15th December 2010

Howdy!

Welcome to the Ranger Blog at Kelburn which has just been started so we can talk all about the latest work, happenings and all the wonderful things we see around the Glen.
It is a wonderful time to start this blog as there are many things afoot...




Lots of exciting new projects have been kicked off in the last few months. Towards the end of September we suffered at the hands of 'Mother Nature' with a rather large flood which remodelled our glen. This means we have begun some rather major rebuilding of bridges to withstand similar floods.



To help us with these projects we had a lovely group of students from Edinburgh University known as the Dirty Weekenders! With their help we were able to rebuild one of the many bridges that were destroyed in the flood along with plenty of Rhodie bashing to help with our oak woodland regeneration project.
We received some very positive feedback from this group regarding their weekend and hopefully we will see them back next year!


A few weeks following the Dirty Weekenders' visit we took part in a volunteer exchange programme with the RSPB group at their Lochwinnoch reserve. This was a great chance for both groups to develop new skills and form a hopefully long lasting link.



 Very exciting news... we have recently taken on three new volunteer rangers, in fact... one of our new bunch have been poached from the RSPB group! For a sneaky peek at our newbies see our profile page!

It is fantastic that we have now got a good group of folk on the team seeing as we have such a wide range of activities for them to take part in. They have been getting stuck in with glen work, secret forest renovations, and working with the public. Our youth conservation group, The Junior Rangers, recently started up again for the winter season, and the fortnightly Health Walks have also been kickstarted.

In our initial Winter session of the Junior Rangers, we all built a large insect hotel (wildlife hibernaculum) for biodiversity at Kelburn, as well as smaller hotels for the children to take home, made out of recycled materials. We have an exciting programme of activities planned for the rest of the season, including bushcraft skills, wildlife gardening and environmental projects.
For more information on our Junior Ranger meeting dates, please click here (link).

Our Winter Health Walks are well under way with three sessions already under our belt!
So far we have explored the themes of Geology, Winter Wildlife and Woodland Folklore. with many future topics to come - any ideas for subsequent walks are most welcome!
Walkers of all ages and abilities are welcome, but please be aware that some of walks are across rugged terrain.



This week we were all very excited about the prospect of going off-site for a morning's worth of environmental education as part of our Primary Partnership Project.
We spent several manic hours with all the pupils of Fairlie Primary School planting acorns and creating very colourful personalised labels. The aim of this is to ready a new generation of oak trees (Quercus sp.) for planting on the estate, as part of our woodland management programme.
We look forward to future sessions like this one.


 As we all have seen, the days are getting shorter and Winter is certainly upon us!
Another sign of this, perhaps a little less obvious than the snow and ice, is the arrival of our Winter bird migrants. At Kelburn we have been seeing many species, which have flown across from Scandinavia and other colder climes.
These have included increased numbers of well known species such as robin (Erithacus rubecula), blackbird (Turdus merula); as well as less common sightings such as waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus), fieldfare (Turdus pilaris), redwing (Turdus iliacus), long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus), and brambling (Fringilla montyfringilla).

Other sightings will be added  as we see them!