Nest
box birds  |
Boat of Garten is a great place for bird watching. Its special nest box
programme ensures plenty of birds stay on during the spring breeding season...
with magical results. 听 | | Highland
landscape - nest box breeding is a top priority |
 You'd
normally associate the highland landscape of the Cairngorms with Mountain Hares,
Ptarmigan or perhaps the reintroduced Reindeer.
But down in the valley you
can find something very different - the strikingly unique Goldeneye. The
Rothiemurchus Estate is a good place to see them in their full glory. There
are now over 100 females raising their young each year in this area as a result
of nature conservation and management.
It's not difficult to see how
these birds got their name - the dazzling golden eyes are a giveaway. But
they're a very shy species and only found in small dispersed groups which makes
them difficult to see from a distance. Look out for the distinctive white
'beauty spot' on the cheeks of the males. Also watch for these birds feeding
below the water level on invertebrates, insects and even small fish. Nest
Box boost
 Nest
box work has been a major help in establishing a breeding population in Scotland.
Normally birds overwinter in the area but, as a result of the nest box
scheme, some started staying in the Highlands to breed from the early 1970's. Goldeneyes
have very distinctive triangular shaped heads, but there's a huge difference between
the sexes visually. The female is brown headed whilst the male boasts a
green head, but the golden eye is present in both sexes.
There's a wide
distribution of these birds in Britain during winter, with about 10,000 individuals.
Most birds will leave as Spring arrives to go north to European forests
that still have ancient trees with suitable nest sites but up to about 200 pairs
stay on to use the nestboxes. The male has a lovely mating dance with violent
head throwing and leg kicking - this starts in Spring. Bird
feeding station  Just
up the road from the nest boxes, outside the village of Boat of Garten, is a small
feeding station set up for the resident woodland birds.
Look out for Coal
Tits, Great Tits and Woodpeckers, as well as Crested Tits, a special visitor. The
Crested Tit is a bird that is hard to misidentify - look for its lovely black
and white chequered crest. You won't see anything like it anywhere else
in Britain - they're specialists of old coniferous woodland. There is a
tiny British population of Crested Tits with no more than 1,000 pairs, all of
which live in Scotland. The next nearest populations are in the vast forests
of Norway, making these birds a unique Scottish race. To try and help the
population at Garten, they have received a helping hand in the form of nest boxes. Nest
box magic  The
boxes are cleaned out every year and then stuffed with dead wood.
Crested
Tits are excavators and want to make their own holes - the reserve gets a much
higher take up rate by stuffing the boxes with dead wood from pines, rather than
any old wood chip The best time to see these Tits is early in the morning
when they'll be topping up the fuel reserves after a long cold Highland night.
It's also worth hanging around as in between the birds visits you're
more than likely to spot Red Squirrels. A good supply of hazelnuts at the
feeding station ensures daily visitors. Star species *
Crested Tit
* Goldeneye
* Red Squirrel
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