3 December, 2024

Martha Henriques Some birds are so charismatic they command troupes of nature lovers who seek them out in their natural habitats. But sometimes the most precious birds are best avoided altogether. As my colleague Jocelyn Timperley writes this week, even well-meaning admirers can compromise the chance of survival of Scotland's capercaillie. Also in this edition: is it better for the climate to buy a fake Christmas tree, or a real one? Take a guess in this week's quiz.

THE BIG PICTURE The return of the condor The California condor is central to the Yurok creation story. Credit: The Yurok Tribe California condors are one of the largest birds in North America, stretching an impressive 9.5ft (2.9m) from wing tip to wing tip. They are believed by the Yurok Tribe to carry prayers into the heavens. But by the early 1980s, the species had been all but wiped out by lead poisoning, illegal killing and the use of the pesticide DDT. A painstaking breeding programme in captivity and reintroduction followed. Now, after an absence of 100 years, condors are once again flying over the Yurok Tribe's land. Read Lucy Sherriff's story on their return here.

CLIMATE CONVERSATION  The Scottish grouse that's best avoided These turkey-sized birds are the world's largest grouse. Credit: Cairngorms Capercaillie Project Jocelyn Timperley, Scottish Highlands Many wildlife enthusiasts would be thrilled to cross paths with a capercaillie, the world's largest grouse, famed for the males' beautiful fan tails. But in mid-September when I visited Abernethy, a remnant of Scotland's Caledonian Forest, to see how the birds are being protected, my goal was to stay studiously out of their sight. ‌ Capercaillies are really on their last legs here in the Scottish Highlands and trying to ensure people – and their dogs – avoid these shy birds has become a key conservation strategy. ‌ As project manager for the Cairngorms Capercaillie Project, Carolyn Robertson has been trying to show people how they might be inadvertently disrupting the birds. ‌ Capercaillies have been shown to avoid woodland tracks by a wide berth. That generally means they stay out of humans' way, but dogs off the lead are a particular concern. Dogs can easily flush a capercaillie's ground-based nest or disturb their leks – gatherings of males who put on a show for females during the breeding season. These interruptions can seriously compromise breeding success. ‌ But Badenoch and Strathspey, the Highland district which includes Abernethy, is also loved by people for its natural beauty. Visitors to this area often bring their dogs, with an estimated 150,000 dogs visiting per year, on top of 6,000 resident dogs.

Carolyn Robertson, accompanied by a dog on a leash. Credit: Jocelyn Timperley Robertson has been working with residents in the nearby Boat of Garten area to encourage them to keep their dogs under close control when out walking. "The local dog walkers [now] feel that it's their responsibility to look after the capercaillies," she says. The hope is that residents will set the tone for visitors, who are less likely to have heard of a capercaillie, let alone understand the impact their dogs might have on them. ‌ Dogs are not the only problem for capercaillie here though: everyone from mountain bikers to photographers and birders can risk disturbing capercaillie breeding. One reason they are so vulnerable to this disturbance is that they are pretty rammed in. Capercaillies, huge, turkey-sized birds with wingspans of up to 1.25m (4.1ft), need a lot of space, but just 1% of Scotland's original Caledonian Scots pine forests, where they thrive, remain. ‌ Every capercaillie matters, because despite decades of conservation, at the last count in 2021-22 only an estimated 532 of them remained in Scotland. This represents a 52% drop since the previous survey in 2015-16. ‌ In the Cairngorms National Park, which includes Abernethy Forest, landowners are working to expand Scots pine forests, including by managing the number of deer, which nibble at young pine saplings, hindering their growth. ‌ Boosting numbers A recent capercaillie "emergency" plan, delivered after a request from the Scottish government, also aims to reduce disturbance, remove more fences which young capercaillie can fly into, restore more woodland and bogs, and explore reinforcing the population with capercaillies imported from elsewhere in Europe. In fact, the capercaillie was reintroduced to Scotland once before in the mid 18th Century, after its status as a popular game bird led numbers to plummet, possibly to extinction, in the late 1700s. ‌ Expanding "diversionary feeding", a recently begun but promising intervention where hunks of deer meat are left out at strategic times of year to tempt predators such as pine marten and fox away from eggs or young chicks, is also part of the plan. ‌ Overhanging all these efforts, though, is another steadily encroaching pressure: climate change, which is affecting vegetation growth and leading to wetter springs in Scotland, which impacts the survival of the chicks. ‌ Jack Bamber, a researcher at the University of Aberdeen who has led the trials on diversionary feeding for capercaillie in Scotland, says he never expected to be doing a conservation project consisting of "roaming around the woods with a load of deer on my back". ‌ "But here we are," he says. "It's worth it in the end. They're amazing, amazing birds." ‌ Read more about the efforts to save this beautiful Scottish bird in my story.