Calling all hillwalkers

BTO Scotland is going to need your help to develop survey and monitoring techniques for Ptarmigan and other mountain birds in Scotland. We explain a little abourt the projecy and how you can get involved.

The uplands of Britain, and particularly Scotland, are wild and atmospheric places — the closest thing to wilderness that can be experienced within our shores. They have charismatic birds and other wildlife (as well as charismatic weather to match!). But of course we have no need to tell you this if you are a regular hill-goer, as these are probably just the same reasons that motivate us to don our boots, maybe grab our bins, and exert ourselves to reach the high tops.

Up until now, the wide-scale monitoring of birds in upland areas, particularly the remote mountains of Scotland and parts of Wales and Ireland, has been limited by the low availability of volunteers to carry out survey work. But these same mountain areas and their wildlife are under threat currently from a variety of factors, including inappropriate levels of grazing, increased human disturbance and associated increases in predators (such as corvids) and climate change. Such montane habitats are recognised as of high priority under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UK BAP).

Assessing survey methods

For the spring and summer of 2005, working in partnership with the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club, we are delighted to have funding from the AEB Trust and the Scottish Mountaineering Trust to carry out pilot fieldwork to test the best methods for hillwalkers and other regular mountain-goers to use to record Ptarmigan. Staff from BTO Scotland have been pretending to be hillwalkers for the day (what a hardship) and walking transects in areas with varying densities of breeding Ptarmigan, in order to find out likely encounter rates and to assess methods for recording the birds, their field signs (droppings, footprints, feathers) and other important habitat information. Using this information, we will come up with a survey design and appropriate training material in preparation for surveying by volunteers (hopefully hillwalkers and others) in 2006. We have just heard that we have been awarded funding from the Scottish Executive under the Biodiversity Action Grants Scheme (BAGS), which will allow us to run this full volunteer survey in 2006, for which we are very grateful.

Why Ptarmigan?

The Ptarmigan is the most abundant and widespread truly montane bird in Britain, and is thought to be sensitive to a number of the environmental changes currently affecting the uplands. It occurs widely across the Scottish Highlands (and down to around 200 m above sea level in the far north) and also on a few islands of the Hebrides and Clyde. Despite the important ecological work that has been carried out on this species at a number of sites in Scotland (largely by Dr Adam Watson), changes to the overall Scottish population and its distribution are not well understood, although it is thought that some long-term range contraction has occurred.

We have chosen the Ptarmigan as a focal species for this new BTO Scotland project for a number of reasons. As well as the likely sensitivity of its population to some key changes in the uplands, the species is relatively easy to identify (even by non-specialists) but is also a particular challenge for long-term monitoring because populations undergo cycles of numbers, at least in some areas of Scotland. All these characteristics mean that it is a particularly appropriate species for BTO to tackle.

Survey practicalities

Previous and existing broad-scale survey work (such as the previous BTO atlases of distribution and the current BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey [BBS]), which necessarily rely in large part on volunteer birdwatchers, do not cover montane habitats very well because of the remoteness of the areas and low human population density (resulting in a lack of volunteers close to many survey areas). So one of the principal aims of this project is to encourage and train new volunteers (particularly hillwalkers but also others who go into the hills on a regular basis, such as estate staff) to carry out survey work in the Scottish uplands. We look forward to collaborating with, and sharing the experiences of, the Scottish Mountaineering Club in this exciting project.

The full survey in 2006 will aim to assess how many new volunteers such a scheme will attract and hopefully establish successful methods for training these surveyors. Using the results of their surveying, we will develop a strategy for long-term monitoring of Ptarmigan and other suitable montane species in consultation with colleagues developing potentially complementary surveys (e.g. the next BTO atlas survey and possible extensions to the BBS specifically for the uplands of Britain) and end-users of the monitoring data (e.g. Scottish Natural Heritage). Such long-term monitoring is likely to be of wider importance for identifying the influence of changing management practices in the uplands on key species, for informing us about the general condition of specific montane areas and for facilitating broader decisions on policy and management of these areas, for example in relation to the possible impacts of climate change.

Can you help?

If you are a hillwalker in Scotland, or will be visiting for a holiday, and would like to get involved in the survey in 2006, then we would love to hear from you. Contact Jacqui Kaye or phone 01786 466560.

We would like to express our thanks to the AEB Trust and the Scottish Mountaineering Trust who funded the pilot fieldwork this year, and to the Scottish Executive (BAGS) for additional funding to allow the full volunteer survey programme to go ahead in 2006. We are also grateful to the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club for agreeing to work in partnership with us on this project.