Holiday 2023 - Dalbeattie, near Dumfries, Scotland
Each year we choose a different place in the UK to stay while on vacation. In the past we have visited various places such as the Lake District, the Peaks, New Forest, Norfolk Broads, Isle of Mull, South Wales etc. We even visited the Scottish Highlands and the Cairngorms last year, and enjoyed it so much that this year we chose to return to Scotland, this time to the Lowlands, in Dumfries and Galloway.
Part 2 - Birdspotting in RSPB Wood of Cree - 10th June
After Arriving yesterday and then a very busy evening of Moth Tapping, it was time to get out and find the first of many nature reserves.
Todays trip was a 30 mile drive west to RSPB Wood of Cree, a nature reserve a few miles Noth of the town of Newton Stewart.
It is actually split in half into 2 sections, which confused the hell out of us while driving up. We were on a tiny single lane road driving up, when we passed a small car park
"wait... is that it?"
The sat nav said there was still 2 miles to go...
"Look there's a sign for an RSPB car park - 1 mile"
Only when we had parked up and found the notice board did we understand that there were 2 locations. I guess we can do a little walk around the 1st bit, and then pause for lunch before looking around the 2nd bit.
That sounds like a plan!
We gathered together all the camera gear, and plasteed on a thick layer of sun screen (it was already warm at 9am) and we set of on the first walk
We walked a short way up to this view point over the River Cree, and then the path ended.
That was a tad confusing. Its a very pretty view of course, but where is the wood? We wandered back to the car park...
Aha!
Looks like we missed the important sign post!
We crossed the main road, and headed up into the trees... this is a bit more like it!
Regular readers know I keep banging on about the idea that if you want to see new things you have to travel to new locations, and ideally find new types of habitats.
This Woodland is a great example of Atlantic Oak Woodland. This is a type of habitat characterised by warm wet conditions with plenty of rain and high humidity. It is often referred to as a Temperate Rainforest (as opposed to the more usual Tropical Rainforest).
It is apparently quite a rare habitat only found in a few places around the world such as Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Japan (Source)
It was beautiful here today, with the dappled sunlight appearing along the path as we walked. As we meandered along we noticed lots of little yellow flowers...
This is Common Cow-wheat:
Common cow-wheat is an annual of woodland edges, heaths and upland moors that has deep golden flowers from May to September. It is a hemi-parasitic plant, meaning that it relies on obtaining some of its nutrients from the roots of nearby plants. (Souce)
Hemi-parastic? That pretty interesting! A similar approach to the Yellow Rattle which is another type of parasitic plant which takes nutrients from grasses in wildflower meadows
Quite dainty little flowers, I whish I had spent more time here getting better pictures.
As befits a wet woodland habitat, there were plenty of streams and small Rivers. Add in lots of rocky and hilly terrain and you end up with Watefalls
I do like a good waterfall!
A classic photography cliche is to use a vey slow shutter speed which slows the water down to make it look smooth and 'milky' like in the picture below. This usually ends up in very bright and over-exposed images, hence why I would normally place a a high stop ND filter over the lens (and use a tripod)
I didn't have any of that, principally as I didn't expect to find a decent waterfall here!
Fortunately the waterfall was quite energetic and fast flowing, and I managed to balance my camera on a relatively stable clump of moss, and it seemed to do the trick!
We carried on wandering around. It may have been shaded under the trees, but the high humidity more than made up for it... it was so hot and sticky that it was becoming uncomfortable...such a beautiful place though... so bight and green and lush....
And this is an example of what I mean by 'wet' woodland. All the trees were covered in various mosses and lichens, and they can only survive here so prolifically due to the high humidity and general dampness though the area.
1st walk completed, we headed to the 2nd car park:
The map shows the second set of walks we could do here.
You could've walked for miles, but we wee feeling hot and bothered (and slightly lazy. We aimed to do the mall Green Loop on the left hand side, but in the end we actually just walk round the cone up to the viewpoint, and then back down again
We saw some ferns...
And some wildflowers - in this case Red Campion
But the star, and highlight of the whole day out was this splendid chap!
I present to you one Male Redstart. :-)
Thee was a nestbox here (one of several dotted amongst the trees)
And every 5-6 minutes, a male Redstart would appear, with some insects or grubs in his beak
He would disappear into the nestbox for a split-second
And then almost immediately pop back out to go find some more food.
He was a very busy little bee bird!
I say he, this was the Male. Redstart's are sexually dimorphic, the males are a much brighter red, the females ae a comparitively more subdued orange. We only saw the male provisioning the nest, so I'd guess the female was still inside it looking after the young.
There was only one problem... in this location there were lots of midges, and after 20 minutes they were becoming rather annoying! We knew the path would come back down this way so we decided to wande off for a change of scene and some respite from the bitey midges
godamnit I wish I wasn't so tasty!
The path headed out of the wood...
and up the hill to the viewpoint
...and indeed you could see for miles! It was a great view over the surrounding countryside... we sat here for 10 minutes in the sun and decided that as the highlight of the walk was the Redstart, perhaps instead walking for miles, we should just head back to to same patch of trees to try to get some better pictures...
So that is what we did!
What a handsome little bid he is. And as for our first day out properly exploring the area of Dumfries and Galloway, this was a fantastic start to the trip... wouldn't it be geat if everyday was as good as today was
er...spoiler, it wasn't but I'll come to that in a future post haha!
But yes. Today was a good day
The next day is a trip closer to the accommodation when we visit another RSPB Reserve, this time on the mudflats of at Mersehead.
Will we find some cool stuff there as well? There's only one way to find out!
While in my care, all individuals are looked after, and after Photographs have been taken, they are all released safely outside.
All names confirmed and checked via Wikispieces
Further Research from UK Moths and NatureSpot
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