Year of
Stories
This year we are joining Visit Scotland in celebrating the Year of Stories.
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As 2022 progresses we hope to share our story, hear your stories and tell stories. We are even dedicating a woodland garden to explore the lore of our trees and plants and find out how stories are at the root of everything we do. You can visit and enjoy our willow arbour, read a story, listen to a tale or simply take a moment to sit and enjoy our glorious Riverside.
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We have chosen some of our favourite Children's Stories that celebrate Scottish Wildlife and teach us to look after after our forests, gardens, oceans and other areas of nature in a environmentally positive way.
You can find them here.
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Riverside’s Stirling Success by Pat Morrissey
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Earlier this year we were asked to contribute to the Scottish Pollinator Blog - you can read about all the different activities and groups working hard to protect our pollinators here.
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I suppose it’s almost a truism that no tree dies without giving: nutrients are returned to the soil, invertebrates benefit from the breakdown of tissue, and a whole new biodiverse environment can be created if the wood isn’t carted away, shredded or burned. But what if the death of a tree gave birth to local environmental ecological activism that resulted in many more trees being planted, orchards being developed and maintained, wildflower meadows, woodland gardens and other areas being managed for the benefit wildlife and thereby the benefit of people? Wouldn’t that be wonderful offspring?
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This is exactly what happened in Riverside in Stirling in 2019. A beautiful mature red oak was taken down much to the displeasure of local residents and, prompted by discussions around the Scottish Wildlife Trust publication “Living Cities”, a group was formed to enhance the locality to make it a better place for people, by making it a better place for nature: Riverside Naturally was born.
In the two- and a-bit years of its existence RN has, in consultation with local partners, redesigned and replanted raised beds in the area with plants specially chosen for their appeal to pollinators. A range of annuals and perennials were grown to give a season-long source of food and shelter. Six different species of bees, innumerable hoverflies, many butterflies (and a few wasps) have been spotted feeding, resting and mating in these newly created spaces. The raised beds have been replicated in the local primary school which has resulted in opportunities to engage with staff and pupils ensuring that the children are aware of the need to support pollinators and how to provide it.
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We also maintain the local community orchard which provides food for pollinators and for the local community: we have over twenty fruit trees in this site. Volunteers help maintain the orchard – weeding, pruning and composting the cuttings and grass. The trees derive a reciprocal benefit from the bees and other insects and all of our trustees, members and volunteers reap the rewards of working closely with nature and learning about the cycle of giving and receiving in the environment. In the years prior to the Covid pandemic we have held Orchard Days where members of the public are invited to share the fruits of our labours and learn of the vital roles played by plants and animals in maintaining a healthy planet.
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The charity has also converted two neglected formal garden areas in Riverside Park, removing sick and unproductive plants, and replacing them with native species of trees, shrubs and ground cover to create woodland gardens which, especially in the Springtime, will give early sources of nectar to those bugs which are active at that time of year. As this work progresses more planting will help sustain these vital insects through the year.
We also have worked in partnership with Stirling Council to designate an area around the river bank as an Area of Restorative Kindness (ARK) where the land has been planted with native species, and then only lightly maintained to allow nature to thrive at its own pace. However, to give it the best start possible we have planted seven oaks and a rowan with additional native plants scheduled for introduction in the coming months.
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What's been seen in Riverside? Pat Morrisey
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About two years ago, on a cold, bright January day I was walking along the path towards the footbridge at Cambuskenneth and saw what I thought was a goosander diving and surfacing in the river just before the bridge. Getting closer it became clear that it wasn't a goosander but something more glamorous altogether, a male goldeneye, a winter visitor to our area and one of the most colourful migrant birds we are likely to see.
It was a special day for me, because about five minutes earlier I'd seen a goldcrest in the fir tree on the right side of the path, and a flock of gold finches in the birch trees bordering the river. Triple gold, I thought, feeling quite self-congratulatory.
Those sightings got me thinking about the number of different birds we have here in Riverside and I decided that over the next few months I'd casually jot down every one I saw. To my astonishment, by the end of March there were over fifty species.
But when you think about it, it really shouldn't have been such a surprise: we live in a place with such a diversity of habitat that it should have been obvious that birds of many a feather should flock together to take advantage of it.
