunberg leading a climate-friendly lifestyle whilst campaigning for governments and companies to change our current system. I’d say in order to do something and make a statement, change whatever you can in your own life to become more climate-friendly, e.g. buying less new stuff, buying local produce rather than import, flying less, and opting for public transport, bicycles and your feet instead of your car when possible. It’s also worth your while having a look at what your workplace could change to be more environmentally friendly (see our blog on ‘our bit for the environment’). If you can then let (local) politicians and companies hear your voice, either via social media, emails and messages, and/or protests, lobbying or similar, you’re practically doing everything you can. System change not climate change! Power to the people.

Manouk

 

Read more on climate change

BBC articles:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50614518

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50588128

 

Summary on climate change scientific facts and how to fix it:

https://350.org/science/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiYj_5o-X5gIVwbTtCh1d4AbCEAAYAyAAEgKeXvD_BwE

 

 

Read more on reindeer populations affected by it

Ecowatch article:

https://www.ecowatch.com/reindeer-population-climate-change-2623281571.html

 

The Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/deaths-of-200-reindeer-in-arctic-caused-by-climate-change-say-researchers

 

 

It’s the time of the year when…

…our reindeer turn into cows… Not quite, but it is the time of the year when they are casting their antlers, and beginning to look perhaps a little like people imagine a reindeer to.

Casting antlers is a completely natural process, and is one of the huge differences between antlers and horns (no deer in the world have horns!). Reindeer grow their antlers from scratch every year, from an area on the top of their skull called the pedicle. The growth period is from about March to the end of Summer, at which point it calcifies into solid bone, with no feeling remaining. After use in the autumn rut, the males cast their antlers, meaning they don’t have to carry a heavy weight through the winter snows, and leaving the coast clear to start their new set in Spring.

This means that from November antlers drop off on a regular basis, sometimes at the most inopportune moments (in the middle of a Hill Trip for example, causing panic among visitors and frantic reassurances of “It’s normal, it’s ok!” from the herder!). As we get nearer to Christmas, our choice of which reindeer join a Christmas event team becomes more and more influenced by who still has antlers on their head – event organisers can be a little grumpy if a team turns up with just one antler between six reindeer!

Most of our males are castrated at 3 years old, helping to prevent inbreeding and giving them a much calmer life in general. A side effect of castration is that the antlers are not as dense as the bulls’, and tend to be cast in sections rather than in one piece. Hence we end up with reindeer with “One and a half” antlers, or often just the front points remaining after the more top-heavy upright points are cast. It’s interesting that members of the public often don’t realise that a reindeer with their front points has actually got any antler missing, whereas a reindeer who has cast all of one antler but none of the other looks more lopsided and draws many more questions of “Did they lose it fighting?”

Sometimes antlers are lost in squabbles, but only when they’re ready to fall off anyway, and I think as many go from being bumped against a tree (or a herder’s backside!). And whilst there is sometimes a little residual blood on the pedicle when the antler is cast, it isn’t a painful process, the only insult being to their pride, as they often drop down the pecking order. But this is often when a bully gets their comeuppance, as the other reindeer they’ve pushed around see the tables turned and get their own back. So don’t feel too sorry for them!

Andi

Each autumn we bring in most of the freeranging females to either run them with a bull if they didn’t calve in the previous spring or to begin getting their calves used to being handled. Most of the girls turn themselves in voluntarily as they seem to know the score but every year there seems to be a hardcore group of girls that do not want to come back to the hill enclosure so we have to spend a while locating them and subsequently rounding them up.

One morning in late September Chris and I were sent to check in on them on our way in to Glenmore. Luckily there were a few greedy girls in the group that couldn’t turn down a tasty bit of handfeed! Here’s what went down….

Manouk

As the rut has now come to a close and we move into winter, us reindeer herders are feeling particularly strong. For most of the year the female reindeer in our herd spend their days free-ranging the Cairngorms. However during the autumn we have all the reindeer that we want to breed from in our 1,200 acre hill enclosure. This is to ensure that we know which bulls have bred with which females and to ensure there is no inbreeding. This does however mean we have many more reindeer to feed than usual. As this is their natural habitat, when the reindeer free-roam they find all their own food and we don’t feed them at all. Whilst there is plenty of natural grazing in the hill enclosure we also give them supplementary food to make sure that the grazing replenishes each year. At the peak of the rut we were both mixing and carrying a lot of food up to the reindeer. In fact on the days when the most reindeer have been in the enclosure we are carrying 144 kg a day or a tonne a week.

