Phytophthora Warning

Juniper under threat

The Heather Trust has been concerned about Phytophthora (pronounced fy-TOFF-thora) for some time, although initially because of concerns that the disease could have an effect on heather itself. While P. ramorum has a devastating impact on blaeberry (V. myrtilis), it so far seems as though heather is relatively safe from large scale damage.

However, equally worrying is the sudden appearance of a different kind of Phytophthora which targets juniper, a vital component of the moorland environment, and one which has suffered terrible declines over the past century. Phytophthora austrocedrae has been found to have killed large numbers of juniper trees in the North Pennines, and the extent of the damage could be far worse.

Juniper trees have considerable value as cover for a range of birds and mammals, including black grouse, but the species may be better known to moorland managers in Scotland in its low-growing variant, often mixed in with heather or on rough ground on the moorland margin. These low-growing junipers are a feature of moorland in the North East of Scotland, and while they are perhaps less well known than the classic upright "tree" form, they are equally vulnerable to P. austrocedrae.

Austrocedrae was first identified in Argentina in 2007, where it was responsible for damaging a native species of cedar. The pathogen attacks the roots and stem bases of juniper, causing symptoms of die-back which vary from a few brown or orange shoots to an entire reddening of the plant, leading ultimately to death. It is unknown how this type of Phytophthora came to Britain, but the family of pathogens to which it belongs is renowned for being highly mobile, infectious and persistent.

Plantlife has recently started a survey on Phythophthora austrocedrae, and they are urging people to get in touch with them if they encounter juniper which appears to have been infected by the disease. This coincides with the Scottish Plant Health Strategy which was unveiled by the Scottish Executive last week in a push to raise awareness about plant diseases.


For information on Phytophthora which is relevant to moorland managers, have a look at our Members' Briefing.

Heather Beetle 2014

After a few dry days of sunshine and light winds, it seems like 2014's burning season is suddenly upon us. Some good fires are being put in from Aberdeenshire and Angus to the Peak District, although many of the West Coast moors have stayed too wet to carry a flame, even through white grass. With the changing seasons, curlews have retuned and the snipe now drum at all hours, while the grouse pairs are becoming more territorial and the blackgame have begun to display in earnest.

When the average day temperature rises above 9degC, heather beetles come out of their hibernation and can be very conspicuous for a few days as they disperse. Beetles hibernate in the deep moss and leaf litter throughout the cold days, where the layers of vegetation protect them from the worst of the frost. Emerging on the first warm days of Spring, it is easy to find beetles as they take to the air and spread out in search of mates and breeding grounds.

Heather beetles are notoriously weak fliers, and they will often seem to drift with the wind whichever way it takes them. If they happen to "crash land", they may settle again for the year within a short distance of their hibernation site, but often they will travel for hundreds of yards.

2013 was a very quiet year for heather beetle damage, and the largest outbreaks were quite modest by comparison to some of the terrible damage caused in previous years. Perhaps this is linked to the long, cold winter which flared up again with a major fall of snow in March last year, and although it is still possible that the cold could come, the conditions for early spring 2014 are precisely the opposite, after the wettest winter on record. Perhaps this will lead to a bad year for beetle damage in 2014, and we rely on your feedback to trace beetle outbreaks wherever they take place.

The Heather Beetle Survey Form is available again from the Heather Trust website, and we are always very keen to hear from people who have spotted beetles or damage caused by beetles.

As Spring runs into Summer, we will be circulating our Heather Beetle Survey Form. In the meantime, why not have a look at our Members' Briefing on Heather Beetles

Croick and the Sporting Sale

We're delighted to be working with Croick Estate, Sutherland for the Heather Trust Country Market and Sporting Sale 2014

With plans for the Heather Trust Country Market and Sporting Sale now starting to come together, we're delighted to announce that we will be working with Croick Estate in Sutherland to offer a fantastic Prize Draw Lot alongside the usual auction when the Sale begins on the 17th April.

