The Old Pig Sty gets an Eco-Revamp

Last Tuesday was a fantastic day out on the reserve, loads of work was done, both big and small jobs but all of huge importance to the site. It was also our placement student Miriam’s first task that she led from the planning stage onwards and she did brilliantly! Miriam set a small team up in the old pig sty to start construction of the rest of the composters. This will help keep food waste to a minimum and produce some good quality planting material for future projects.

Photo by Stuart Winston

Additionally, volunteers Charlie and Stuart began excavating the rest of the troughs in the pig sty, they did a great job at getting them out and they’ll be joining the other troughs we’ve removed which will be used as trough ponds.

Some smaller tasks were finished that had been on our list for a while. This included putting the final Tree sparrow box up in the cottages, hopefully it’ll be as successful as the others!

We also had volunteers Bob and Joan dismantle some old rotten infrastructure out over the site to smarten the place up a little. Finally, we managed to rake up some vegetation that had been strimmed the day before, overall incredibly successful day, well done team!

In addition, the following day, reserve warden Jake and Miriam did nest box checks for the week. They even saw the first round of chicks and eggs. It is fantastic to know that boxes we put up two months ago are already helping with this year’s breeding season.
Placement student Sandy was out checking for Natterjack toads, the team saw eight males in the field where the Hebridean sheep usually graze. It is awesome to see that the Natterjacks are springing into life!

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