Mixing feed can be a real work out as it involves lugging around 20kg bags of various grains, measuring out the right amounts and throwing them into a cement mixer. The reindeer food is made from a mix of barley, sugar beet, sheep mix, dark grains (a by-product of whisky distilling) and hay soaked in garlic. As you can’t buy reindeer food here in Scotland, we mix up the food from lots of different things to give the reindeer the right nutrition.

And then once the feed is mixed, actually getting it to the reindeer is no mean feat. Normally the food is packed into roughly 15kg sacs and carried up to the reindeer enclosure on our shoulders. We have however also been asking visitors to help carry smaller bags (no more than 6kg) of reindeer food up the hill. If you have helped us carry food, thanks again from everyone here at the centre, both two and four legged.

You certainly won’t find a reindeer herder in the gym, especially not during the rut. Mixing and carrying feed (as well as unloading the feed lorry) is a very good work out and justifies the copious amounts of cake we all eat. I also know that all the reindeer herders, especially the women, take great joy in easily flinging a large bag of reindeer food onto our backs as a visit of people look on amazed. This summer I heard a man ask my colleague Nell if she needed a big strong man to help her carry her bag, to which she responded very politely “I’m a little strong woman and I’ll be just fine”. Go Nell!

Lotti

Chris has been on at me to write another blog, but with Christmas round the corner (at time of writing) I’m a bit pushed for time, so have been racking my brain for a blog that is mostly photos… Which to be honest, I think a lot of the time is all people really want to see, rather than read a load of text.

With the loss of old lad Paintpot this autumn, I thought I’d show you all the course of a reindeer’s life, from baby calf to OAP. At 11 years old he didn’t make it as long as some reindeer manage, but 11 is still a perfectly respectable age for a reindeer, especially a male.

Paintpot was born in 2009, in the year that we named reindeer after animals with horns or antlers. Yes, I see your confusion. As a calf Paintpot was white but with one black foreleg, as if he’d stepped in a pot of paint – a nickname that stuck. I couldn’t find a photo of him as a really little calf so have resorted to freeze-framing our DVD, hence the poor resolution.

At two months old, Paintpot’s calf coat is already beginning to fade, his face marking not so visible. Here he is with his mum Shine, out free-ranging on the mountains for his first summer, and just starting to grow his very first set of antlers.

The calves moult their baby coats in the summer and when their new winter coat grows in again in the autumn they look more like mini adults. The cute baby look is sadly gone. At 7 months old, his adult winter coat is showing his markings more clearly.

From now on the photos are all taken in September of each year, as I do the photos for the adoption certificates in this month, when reindeer look at their best, full grown antlers and fresh winter coats. At a year and a half old, below, Paintpot definitely has the look of a naughty child about him, full of mischief and wanting to poke anyone and everyone with those sharp point antlers…anything to be a general pest…

At two Paintpot has grown a huge amount, his antlers are much larger and his ego and testosterone level has gone up too! Two year old bulls are generally a total pain, confident enough to be awkward should they choose to challenge us, and ruled by their hormones. Teenagers…

Reindeer reach fully grown as three year olds, height-wise at least. Like humans, after that it’s generally outward growth rather than upward! At three Paintpot is pretty impressive with enormous antlers, although not particularly elaborate ones (you’ll see throughout the whole series of photos that his antlers are always relatively simple – that was just his antler shape). Three years old is when we castrate our male reindeer too, so you’ll see the big change here is that Paintpot’s antlers are no longer ‘clean’, the velvet skin remaining right into the winter rather than stripping away cleanly in early September. Castrating reindeer changes their hormone balance, and antler growth is controlled by hormones, hence the different appearance between bulls and castrates throughout each autumn.

The next two photos below, taken in 2012 and 2013, show Paintpot as a young castrate, his antlers smaller than before (another ‘side-effect’ of castration) but still a decent size, his coat smooth and sleek and the alert face of a youngster.

But then, as Paintpot reaches middle-age at 6, there is a bit of a change noticeable. Still excellent antlers (good grazing that year, obviously!), but his coat isn’t quite as sleek as before and he just has a general look of a reindeer not quite so much in the flush of youth. I know how he feels at this point.

