Lunan Burn Wildlife Cluster Birds & Bats

Grantee: Lunan Burn Wildlife Cluster

Duration: January 2025 – March 2026

Background

Farm clusters – whereby neighbouring landowners/farmers/crofters work together to improve biodiversity at landscape scale – are an expanding network across the Highlands and Islands.

Lunan Burn covers an area of 20,000 hectares between Dunkeld and Blairgowrie, in Perthshire. The cluster covers a wide range of habitats such as heather moorland, native woodlands, wetlands, rivers and lochs; including areas with designated SAC and SSSI status. 15 voluntary members are working to improve biodiversity across the cluster, through improving water quality, increasing pollinator habitats, and reducing lowland deer density.

The Project

There are two elements to this project:

• Bird and Bat baseline data collection

Baseline data collection will aim to identify species and gain an understanding of population size, in order to inform future conservation strategy. This will involve a methodology called Bioacoustic Monitoring, whereby vocalisations of different species are recorded, displayed and analysed.

• Swift and Barn owl boxes and callers

Barn owls and swifts have been identified as two key species that this second part of the project will focus on.  Firstly, Barn Owl & Swift Boxes will be placed in several locations throughout the cluster, and numbers will be monitored to evaluate breeding success. In addition, Swift ‘callers’ will be trialled on the site. This innovative new technology uses a call player to attract birds flying overhead, who think that other swifts are nesting nearby and thus choose to occupy the swift boxes.

These conservation measures – particularly the swift-caller trial which is one of the first of its kind in Scotland – have potential to not only increase biodiversity locally, but also be replicated by other local groups across the country.