More vole monitoring

In case you're wondering, yes, we survived last Sunday's beach clean at Orphir Bay despite the 40+mph winds. Fortunately (although actually unfortunately), there was so much rope on the beach, we were able to weigh down our plastic rubbish bags quite easily. Smaller bits of plastic were trickier to handle in the gusty conditions, for despite plunging the offending piece of litter into a bag, by some sort of venturi effect, it would be whipped back out by the wind. I had to pick up one particularly annoying food wrapper four times 🙄 At a rough guess, 95% of what the group collected was fishing-orientated: rope, string and netting. There was also plenty of parcel strapping and, new for 2024, some discarded coffee pods.

The following day saw Megan and I head over to Deerness to carry out some vole monitoring, with the Spring survey for the Orkney Native Wildlife Project. Shortly after beginning the first of our two transects, Megan found a caterpillar of the Ruby Tiger moth clambering about in the vegetation, whilst I spotted a vole skull laid on the ground which would likely have come from an owl pellet.

We also found a plucking site where a raptor had devoured several birds, if the quantities and types of feathers were anything to go by. Of which more later. Just before we completed the first transect, we were pleased to spot our first Swallows of the year, hawking for insects along the clifftop.

We managed to find a bit of shelter from the gusty weather down by the shore, eating our lunch near the Brough of Deerness. 

En route to the start of the second transect, we encountered another first for us in 2024, a Wheatear, again foraging on the clifftop. Ditches were full of Lesser Celandines and Marsh Marigolds, a Short-eared Owl hunted for voles (and probably had better luck than we did), and back at the car park, a pair of Stonechats perched on a wire fence.

Despite the strong wind, we did manage to recover several feathers for later ID. Most were actually plucked (so the predator was a bird), but some had chewed ends, which hints that a scavenging mammal had been present too.

Our thanks to BR for identifying the feathers as being from three different species:

Snipe

Top: Rock Dove, and Bottom: Mallard

We were able to confirm the presence of Orkney Voles in both transects, but the runs we found only contained old droppings and old grass clippings. However, the hunting Short-eared Owl sighting does strongly hint that there are definitely still voles in the area.