 

And in 2015, below, there is an obvious change yet again. The antlers are much smaller and not so clean cut, with more points lower down looking a bit scruffy. More ‘castrate-y’. Bulls and young reindeer have neat and tidy antlers in general, while older castrates have smaller, ‘busier’ antlers.

This trend continues in 2016 as Paintpot reaches age 8, and he has by now adopted his default expression (‘grumpy toad.…). I always thought his dad Sirkas looked like a toad, and here he is the spitting image. What an expression!

By age 9, Paintpot has aged enormously, and now looks like an old reindeer. Some reindeer seem to reach this stage relatively early, like Paintpot, while some reindeer spend ages in the middle aged stage with no obvious visual sign that they are getting on a bit. It just varies from animal to animal.

The last photo I have of Paintpot, taken in September 2018, shows him aged 10. An old lad and very definitely in the OAP category, but still looking well. In fact he looks exactly the same as the previous year, as if the photo had just been taken from the other side!

So there you go. Paintpot lived for another year after that last photo, but I never did get a final photo of him before he passed away. But there’s the course of a life right in front of you, fast-forwarded, yet ticking all the boxes that advancing age throws at us. Slightly different boxes to a human perhaps, but none the less recognisable.

As it turns out, I just can’t write a short blog. I really do try, but the words keep coming. But I’ve had an enjoyable hour reminiscing about a favourite buddy of mine which was a nice break away from the (probably more important) things I should have been doing, so thank you Paintpot for the memories, and Chris for hassling me into writing a blog once again!

Hen

Four pop stars and an Okapi walked into a carpark…

…and no this is not the start of a bad joke but instead a phone call that we get every once in a while from Jamie, the carpark attendant on Cairngorm mountain. At the moment most of the females are in our hill enclosure either because they have calves that we are training and getting used to people, or because they have been running with a bull with the hope they will calve next spring. We do have a few reindeer though who are fully retired and we won’t breed from anymore. These reindeer are allowed to free-roam to their hearts content but seem to keep showing up in various places keeping us busy. I will introduce you to the members of the group, four of whom were born in 2006 and named after pop and rock legends and the final one who was born in 2008 when the theme was horned and antlered animals.

Lulu

Named after the Scottish singer-songwriter, Lulu is a firm favourite amongst herders; we can definitely all shout about how much we love her. She is very tame and friendly and is the mother of LX who has inherited her greediness. For any of you who have been on the hill to meet the reindeer you may have fed LX as he is often one of the first in line for hand feeding.

Blondie

Named due to being totally white, Blondie certainly doesn’t have a heart of glass. Blondie is a leucistic reindeer, a genetic condition that causes a loss of pigmentation and also causes her to be deaf. Blondie is often the last of the reindeer in the group to come for food as she may not have heard us calling. Blondie is also very useful as unless she is in snow, she doesn’t camouflage as well as the other reindeer so she helps us spot the group.

Enya

Enya is one of the most independent reindeer in the herd; I’m sure much like her namesake the Irish singer. Recently we have barely had a day without rain but the reindeer don’t seem to mind, being very well adapted for the environment that they live in. Enya always grows a lovely set of antlers.

Santana

The final of the 4 rock and pop legends in this group is Santana named after the American rock band. Her coat is certainly as smooth as it looks in this photo of her taken last autumn. Santana is the oldest daughter of Haze, who was a strong matriarch in the herd in her day. Santana certainly is no stranger to being amongst strong women with Gazelle, Caddis and Camembert as sisters. So it’s no surprise that she has formed a clear group with these lovely older girls.

Okapi

Now last but certainly not least is Okapi, who is two years younger than the others but also retired from motherhood. If you’re not sure what the animal Okapi is named after looks like then definitely google it as they are incredibly cool looking. They live in the forest and are related to giraffes. Okapi is incredibly tame and greedy, and will follow you almost anywhere if you have a bag of feed.

