Balranald reserve is a hot bed of biodiversity news
Another good weather window, so we went on the two hour walk of the RSPB reserve at Balranald.
You never know whom you might meet as you go round. We met several people, known and unknown, and Hougharry beach was incredibly crowded with at least TEN people on it.
Bumping into RSPB bird recorder Brian was very interesting: he revealed corn buntings talk in dialects. A researcher from Aberystweth University has been here studying the different dialects talked by our 70 strong population of corn buntings. Apparently it varies from district to district. Brian has promised to put me in touch with the Aberystwyth man when he’s next here in about three weeks, so watch this space.
We also found two people measuring out the shoreline into a 4m square. ‘A plot for a house?’ suggested Mr Mac trying not to sound facetious. It was merely an opening gambit after all.
It turned out the pair were recording the flora within the plot to compare with a study last done on the same spot in 1976. They had a check list of about 90 species. It’s a Macaulay Institute, Liverpool University and SNH study. Lots of people come here and study things, but we rarely get told who they are, what they’re looking at and what the results might be, so it was handy to bump into Robin and Sara. They’re doing the same thing right across the Scottish islands and North Coast. Robin’s doing it for his PhD, Sarah for probably the best summer job ever- and a chance to suffer hypothermia and sunburn all in one day, most days.
We know that our islands are incredibly rich in biodiversity, but most of us are quite ignorant of what is there, right under our eyes. So I’m excited when Keiren Jones, our machair apprentice tells me we’re having a Uist ‘Bioblitz’ in August, where a dozen or so experts are coming from far and near to record what they find in Balranald over a day. Members of the public are invited too.
Funny how even when we live in such beautiful locations how often to we take into account only the views we have and take for granted ,and never stop to realy think about whats under our feet??