Croick Estate consists of 12,000 acres of mountain, moor and farmland in the heart of wild Sutherland, and the land is home to a fantastic array of birds and mammals, from black grouse to sika deer. As part of the Sale, supporters of the Heather Trust will be able to buy tickets for a Prize Draw which will entitle the winner and up to five guests to a week's stay at the recently refurbished Old Croick Manse, where stalking and walked up woodcock shooting will also be provided.

More information on the Prize Draw will soon become available, but as donated Lots continue to trickle in, it looks like 2014 could be one of the best Heather Trust Sales to date.

To donate a Lot, sponsor the Sale or help to promote it, email clara.jackson@heathertrust.co.uk. For more information, visit  http://auction.heathertrust.co.uk/

To find out more about the estate, the frequently updated Croick blog is well worth a look.

Grit Varieties

A grit station in Galloway

The Heather Trust has recently been looking into different kinds of grouse grit on behalf of one of our members, and the investigation revealed that the huge variation in different grits used not only across the country but also between different moors. 

Grouse consume a huge amount of grit at this time of year because it helps them to digest poor quality roughage, and a shortage of good grit can be a real problem for some populations of grouse. Even more fundamentally, grouse will travel long distances to gather the grit they need to digest their food, and it is safer for the birds if they are supplied with ready access to everything they need in each territory. With the exception of “direct dosing”, treated grit is the only effective way of medicating grouse against the damaging intestinal parasites which cause damaging strongylosis.

Moor owners have had different results using various different kinds of grit, from flint to quartz, but the variety between the different types of quartz makes room for controversy. Cornish quartz is available in a wide range of different grades, and some of the very fine grit which has been processed almost into sharp sand is surprisingly popular amongst grouse and moor owners. 

Scottish quartz can be rounder and quite nobbly in appearance, and many people argue that this is the best kind of grit, but there are so many different contenders that it is difficult to decide one way or another. There is even a kind of flaky, crumbly quartz which is quarried in Portugal which several moor owners are very keen on, and the variety is endless.

There is very little in the way of science to definitively determine which kind of grit is best for grouse, and it is generally believed that grouse will soon get used to using whichever type is most abundant and safest to access. It can take grouse a few seasons to get used to a new kind of grit, but the best advice is usually to stick to what they are used to.

Stone Drinkers

A stone-carved grouse drinker on Stanage Edge (picture Jim Ennis)

After mentioning grouse and water supplies in a previous Talking Point article in November, it is interesting to follow on the subject with some novel grouse drinkers in the Peak District.

Photographer Jim Ennis's pictures taken at Stanage Edge show drinkers which have been carved into suitable spots in the exposed gritstone, with specially designed troughs and gutters to draw the water into a central cup. The drinkers are numbered and form part of a long sequence across the moor. Some of them are carved into this "sun" shape, but others make use of sloping rock to form oblongs and shallow gutters which supply the birds with a dependable source of water.

The gamble with providing grouse with drinkers is the reliability of rainfall during the hot, dry months of summer. The shallower the trough is, the more likely it is to dry out altogether during June and July, but as the water evaporates on a hot day, deep, steep sided drinkers will often pose a threat to chicks and young birds which can easily fall in and drown without a smooth and sloping access and exit point.

It seems likely that even the slightest frost would freeze the water in these drinkers, which without cover or shelter would develop a skin of ice even on a day when only the wind was cold. This is not a problem for many drinkers which are cut into the peat, because the rushes and vegetation provide some insulation and would potentially keep the water clearer of ice for slightly longer than an exposed cup in the stone. 