One of the most popular garden birds, the Blackbird
We have moorland birds, curlews, plovers and snipe that fly overhead from their summer nesting grounds to the Forth estuary where they mix with oyster-catchers, a fair number of which can be seen in the fields at Queenshaugh during the summer. There is actually quite a lot of farmland surrounding us which provides food for at least three species of gull as well as other birds, and we have a school playground that hosts herring gulls at lunchtime.
Our gardens are perfect for blackbirds, starlings , robins and dunnocks, and house-sparrows that are making a welcome comeback in Stirling. And of course where there are small birds, there will be predators. If you're really lucky you might see the resident sparrow hawks contour flying over hedges and garden walls terrorising the bluetits who appear to be their main source of food in the autumn, when they can't get a plump feral pigeon.
There are hedgerows and gorse sheltering yellowhammers, linnets and tree sparrows, nearby rocky crags where ravens have been seen in the last few years and we are on the flight path for ospreys heading for Africa, red kites going anywhere they can to find a meal, and the many thousands of geese whose delta formations in the sky are so characteristic of winter.
This is a perfect time of year for bird-spotting: the trees have shed their leaves and those elusive little brown birds you caught out of the corner of your eye in summer can reveal themselves in all their variety - if they haven't headed for warmer climes.
Riverside is a great place to live and visit, not only for us humans but for out feathered friends also. So, next time you're out for a walk keep your eyes open, make a note, check against the list on our website ... and if you are fortunate enough to see waxwings this winter, call me, please, please, call me!
Have you ever smelt a spelt or a sparling, Darling? Pat Morrisey
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The last blog I wrote was about what birds we can see in Riverside and how our area is special in having such a diverse environment. But as any ecologist will tell you, the majority of life forms on the planet carry out their day to day existence out of sight of humans - in fact 10% of the world's biomass is contained in the soil below our feet. For many of us our doorway into that world is when we turn the earth in our gardens and we bring worms and other beasties, and of course slugs, to the surface - feeling grateful for the former and if you grow lettuce, defeated by the latter. The fertility of our soil is to a great degree dependent upon these invertebrates and the huge number of microbial creatures, fungi and bacteria, whose eating, respiring, reproducing, competing, cooperating, and responding turn organic debris into a rich food source for plants.
The other part of Riverside where most of the creatures live out of sight is, of course, in the river itself. There's plenty see on the surface - ducks, gulls, the occasional otter, gray seals, and if you're really, really, really lucky the beaver which have taken up residence on the Forth. But how many of us have actually seen a salmon, a trout or a sea trout on our walks along the banks? Or the huge shoals of dace that anglers pursue in the summer months, the eels that the dabchicks eat or the flounders on the river bed. Or the even more elusive sparling?
Nope, it's not a typo.
The sparling (Osmerus eperlanus) is also known as the European smelt. It's a small fish about 20-30cm that spends most of its life in estuaries but, like sea trout and salmon, swims upstream to spawn in freshwater ... and it smells of cucumber! The spawning period is quite short, sometimes only a few days, and depends on a number of factors; water temperature, tide levels and availability of suitable sites being the most important.
They are found in the western edge of Europe and the Baltic and up until recently could be caught in many rivers where they were both a supplement to the local diet and an important component in the inshore fishing industry. In fact there was a sparling fishing fleet in the Forth until the 1970s when the decline in fish numbers meant it was no longer viable.
Despite the fact that across their range sparling are not seen to be under threat, nowadays they are only found in three Scottish rivers of which our very own Forth is one*, and they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended).
Sparling are an important indicator species in identifying environmental quality as they require clean water and are highly susceptible to pollution. In the past the Forth was heavily polluted with untreated sewage and toxins from the heavy industry along its shores, but a huge investment of over £220m in water treatment plants in the early part of this century has had dramatic results which have not only benefitted sparling , but also herring, sprats and around fifty other species of fish in the estuary.
My only tenuous claim to having seen sparling was last spring when I saw a flock of goosanders corralling fish into a bend in the river at the old harbour area. They were small and silvery fish but I wasn't close to enough to either get a really good look, or check if they smelled of cucumber, but it was just after a high tide and they didn't look familiar. So maybe, just maybe, they were the rare, fragrant, anadromous** sparling.
*The Cree in Galloway and the Tay are the other two rivers.
* *An anadromous fish, born in fresh water, spends most of its life in the sea and returns to fre