On Friday last week Glen Tanar featured in the BBC Landward programme in their piece about Scottish Wildcats, including descriptions given by our Wildlife Manager Colin McLean and some of the footage of the cats from our camera traps which Colin is shown tending. There were also some spectacular shots of the deeply snow-covered Cairngorms landscape in brilliant sunshine.
You can watch the episode (number 23) on BBC iPlayer at this link. The wildcat section is near the beginning but the whole programme is well worth watching and includes a piece on photography in Skye with ace landscape photographer Colin Prior.
Red Squirrel
During the recent Royal Deeside Venison Festival writer Richard Rowe visited us and experienced one of our estate safaris to see the management and conservation efforts taking place here and experience the landscape and wildlife of Deeside at first hand.
His insightful article for Scotland Outdoors covers not just the deer and their management but also many other aspects of the estate including fire prevention in the ancient forest, the salmon fishery, and the wildlife such as grouse and capercaillie, red squirrels, pine martens and wildcats. You can read the article - Estate of Mind – by viewing or downloading the article in pdf format.
From the 26th to the 31st of October chefs, venues and estates across Royal Deeside and The Cairngorms will be toasting the Monarch of the Glen from hillside to plate at the inaugural Royal Deeside Larder Venison Festival.
Here at Glen Tanar on Tuesday the 26th of October we are holding a Wild Life Safari which will include a tour around the Estate looking for Red Deer in their habitat and learning more about the beautiful animals. A BBQ lunch will be provided by Liz Peck of Liz’s Larder and this will be served at a remote bothy at the bottom of Mount Keen.
This event costs £40 per person and runs between 11am to 2pm. To book a space please contact us by telephone on (013398) 86451 or email us at info@glentanar.co.uk
To celebrate Red Squirrel Week, a national week dedicated to everything red and squirrelly which runs from Saturday 2nd to Sunday 10th of October 2010, Glen Tanar charitable Trust Ranger Service will be hosting a Red Squirrel fun day on Sunday 10th October, in partnership with the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels (SSRS) project team.
Come along to chat with the SSRS project team and learn about squirrels and how this project is working hard to try and protect them.
There will be an information stall at the Braeloine Visitor Centre and red squirrels woodland walks throughout the day starting at 10.30am, as well as fun activities and the chance for the kids to meet Mr Squirrel, a giant red squirrel who likes nothing more than a big cuddle.
Red Squirrel at Glen Tanar
“While Glen Tanar is a lovely place to relax and enjoy the countryside its also a working estate and one of the things we are always keen to do is to educate people on how the estate’s ecology and economy work together. To do this end we recently held an event for children from Aboyne Primary School which was all about deer management. This event was designed to show why deer are managed, what value they bring and what impacts they can have as well as enjoying deer for the fabulous animals they are. Kids played games to simulate stalking and to find out about the resources deer need to thrive. In the spirit of Jamie Oliver we looked at deer as food, what they look like inside and how we butcher a carcase. Most children are very open to this once you have got past a few understandable “ughs!” One wee lad came up to me later and confided gleefully “I just touched some lungs!” “Good on ya” I said.
However when you dress up 72 children as Environmental Health Inspectors and get them to examine carcases you can hardly expect to sell the same carcases afterwards. It’s a shame to throw away good food so we decided to be more creative. The Polar Bear, Mercedes at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kincraig is the only one in the UK and she is one of Scotland’s treasures. She also has a liking for venison. I had visions of a blog entry featuring a photo of Mercedes eating Glen Tanar venison under the headline “I know I have had a hard winter but this is ridiculous”. However when the meat arrived she left her huge open enclosure and retired behind bars to enjoy her meal. It didn’t make for a good photo at all but as you can see the Amur Tigers were much more obliging.”
Colin McClean, Wildlife Manager
The first big salmon of the 2010 season
The first big Salmon of the season was caught on Saturday 6th of March on one of Glen Tanar’s beats, Waterside & Ferrar.
The beautiful Salmon weighed 25lb and was caught by Crawford Mallean alongside Ghillie Davey Goodfellow.
We hope that this will be the start of a very good season.
At Glen Tanar we are keen to find new ways of showing people our wonderful wildlife. One idea we are exploring is setting up a photography hide for Golden Eagles which would come to feed on the carcases of poor quality Deer shot by our stalkers. Golden Eagle chicks grow much better when fed live prey rather than carrion, so carcases would only be supplied during the non breeding season.
During this winter our Wildlife Manager, Colin McClean has provided baits at a variety of sites, kept them free of snow and monitored what animals have been using them with a motion sensored camera. Early results are quite exciting although we need to learn more about how our Eagles use these sites before opening a public facility.
Below is a photo of a Golden Eagle eating a Deer carcase on Glen Tanar Estate.
For those of you who want to catch a glimpse of life here on Deeside we now have two videos on the site for you to enjoy. The first is our new Glen Tanar promotional video which shows scenes of the local mountains and landscape, wildlife and birds, local characters and hard-working estate staff, visitors to our holiday cottages and some of the weddings and events what we host here.
The Glen Tanar video is also available on Youtube so if anyone would like to embed it then you can do so from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryK5cPwy2o
The second video is about Salmon and Trout Fishing and is a section from Sky TV’s fishing programme Tight Lines featuring expert angler and TV presenter Fiona Armstrong, who visited Glen Tanar to fish on our stretch of the River Dee and on our trout loch. Fiona is a great fan of the Dee and really appreciated the quiet seclusion and wide open spaces of our beats.
Enjoy both videos and please let us know if you have any problems viewing them. They’re both quite large in order to maintain as much quality as possible so there may be a little buffering when downloading them, but we hope we’ve got the best balance between viewing and loading.
Today on Monday 1st of March 2010 we are very happy to say that the Salmon Fishing on Glen Tanar’s beats has officially started for the season.
Here at Glen Tanar we have 4 beats on the famous River Dee, these beats are Headinch & Cambus O’ May, Deecastle & Dinnet, Waterside & Ferrar & Craigendinnie.
Despite all of the heavy snow and ice that we have been experiencing this Winter and are still working around today, we have managed to get the Fishing started. We hope that the fishermen that we have out on the River this week will still manage to catch some fish despite being surrounded by snow.
Nature’s Calender with presenter Chris Packham will be re-shown on Wednesday 3rd of February at 11am on BBC2 and will then be available on BBC iplayer soon after.
Estate News, Wildlife | admin | 
December 21, 2010 1:17 am | 
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