An additional bonus to drinkers cut into the ground is that they develop the kind of mushy vegetation which is so suitable for invertebrate life, providing chicks not only with water but also with the high protein diet that they need to flourish during their first few weeks. Stone drinkers would be of little value to young birds, particularly since using them would effectively be tantamount to placing them on a pedestal for every predator on the moor to see, but drinkers on high points like this one could still serve a valuable focal point for territorial cocks throughout the winter. Combined with grit piles, exposed drinkers like these could be used as miniature landmarks for birds as they set up their territories, and thereby serve a purpose that conventional scrapes of puddles could not.

There is no doubt that these drinkers would be helpful for grouse, but as the picture also shows, during days when the drinker is full, there are puddles and splashes across the entire moor which have the added bonus of allowing the grouse to visit them in camouflage and secrecy. The time when there would not be water elsewhere on the moor and when there would be safely accessible water in the drinker may be limited, but the work involved in having a stonemason carve these neat little drinkers was obviously worth the effort.

There are pros and cons to introducing artificial water pools onto grouse moors, and the amazing variety of different means of watering birds is a reflection of the huge diversity of moors and moorland across the country.

Jim Ennis's website JimEnnisPhotography.co.uk has plenty of other great photographs of the Peak District National Park, where the Heather Trust is very active at the moment.

Bracken & Cattle

Belted Galloways mashing up a stand of bracken

What with all the current legal difficulty around the chemical control of bracken, it was refreshing to see an old-fashioned management technique being profitably employed on a Galloway hillside. By dropping a ring-feeder on a stand of bracken, the Belties are forced to congregate in such greedy abundance that they literally pulverize the bracken litter. Some of the root rhizomes which make bracken such a hardy and difficult species to manage will have been directly exposed to frost and cold weather by this action, and others will become vulnerable once the layer of dead litter which usually keeps them insulated has been broken up and removed.

Bracken rhizomes are extremely vulnerable to the cold, and the area around this ring-feeder will have much less in the way of bracken when May comes. Rhizomes can descend up to a metre into the soil, so while this kind of control does not guarantee 100% removal of the plant, it does make a difference. Besides, the nature of bracken "control" is not to annihilate the plant altogether; just prevent it from encroaching at the expense of other interests. If the ring-feeder is moved around over the course of the winter, it could clear off quite a significant amount of bracken, and this is a traditional means of keeping the plant in check.

Not everyone can afford to keep hardy native breeds like Belted Galloways, and the number of wintering cows in the hills has fallen dramatically over the last twenty years. This loss is a major contributing factor to the huge proliferation of bracken in many areas, and explains why chemical control has become so vital in the ongoing battle against this invasive species.

Wildlife Estates Scotland

Planning has already begun for 2014's Golden Plover Award, and we are now hosting a Golden Plover Award webpage on the Heather Trust website so that potential entrants can learn more about the award's criteria, ethics and purpose.

New for the 2014 Golden Plover Award is the involvement and support of Wildlife Estates Scotland, an initiative backed by Scottish Land and Estates to encourage and promote the very highest standards of quality and best practice on Scottish sporting estates.

Wildlife Estates Scotland became active earlier this year as part of a Europe-wide scheme to provide estates with accreditation based upon sound wildlife management. Eight estates received their Level 2 accreditation following the WES pilot scheme during the summer (of which Golden Plover Award winner Edinglassie was one), and a total of ten estates have now made the grade.

Accreditation is undertaken by a totally independent body, SFQC, and the process is rigorous and objective. Half of the assessment is based upon a comprehensive desk review of the application along with supporting documents, and the other half consists of a visit to the estate in order to see the management practices "in action".

Two hundred and fifty estates have so far joined the scheme, and forty are currently working on their applications. As part of the Wildlife Estates initiative, regional meetings are taking place to spread

the word to estates across the country, with presentations and information issued so far in Fife, Deeside, Speyside and East Lothian, with more pop-up appearances taking place over the winter and into the New Year in order to engage with an even wider audience.

 

WES will have input to the Golden Plover Award selection process, and we look forward to working with them on this project. In the meantime, there is a great deal more information on the WES website at www.wildlife-estates.co.uk