At the end of August a group of staff and students from the School of Biomedical and Biological Sciences at Plymouth University spent a week at Dundreggan, carrying out some initial exploration work in the canopy of Scots pines and oak trees there. I had already met Steve and Sarah Burchett, the organisers of the project, when they made a scouting trip to Dundreggan in May this year, and I was excited both by the prospects that their research offered, and by the possibility of climbing high up some of the trees on the estate. So, on the last day of their visit I was delighted to join them and take advantage of their expertise and skill to gain access to one of the least-visited and studied parts of the Caledonian Forest – the canopy of the mature trees. [Read more…] about Ascent into the canopy of a Scots pine

On Sunday 31st July I spent the day on Dundreggan with Jonathan Willett, who is doing a dragonfly survey of the estate for us this year, and my colleague Colin Hall, who also has a keen interest in dragonflies. We went up to the northwest of the estate, to look for evidence of breeding dragonflies in the lochans, pools and small burns there, and I was also intending to look at the dwarf birch plants growing in that area – we fenced an area for natural regeneration of this key montane scrub species there in 2010.