What a cracking summer season! Plenty has been going on in the Glen and further afield. For example, we had another successful drop in bird ringing event at the Glen Nevis visitor centre led by BTO ringer John Owen who was aided by two trainees (including FoN stalwart Kirstie) and Trainee Volunteer Ranger Jake who holds a 'C' permit. 154 new birds were ringed along with several retraps and controls recorded. Birds included Siskins, Chaffinch, Great Tit, Blue Tit, House Sparrow, Goldfinch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Treecreeper, Wood Pigeon, Blackcap, Blackbird, Coal Tit and Robin. The ongoing effort at this site is starting to produce some good data. The next event is on Sunday 26th August, hopefully the weather gods will be kind!

Local Botanist Dr Ian Strachan led a well attended botanical foray to Bohuntine to visit the hay meadows. We learned how traditionally managed hay meadows support a rich flora but have suffered a massive decline due to modern meadow management and silage production. Over 50 plant species were identified in the field including some fine orchid examples such as Heath Spotted, Heath Fragrant, Greater and Lesser Butterfly, Northern Marsh Orchid and some suspected Dactylorhiza hybrids. 

Back at An Drochaid we were treated to a bumper Moth Morning in July by Tom Prescott from Butterfly Conservation. About 100 species were identified including Burnished Brass, Antler Moth, True Lovers Knot, Large Emerald and Drinker (shown below) 

Up the Ben and  in the Glen pathwork, bracken bashing and tree planting have been happening, led by Dougie and Rowan from Nevis Landscape Partnership and ably assisted by summer Trainee Volunteer Rangers Jake, Chris, Scott, Dave, Andy and Cameron. To date almost 9,000 trees have been planted and 11 kilometres of pathwork completed by Nevis Landscape Partnership and Friends of Nevis work parties. We still have in the region of 4,000 trees to plant and plenty more work to do on the Ben paths so come along and sign up for one of our conservation or footpath work parties to do your bit! As always the craic is great, plentiful chocolate biscuits and tea provided. 

Photos and post by Rory Stewart, Friends of Nevis & Nevis Landscape Partnership Volunteer Coordinator.

Another busy year was had during 2017 with some fantastic work being carried out in the Ben and Glen Nevis area. We can't thank you all enough for your support whether it be through membership, volunteering or donations. Alongside this many benefited from our workshops from Gaelic in the Landscape to Leave no Trace Awareness to Upland Bird Surveying along with kids events, we had a productive year.

Now looking ahead to 2018 and moving into the 5th year of working in partnership with Nevis Landscape Partnership www.nevislandscape.co.uk/ and other partner organisations, all striving towards sustainable use of the outdoors.  Our events calendar is filling with lots of work parties planned and new events constantly being added.  Check out our events page. 

​We hope to see you along on one of our events this year.
Susan, Volunteer Coordinator

It's been AGES since we've had a chance to update the blog, sorry folks!

If you want a chance to catch-up with us in person and find out about all of the fun things we've been doing in Glen Nevis since you heard from us last make sure you come along to our AGM. Our informal gathering will take place on Friday 3rd November at Glen Nevis Restaurant and a small donation is required to cover the costs of a buffet for everyone who comes along.

The evening is your chance to meet our members, volunteers and staff as well as hear from our guest speaker archaeologist Martin Cook who will be talking about the most recent excavation of Dun Deardail, a project Friends of Nevis were heavily involved in.

Book your spot here;
www.nevislandscape.co.uk/events

We look forward to seeing you there, all the best!
Susan

Well, where does the time go, since our last instalment we have been cramming a lot in.  Not only have Friends of Nevis had their own events but volunteers have been able to get involved in all Nevis Landscape Partnership events.  It’s been busy….Here are a few mentions…

Footpath Work Parties have continued every month and volunteers have been trying to keep on top of the maintenance of these paths.  Contractors cover big chunks of the work however unless these paths are maintained they easily become damaged and eroded.  Our volunteers are vital in the upkeep of these paths for the use of all, thank you!  

​Our Citizen Science events have continued to be popular with Gordon Strachan running a Wild Flowers of Glen Nevis event around Steall Gorge and Liz Holden running a Fungi Foray event round Leanachan Forest.  Both events were popular and delivered with lots of enthusiasm and we all came away with lots to think about.

​And then to the children…

A Family Bushcraft Day run by Pete Long during the October holidays was a great opportunity for families to learn and have fun together.  Weather was pretty miserable however this dampened no-one’s spirits and shelters were built, fires made and marshmallows enjoyed by all. 
We joined forces with Forestry Commission Scotland and Highland Council Rangers to run a couple of school events.  Lundavra Primary enjoyed a visit to Leananchan woods for an Adventurers and Explorers day and Inverlochy Primary learned map reading skills and put these to the test during a treasure hunt which allowed them to find equipment to build a fire and have smores and hot chocolate!  

​
One thing (among many other skills!) Friends of Nevis volunteers do brilliantly is keeping Glen Nevis clean and tidy.  Hardy, dedicated volunteers, both young and old did a fantastic job this year keeping Glen Nevis presentable for the benefit of the environment and for others to appreciate and enjoy as much as we all do.  A huge thank you for those prepared to do the less glamorous but very rewarding work.

HELLO!

We have been so busy over here I haven't had a chance to sit down and tell you all about what we have been up to so here goes..

First of all, way back in May we had another excellent bushcraft workshop with the super-talented Pete Long. A mixture of Nevis Trainee Rangers & the general public enjoyed learning how to survive in the wild, build shelters and enjoy tasty wild foods. Thank you to everyone who came along, it's good to go wild now & again!

