I’m poking sticks into the gaps in an old stone wall. At first you may think that I have finally reverted to childhood and that my next activity will be drawing cowboys and Indians, after all that’s not the sort of activity pensioners normally indulge in. There is, however, a purpose behind what I am doing. I am building an insect hotel.

As I write this I realise that constructing hotel for insects probably confirms your impression that I have the mind of a four year old but actually it reflects and new direction in my life wandering the glens and hills of my Scottish Highland home. I have decided to take an interest in wildlife. Insect hotels are designed to encourage all manage of creatures to make their homes in the area so I’m extending hospitality to bugs.
Come to think of it I’ve spent more than a few nights in Aberdeen hotels that might struggle to engage with an insect clientele. I once spent a night in the Premier Inn in Aberdeen, so cold was it that I passed the evening fully dressed, in bed and shivering. Your average Woodlouse would have phoned reception to demand a hot water bottle.
My insect hotel might struggle to get two stars but my aim is to slowly extend it and make it ever more luxurious. I am trying to create an environment full of nooks and crannies where the ugly bugs of this world will feel at home.

For years I’ve rampaged through the glens and hills of the Highlands always meaning to learn more about the wildlife I encountered but never getting around to doing anything about it. I never quite know the name of the birds I hear singing and can only put names to a handful of the plants I encounter.
This year, I decide, I’m going to change all that. As a naturalist I am not yet worthy of scraping the moss from David Attenborough’s boots but, like a Dung Beetle building a mountain, I decide I have to start somewhere. Where I am starting is one of the best places in Scotland to begin a quest for knowledge in natural history. I am on the Ardtornish estate in Morvern, on the west coast of the Highlands. Not very far from where the land runs out and you can climb aboard a ferry and journey to the wonderful island of mull. For many years the Ardtornish estate has striven to work in sympathy with the wild land it occupies, and its owners have followed John Muir’s philosophy of giving nature the respect it deserves. Muir, born in Scotland, was the patron saint of the environmental movement and, after moving to the USA, was highly instrumental in the establishment of Yosemite and other American national parks.

I’m just pushing the last of my twigs into the wall when an indignant local resident pops his head up. Like a rotund gentleman landowner who has who has just spotted an intruder on his land a toad appears.
“What on earth do you think you are doing, shoving sticks into my wall. Be off with you!” he seems to say.
“Well I’m just trying encourage insects,” I stammer.
The toad puffs himself up, “Insects! Are you mad? This is my wall.” At this point he notices that one of the sticks has attracted a small foraging party of ants. “Oh, ants,” he says, and licks his lips in anticipation. “Why didn’t you say?”
At this point the toad’s sticky white tongue pops out and he begins to scoop up the ants, forgetting all about me and my sticks. Perhaps my hotel has attracted its first guests.
Bashing for Butterflies
You would think that conserving butterflies would be a gentle affair when I met up with Michelle Henley from the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) it turned out that there’s quite a lot of violence involved, at least if you happen to be bracken that is. I went to help her on the Rahoy Hills nature reserve, an area of woodland jointly managed by SWT and the Ardtornish estate. We were working to help numbers of butterflies thrive in the woodland that was fenced off from deer a few years ago to allow the forest to regenerate.

Deer may well be nice to look at and always bring back childhood memories of the Disney film Bambi but right across the Highlands their huge numbers prevent the natural forest from regenerating. The open hills you find in Scotland today are far from natural and, if not for the huge numbers of deer grazing down young trees our hills would be shrouded in forest and support a far greater range of wildlife than they do now.
In the Rahoy Hills reserve an area of woodland has been fenced off by the SWT to prevent deer from nibbling down the new growth. The problem is that without deer the violets, that the butterflies feed on, are quickly submerged in newly grown bracken. My job was to batter down some of the bracken to give the violets, therefor the butterflies, a chance by becoming artificial sheep and battering down the bracken into submission.
Michelle pointed out the butterflies to me, as we hacked at the bracken, raising the number of butterflies I can now identify to a staggering one. The butterfly in question is the Pearl Bordered Fritillary a once common species that is now endangered.

During our few hours subduing bracken we also donated a fair amount of blood to the hordes of midges and ticks that also populate the woodland and demand their levy of any passing humans. I suppose everyone has to make living somehow.
I count it as quite a good coupe of days, it’s not everyday you get to meet a toad and learn the name of a butterfly. I’ll be going back to Morvern on a regular basis over coming year and I hope to build on my relationship with the area’s wildlife and I’ll keep you informed as to how I get on along the way.
Do come along for the ride.