These five reindeer have a collective age of 63 (old enough to get a bus pass) and have been on all sorts of adventures throughout the autumn. We originally brought them into the enclosure as a part of a larger group, the rest of which we wanted in the enclosure for the rut. We then let these guys out of the enclosure to free-range the hills which they did for a couple of weeks, before trying their hand at a bit of reindeer herding. They successfully brought two cows and calves back with them to the enclosure. Cheers girls, thanks for doing our job for us. After the reward of an easy meal we let the girls back out of the enclosure, half hoping they would continue to play the game and collect some more reindeer for us…

Lotti

Working with the reindeer means spending a lot of time with them. This means we often get amazing photo opportunities, with great weather conditions or reindeer posing. This also means that we can often see their slightly less glamorous side, and tend to capture it every now and then…

Manouk

 

Mammals

Reindeer

 

During the autumn months reindeer are starting to prepare for winter. By October, their summer coat has begun to disappear below a fresh new winter coat. Reindeer winter coat is one of the warmest coats in the animal kingdom, with over 2000 hairs per square inch on their body. About 600 hairs per square inch are hollow allowing air to be trapped between them forming an insulating layer, which can keep help them survive down to 72°C.

 

 

The rutting season is an important time of year for Reindeer bulls. First their velvet strips off their antlers leaving them with solid bone, stained red from the blood supply that was there to help the antlers to grow. Eventually the antlers lose the red stain and their impressive sets are revealed!

 

Castrated males don’t lose the velvet from their antlers quite so quickly. This is because the reduction of testosterone doesn’t trigger the response to shed it. This also means that the castrated males get to keep their antlers slightly longer than the bulls. Because of this, castrated males make for the best Christmas reindeer.

 

Females that are put with the bulls during the rutting season spend the majority of the time with the breeding bull. Calves and yearlings will stay with their mothers during this period too.

 

Red squirrels

 

The red squirrels are also preparing for winter during the autumn too. They collect stores of nuts and burry them so once winter begins they have a source of food, even when no suitable food is available. The only issue they have is remembering where they buried their store.

 

Also during the autumn Red Squirrels begin to grow their winter coat. Their winter coat, like reindeer, is thicker than their summer coat, and denser. This allows them to keep warm during the winter. Their ear tufts also become thicker and more prominent.

 

Pine Martins

 

A group of pine martins is called “richness”, even though they are skilful climbers they normally hunt on the ground. Pine martens are believed to have come to Britain around 10,500 BC, at the end of the last ice age. They live in woodland habitats and were Britain’s second most common carnivore around 6,500 years ago in Britain and Ireland.

 

Similar to red squirrels, pine martins do not hibernate. They have thick fur all over there body to keep them warm during the cold winters. Pine Martins are hardy mammals and will eat anything including mushrooms, insects, small mammals such as voles and bird eggs. Being omnivorous allows them to always have a source of food even when certain plants and berries have died off due to the winter frost. They mainly forage or hunt for food at night or late in the evening.

 

The local bar to the Reindeer Centre is named after this elusive creature, the reason being that several Pine Martins have been spotted outside the bar late in the evening eating the various feed which is left out for the Red Squirrels. (Reindeer herders are also often found at the Pine Marten Bar late in the evening…)

 

Birds

 

Osprey

 

During the autumn Ospreys will start their incredible journey back to Africa, where they travel up to 5000 miles. The female is the first to leave. She leaves the nest and her fledglings in the care of the male who will continue to fish for them until they are able to fend for themselves, once they can the male will set of on the migration. Then finally the young will start their journey.

 

The mating pair may not see each other over the winter period, but will meet up again the following breeding season back in Scotland or Northern England. Ospreys were driven to extinction in the UK in the 1900’s due to egg collectors, they were also considered a pest due to them eating the salmon and trout.

 

Ospreys returned for the first time to breed in 1954 to Loch Garten near Aviemore. This was a natural recolonization, but the birds still needed a huge amount of help and protection to breed successfully in the Scottish highlands.

Eventually several pairs of osprey began to breed successfully in more remote parts of Scotland. However, many birds were helped with artificial nest platforms and nest protection watches, and a huge public enthusiasm for the birds helped ensure their survival.

