Month: December 2017

Over a period of 9 sessions, a group of S3/4 students studying Rural Skills at Inverness Royal Academy have been coming to Naturedays to get practical experience related to what they have been learning. Activities that the group of students have been carrying out include an estate tour, stream clearing, pothole filling, putting up fences, planting bulbs, path cutting, shrub pruning and maintenance and raking leaves. As well as all of this, over a few weeks they scrubbed the wooden balustrades of Hen House, one of the cabins that Aigas guests stay in during the season, to clean them and get all of the varnish off before adding a new layer of varnish so they look good as new. The most recent project they have been working
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I am sat writing this blog post after watching the sun set over Lake Victoria. I am fortunate enough to be spending three weeks volunteering for The Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust (The Chimpanzee Trust), an NGO based in Uganda which focuses on rescuing orphaned chimpanzees and working to tackle the problems that lead to these individuals becoming orphans in the first place. This involves working directly with communities who inhabit areas where wild, unprotected populations of chimpanzees are known to reside. Aigas Field Centre runs a staff exchange programme with the sanctuary so that we can share knowledge, skills and experience with fellow conservationists from completely different backgrounds.  Earlier this year we had the sanctuary manager and vet, Dr Titus, over to stay with us
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Back in July the Aigas Loch was alive with fast, beautiful, prehistoric predators of the air. Their ancestors with 70cm wingspans were the largest creatures in the air 300 million years ago. Dragonflies are a pleasure to watch wherever you are in the world. Some people dub them the new birds with their rise in popularity amongst twitchers. Dragonflies don’t call or sing to give away their presence however their 2 sets wings beat at around 30 times a second often making an audible hum which draws your attention. [caption id="attachment_1629" align="aligncenter" width="551"] Spotted chaser[/caption] Our world is home to 5,900 species of dragonfly, we have 45 of them living in Great Britain & Ireland, 11 of which feed and breed on the Aigas estate. A stroll
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Possibly the most important work that the Aigas Trust funds is that of Naturedays. We provide environmental education to students from nursery to secondary school age. Each year over 5,000 students throughout the Highlands and islands of Scotland and beyond are taught by Naturedays on the estate, in local green spaces and in school grounds. For over 35 years we have tailored programmes for school children and adults to engage with the natural world and inspire people of all ages. Our programmes deliver Curriculum for Excellence, meaning teachers can leave with enthused students, but also tick off a few things from their syllabus. Some of the most loved sessions include bushcraft (fire lighting, shelter building, whittling), freshwater invertebrate investigation and map skills. Any readers that have visited
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A frozen loch gleams icily in the last hour of night.  An eerie stillness settles around us.  No birds are stirring yet; deer are still out on the river fields, yet to slip back into the woods as winter daylight slowly spills in from the cloudless east.  Whisps of ghostly white mist hang over the valley and somewhere far upstream we can hear the bugling of the twelve whooper swans that have winged in from the high Arctic to winter on our river. We had dumped a road-kill roe deer carcass out on the moor with a stealthcam in place to see who and what would exploit it.  The first and obvious images were fox.  A solitary fox tugging at the rib cage and hauling it off
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