We continued our walk on the wild side and dabbled in some foraging with Claire, West Highland Herbal. Claire's workshops are always popular, the Herb Walk and Workshop were both fully booked weeks in advance, make a note to book early for the next one! There was plenty of foraging to be done in Glen Nevis and what the group collected with was enough to create lots of edible treats & medicinal lotions back at Friends of Nevis HQ. 

We followed up our fortnight of being wild things with some good old fashioned work parties. First up, our volunteers travelled to The Lake District for a weekend in the middle of June to lend a hand to the "Fix the Fells" campaign and make friends with similar organisations, hopefully the folk we met will travel north and return the favour. Next on the cards was our first ever Thistle Camp with National Trust for Scotland, a week-long footpath work party focusing on the Ben Nevis mountain track. The working holiday was booked up, the sun shone all week & the volunteers worked really hard to make a HUGE difference to the track, take a look. If we had used contractors for this it would've cost nearly £30,000, power to the volunteers!

Here at Friends of Nevis we have loved having Ruth, Nicolle, Eliot & Katie come along and lend a hand on almost all of our recent events. The fab four are taking part in The Nevis Training Programme, a ten-week placement in the area offering them essential work experience to gain employment in the environmental sector. We just wanted to say a big thanks for all your help & the long shifts you put in to man the registration desks and marshall the Caledonian Challenge after a hard-week of Thistle Camp'ing. Well done folks!

Phew! So we've covered May through to early July, are you still with us?

We said goodbye to the first lot of volunteer rangers and welcomed four new trainees last month & wasted no time getting them stuck into some of our engagement events including the popular "Bird Ringing & Mist Netting" workshop as part of our Citizen Science programme. A great event and a chance for volunteers and trainees alike to get up close to lots of different bird species and learn how to safely handle and ring the little critters.

We spent last week on a roadtrip around Lochaber bringing bushcraft & environmental games to the wee ones during their rainy summer holidays as part of the excellent Active Schools programme. Ciaran, one of the new trainees, commented on how hardy Lochaber kids were & how completely oblivious they were to the awful weather. All in all a great week of unplugged, natural play which we think the kids of Glencoe, Kinlochleven, Strontian, Arisaig & Fort William enjoyed almost as much as we did, good fun all round.

There you have it folks! A big write-up but I think that's everything from the past wee while that we here at Friends of Nevis have been up to. You are all more than welcome to join in with any of our events, we would love to have you. In fact, this Saturday we are having a Footpath Work Party, if you fancy showing the local mountain paths some love then please sign up here. Keep an eye on here for updates & over on Nevis Landscape Partnership's Facebook page.

All the best, enjoy the weather!
Susan, Friends of Nevis Volunteer Co-ordinator

Our first Citizen Science events of the season proved popular.  Our Raptor event ran by Brian Etheridge, previously having worked for RSPB and BTO proved popular with 11 people taking advantage of this workshop. A presentation was followed by a walk through woodland habitat looking at nests, raptors and field signs.  Our other event was a slight contrast.  We ran two days looking at Butterfly Recording and Monitoring as well as Moth identification.  Ran by the ever popular Tom Prescott of Butterfly Conservation Scotland this workshop was fully booked and weather was ideal for spotting butterflies.

Welcome to our brand new website, what do you think? We're so happy to finally get it up and running. It's been many months in the making but we're finally here and we're pretty excited! We have strived to make information readily available and becoming a Friend of Nevis an enjoyable and user-friendly process however it's early days so please do get in touch with feedback of any kind, we need you to let us know if we've forgotten anything.

In other news we have been out and about volunteering as usual. There was an amazing turn out to the Spring Cleaning Litter Pick, thank you to all thirty of you who turned up for a clean sweep of the entire Glen. Dougie also had a handful of hardy footpath volunteers out on the lower section of Ben Nevis last weekend. The National Trust Thistle Camp will carry on with the repairs started by our volunteers all through next week.

Our next upcoming event is the June Footpath Work Party, make sure you're there for a fun day of fresh air with the Friends of Nevis.

See you soon!
Susan

Another weekend, another work party!

A big thank you to Dougie for sharing his path skills with all of our hardy volunteers, new and old, who turned up to lend a hand this weekend. We once again concentrated on clearing the drains, digging ditches and stabilising the water-bars around the bottom of the Ben Nevis footpath, near Achintee.

It was a really productive day & morale was high despite the dreich Highland climate. Ditches and water-bars really help preserve paths and what our volunteers achieved will go a long way to ensure the rain doesn't wash away the path surfacing no matter how many boots tread upon it. 

If you fancy giving us a hand, check out our events page for the next volunteering days!

Susan
​Friends of Nevis

The children of Lundavra Primary School have recently been learning about conservation and wanted to their bit for our environment so they came along to Glen Nevis for a day of exploring and tidying up. The day started with a little quiz to test their knowledge on what counts as litter and what doesn't then everyone headed out to pick up some of the rubbish left behind in the Glen.

As a reward for all of their hard work we treated the little litter pickers to a cosy picnic in the teepee with smores and hot chocolate before heading out for the last activity of the day, an un-natural treasure hunt. Lots and lots of fun was had by all and we hope to see the children of Primary 4/5 back soon to help us keep Glen Nevis tidy! A big thank you to Mr Ross, Ruari from Forestry Commission Scotland & Michelle, Lochaber Countryside Ranger.

Thanks for reading!
Susan