Tag: Lapland Bunting

Put the flags out! Finding Bunting!

n341_w1150
Illustration page showing Lapland Bunting (left) and Snow Bunting (right)
Image: n341_w1150 Birds of Britain
London,A. and C. Black,1907.[etc.]1883-85. by Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Public Domain at Flickr

May the 4th (#StarWars Day) 🙂 is usually a day for all things intergalatic but we also like to find about things nearer home, as well as those species that have a shared heritage across the northern regions.

At EalaCreative we are exploring how to work with archives and digital collections as resources for learning and creative inspiration. This image of two ‘bunting’ birds -Snow and Lapland – is from the Biodiversity Heritage Library available online. For some info on Scottish birds see for example the page posted here by The Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (SOC) on snow bunting sightings in Scotland.

In the Cairngorms – a mountainous tundra climate plateau region in Scotland – a number of ‘Arctic’ and -sub-Arctic species are found including the snow bunting. See here for more information on the Norsk Polarinsk resource site where you can listen to the song of the Snow Bunting, Svalbard’s only ‘songbird’.

“The snow bunting is the most northerly passerine bird in the world. It breeds in a circumpolar range, south to Scotland and Iceland, and it is a common breeder in suitable habitats in northern Scandinavia, Greenland, Svalbard, arctic parts of Russia and the northerly parts of North America.”

See also a like below for a Wildlife Photography video available on YouTube of Snow Bunting in the Cairngorms.

“904 views 6 May 2019 4th May Scottish highlands, a couple of days snow brought the Buntings down from the high tops of their breeding grounds, They are a scarce breeding species in the UK, in Scotland around 60 pairs, in winter numbers can be 12,000 birds up and the UK”. “Wildlife Photography Snow Buntings highlands of Scotland”. “

Connections over place : Cairngorm

Swans Flying Over Loch Insh
Swans Flying Over Loch Insh by charlieishere@btinternet.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0 at Flickr

The image above of swans flying over Loch Insh is by the photographer Charlie Marshall. The EalaCreative team selected this striking image as representative not just of the swans who migrate to and from Scotland and circumpolar regions but also in this case, as the photograph is from Loch Insh, to connect here to a particularly special place and landscape – the Cairngorm mountain region in north-east Scotland. This mountainous area, with forests including large tracts of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian woodland, and freshwater lochs of snowmelt, is notable as being an area of mountain plateau of alpine and tundra like climate and ecology, a unique landscape in the whole of the British Isles.

“The Cairngorms provide a unique alpine semi-tundra moorland habitat, home to many rare plants, birds and animals. Speciality bird species on the plateaux include breeding ptarmigan, dotterel, snow bunting, golden eagle, ring ouzel and red grouse,[6] with snowy owl, twite, purple sandpiper and Lapland bunting seen on occasion.[40] Mammal species include red deer and mountain hare,[6] as well as the only herd of reindeer in the British Isles. They now roam the high Cairngorms, after being reintroduced in 1952 by a Swedish herdsman. The herd is now stable at around 150 individuals, some born in Scotland and some introduced from Sweden; since the individuals depend on humans for food and come from domesticated stock, they are not considered wild.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairngorms

The Cairngorm area is named after one of its main mountain peaks Cairn Gorm and the wider area most espcially in leisure and tourism terms is more often referred to as ‘The Cairgorms’. The region is now a designated national park (Scotland’s second) and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). More information on this can be found here NatureScot and a detailed summary of this Cairgorms SSSI can be downloaded from the NatureScot site, including the vegetation of alpine moss-heath, sedge and rush vegetation ‘communities’:

“The Cairngorms has the largest tracts in Britain of a range of alpine moss-heath and associated sedge and rush communities developed on base-poor granites and schists and the full range of these communities. The community characterised by three-leaved rush is
particularly well developed, with the full range of subtypes varying from those where woolly fringe-moss Racomitrium lanuginosum is co-dominant to open tussocky, lichen-rich areas.
Extensive areas of the plateau are dominated by stiff sedge Carex bigellowii and woolly hairmoss, particularly on the western spurs and ridges.”

Source: NatureScot, CAIRNGORMS SITE OF SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC INTEREST Highland, Moray, Aberdeenshire