Spotlight


on park wildlife Joe and Howie’s wildl e witter


SPRING IN THE CouNTRy park is the time to spot wildlife at its best. The arrival of migrant birds from Africa means binoculars are always at hand. The first week in April saw the arrival of sand and house martins in their hundreds. The best place to spot them is at the dams, where they swoop low over the water


catching insects. Swallows arrived at the same time, but in fewer numbers. Either side of these visitors come the warblers. First were the chiffchaffs and blackcaps at the end of March, to be followed by willow warblers, sedge warblers and grasshopper warblers. Even earlier, on the 21st March, we spotted a skylark


Deadwood is not ‘dead wood’!


WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE PHRASE ‘dead wood’ to signify that something (or someone!) is no longer useful. of course when something is no longer useful it tends to be cleared away or removed. Frequent visitors to the country park will have noticed quite a bit of deadwood building up recently due to Glasgow City Council felling unsafe trees hanging over Corselet Road and Scottish Water clearing a route for a new pipeline. So why is the countryside ranger service not urging them to clear this ‘mess’ away? The answer is that deadwood is an essential part of the woodland ecosystem and extremely useful. Deadwood is a vital food source for countless species of fungi, bacteria and invertebrates. This ‘silent majority’ are not as colourful or charismatic as the woodland flowers and birds, such as wood anemone and the treecreeper highlighted in our spring edition of Wagtail, but they are vital all the same. When fungi, bacteria and invertebrates feed upon deadwood they break it down into organic matter, essential for all plants and the trees of the future. These decomposers also form an important food source for other invertebrates, small mammals and birds. So next time you look at a pile of deadwood, resist


the very human urge to tidy it away and instead leave it there for the saproxylic (organisms dependent on dead or decaying wood) saviours of our woodlands.


Dams to Darnley Local Nature Reserve bluebells.


singing in the fields behind Balgray Reservoir; a true sign of spring. Into May and a spotted flycatcher was seen near the Darnley Mill pond. Last to arrive as usual were the swifts, but they are now here. Butterflies were few and


far between until early May when the male orange tips suddenly appeared in


numbers. Around the same time large red damselflies began to be spotted, flittering around the ponds. The various blue damselflies will probably be out by the time this edition of Wagtail is published. Now that the snowdrops


have died back it’s the turn of the bluebells which carpet various parts of the country park. But you can still spot plenty of white flowers. These could be wood anemone, wood sorrel, greater stitchwort, mouse-ear or chickweed. So take an ID book! one plant that won’t be confused with anything else is wild garlic or ramson which covers the ground in a profusion of strong, scented leaves. Great if you like garlic.


Deadwood is essential for woodland ecosystems.


REPORT ANY PROBLEMS


Report any antisocial crimes in progress to the police on 101


other antisocial problems such as fly-tipping or graffiti should be reported to the countryside ranger service on 0141 577 4053/54


outwith office hours call ‘Clean Glasgow’on 0800 027 7027


or East Renfrewshire ‘Ring and Report’ on 0800 013 0076


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