Spring bird migration at Mar Lodge Estate

And so all this movement and life comes together at some point in late May. After the birches have put on their first spurt of leaves, when you are awoken by the incessant calling of a cuckoo and the house martins are squabbling outside your window. The swallows are swooping over the meadows, with swifts are screaming high above, and willow warblers and tree pipits are singing in the newly regenerating woodlands. Redstarts and spotted flycatchers perch on the low branches of old pines and the rivers are bustling with sand martins. The moors host the calls of golden plovers and singing skylarks and wheatears, and ring ouzels are back in their remote corries. And you wonder whether the long dark days of winter were a dream after all.

Following the phenology of a landscape allows a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the world. It’s a personal understanding too, as many of the birds which return to the estate will return to the same spot to breed over several years. Phenology reminds us that ‘our birds’ are global travellers, linking us with places like sub-Saharan Africa. But there’s also an important scientific reason for monitoring these occurrences.

Our long-term dataset is only small and has a few gaps in it, but it does seem to be suggesting that some birds are arriving back at Mar Lodge earlier now than in previous decades. Of course, this is only a snapshot (perhaps we’re just getting better at looking out for species as they arrive), but it tallies with what other people are finding across the country.

Is this a problem? In a word, yes. As climate change bites and weather patterns change, species are emerging and returning at different times. Like an orchestra playing the same music at different tempos, when migrating birds get out of sync with the rhythms of other species, the result can be dissonant and discordant. Dotterels, which come all the way from the Atlas Mountains, are struggling to arrive at the correct time to make the most of their cranefly prey. This is one of several interlinked reasons why the species is suffering dramatic declines across Scotland. Climate change is adding an extra layer of difficulty for migratory species, which are already struggling with habitat loss in both their summer and winter homes and illegal hunting in the Mediterranean.

For all that, Mar Lodge remains a haven. Our work to restore and increase the area of the Caledonian woodlands is good news for red- and amber-listed species like redstart, tree pipit and willow warbler. Our work to restore high-altitude woodland will help species like ring ouzel and wheatear, increasing the diversity and abundance of their insect food. Our peatland restoration work will help waders like golden plover and dunlin to cope with the increasing frequency of drought conditions, while our river systems create dynamic landscapes for our curlews and sand martins.

The spring orchestra of cuckoos, warblers and redstarts have now all returned for the year, filling the glens with birdsong. Studying these remarkable creatures brings the team a fascinating insight into our changing world, and no small amount of delight to the human visitors to Mar Lodge Estate.