 

Golden eagle

 

The golden eagle is the top predator in Scotland. It’s a massive bird of prey that mainly hunts rabbits and mountain hares but will also catch foxes, young deer and large birds like grouse. It can be seen soaring high in the sky in upland areas and remote glens. Golden eagles have large home territories, nesting on rocky cliff faces and in trees where it builds a giant nest or ‘eyrie’. These nests are often used by successive generations to rear their own young. Furthermore, similar to Osprey, Golden eagles pair for life

 

There are around 400 breeding pairs of Golden Eagles within Scotland and Northern England too. The birds are perfectly adapted to survive the harsh Scottish environment. Their talons can grow up to three inches, along with an amazingly sharp beak makes them perfect hunters. Also their varied diet means that there will always be some sort of prey to hunt.

 

Ptarmigans

 

They are exclusively found in the Scottish Highlands. Mature birds eat a diet of seeds, berries, nuts and leaves, while juveniles will also eat invertebrates. During the breeding season, males usually mate with one hen, producing one brood a year of around seven eggs.

 

You can often find them all year round on top of the highest mountains in the UK, especially on the Cairngorm Plato. Ptarmigans prefer the rocky tops of mountains to the forest environment.

 

During the autumn months they start to grow in their winter feathers. Eventually they change from brown to a pristine white colour. This helps protect them from predation. Blending into the snowy winter background makes it more difficult for Golden Eagles to hunt the small bird.

Izzy

We have a huge network (well, by our standards) of staff members who work at least part of the year for us, ranging from those full-time year round, through seasonal staff right down to the odd ex-herder roped in for literally just a day or two a year. Our job is made far easier however, by the epic efforts of a constant stream of volunteers, and 2019 has been no exception. So this is just a wee blog to say thank you to everyone!

 

We have, over the years, built up quite a collection of regular, long-standing volunteers, some of whom visit annually, and some just every now and then. The top dog of this crew has to be retired joiner Paul, who first came to help for a couple of weeks back in May 1999. Twenty years on and he’s still coming for a fortnight twice a year to ‘mend, bend, and fix’ and while he may be 80 now, age hasn’t slowed him down too much yet!

Emm is another very regular volunteer, having settled into a regular pattern in the last couple of years of 4 separate weeks of volunteering throughout the year. She’s a great help to us with everything reindeer related, and the kitchen table is never short of cake while she’s around… You can read more about one of her stints in her blog here. We also have Sharon and Colin who come once or twice a year too – always bringing a good supply of crafting materials for the Paddocks, and – socks! Their blog is here:

Our other type of regular volunteer is the lovely Anna who’s been helping us out once a week throughout the summer and autumn, and we hope will continue to do so in the future. Stella fits into this category too but is a bit elusive of late – she’s always off volunteering for all sorts of different organisations or visiting far-flung parts of the world. Having far too much fun! Stella – if you’re reading this, will we ever see you again?!

 

Long-standing volunteers have the luxury of picking and choosing what season they want to come in, but otherwise we are helped out by a steady stream of helpers from the last week of May until the end of October. This year has been great, and I think I’ve remarked to everyone here at some point just how lucky we’ve been with the 2019 vols! Once upon a time we used to get mainly vet students wanting to volunteer in order to gain experience, but nowadays we seem to get a much wider range of people from all walks of life, which suits us nicely as it’s lovely to meet so many interesting people! This year they included a chocolatier, an Olympic physiotherapist, a costume designer and a goat milker, with all sorts in between! So HUGE thanks for all their willing and tireless help to Arianne, Cathy, Becks, Katy, Rowena, Katie F, Sally, Laura F, Amy, Ida, Mary, Hannah, Christine, Kathleen, Helen K, Laura W, Helen A, Heather, Katie D, Kimberley, Mhairi, Lou and Joanne. But no thanks whatsoever to the volunteer who booked in for a week and then never turned up, having not thought to mention to us that her plans had changed…

 

Special thanks and recognition go to Cathy, who downed tools with 3 days’ notice to drive to the opposite end of the country to help us out after another volunteer cancelled on us; and to Rowena, Sally, Mary and Katie D who all came in 2018 and had such a good time they gave up another spell of their precious time to come back this year. And another special mention (and possibly a round of applause!) has to go to Helen A, who managed to break her wrist on the third day of her week with us but still soldiered on for the next 4 days! And finally Nell, who managed to time her volunteering stint just at the point that we decided we needed an extra staff member for the summer, so she ended up with two months’ paid work afterwards.

Thank you all SO much – we’ve loved having you all here and hope you all had a great time! And I expect we’ll see quite a few of you again in the future 😊

Hen