Hello dear blog readers - it's been a while since we were introduced, but as you can imagine, myself and the rest of the osprey team have been busy learning the ropes over the last few weeks!
I could type at length about the amazing things I have learnt and seen since we arrived; there's fantastic wildlife everywhere you look in this beautiful reserve, including marvellous plant life, amazing fungi, red squirrels, capercaillie, and of course the ospreys themselves!
But for my first blog I thought I might focus on a different sort of amazing organism - often overlooked by visitors, and, I'm ashamed to say, myself, the humble lichen was a stand-out feature which none of us could fail to notice on our arrival. Back down south, of course there are lichens of all sorts to be found if you're happy to look for them. But here they are positively dripping off the trees, coating the fence posts and smattering every large rock in sight.
Why this difference in abundance? It's simply the fantastically clean air that makes lichens so plentiful here -in fact, they have long been used by scientists as biological indicators of air pollution levels. So what is a lichen? They are actually made up of two sorts of organisms - a fungus together with one or more kinds of algae - which coexist to form one structure. The fungal component relies on sugars produced by the alga, which in turn relies on the protection of the fungus to shield it from the harsh environmental conditions.
Their amazing diversity and ability to cling on a vast variety of substrates, from bark to bare rock, means that they are found all over the world, in some of the harshest environments on earth. They may be everywhere you look in the forest, and so are easy to take for granted. But look a little closer and you can't fail to appreciate their beauty, and the amazing delicacy of their intricate structures.
Although their colours are often subtle, there's an amazing array of shades of green and grey to be seen, interspersed occasionally with flashes of luminous yellow or orange! In the colder months, I like to think of them as winter's flowers - blooming from every surface and transforming the woods into something a little bit magical.
Next time you go out for a wander, be it through the woods or just into your back garden, why not take a moment to appreciate the loveliness of a lichen - I know I will!
Our latest update on Breagha (thanks to Mike) shows that he is still quite content in his routine of sticking around his current 'home' patch, with no long-distance movements recorded over the past week. All's well here at the centre too, despite quite a lot of intruder action over this past week. The latest scare occurred yesterday morning, when Odin had to chase off an intruding male Osprey. EJ's done her fair share of the hard work too though, as she managed to see off three buzzards at once on Thursday afternoon! EJ and Odin have proved themselves more than capable of dealing with any unwanted visitors, so now we're all keeping our fingers crossed for next week, when we're hoping to see chick number one hatch on Saturday/Sunday. Stay tuned!