West Stormont Woodland Group

West Stormont
Woodland Group

Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) SC051682

Join us today to bring Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into community ownership

Community Monthly Update – October 2021

“Soggy Saturday in October” – this month’s wonderfully descriptive blog from Margaret Lear on the “olfactory hamper” that is Five Mile Wood at this time of year. Although it has to be said that we have had some amazingly warm and sunny weather this month too!

What has WSWG been doing this month?

Update from Margaret on the “unknown unknown” fungus in Five Mile Wood! “I got onto the British Mycological Society facebook group eventually and quickly got an answer. It is Paurocotylis pila, the Scarlet Berry Truffle. It is rare in UK and from what I can gather from google, recorded sightings in Europe pretty confined to UK.  4 recorded in Scotland, only 2 verified. I am to record this one as verified by BMS. It is actually a New Zealand species! How it got to 5 mile wood who knows….

  • As well as the smells of autumn, we’ve been hearing the sounds of autumn too. In Taymount Wood, rutting fallow bucks can be heard – a sort of deep, grunting belch! And we’ve seen some visual signs of the rut too – territorial scrapes in the ground and nearby small trees frayed by rubbing and sometimes even uprooted.
  • Ongoing meetings of the WSWG Shadow Board and its three Working Groups, mostly on-line but sometimes now in person (hurrah!), usefully progressing the Forest Management Plan, Business Plan and computation of the range of community benefit the WSWG project will deliver.
  • Participation in an on-line Climate Café as part of Dunkeld and Birnam Unplugged Week, showcasing local projects people can get involved in.
  • Attendance at an update meeting of the Perthshire Nature Connections Partnership within which we very much hope to develop useful links for both WSWG and West Stormont Connect going forward.
  • Participation in an on-line Workshop on community engagement as part of the Community Woodlands Association Annual Conference. Four CWA member groups were invited to reflect on their experience in a range of contexts. WSWG’s topic was Events and Guided Walks; other contributors covered consultation on plans, involving children and young people, and using social media to reach out to the community. For our presentation, it was particularly enjoyable remembering the range of lovely community events we had in 2019 in our “Feeling Good in the Woods” programme. Here’s to more of that in the future.
Mossy clumps and deer-browsed birch tree in Taymount Wood

Word of the Month

Deer rutting season: That is the time of year when deer mate. In the case of fallow deer, the rut runs from late September to early November. This allows females to gestate over winter and give birth in the spring. Both fallow and roe fawns are born in late May and June but as roe deer have a longer gestation period, their rutting season is in July and August. Particularly at the start of the rutting season, fallow bucks spend a lot of time and energy making and maintaining conspicuous ground scrapes. Most scrapes are about 1m wide and appear to be scattered randomly within the herd’s territory, but some show clear linear distribution alongside deer paths and field boundaries. Larger scrapes are usually associated with rutting stands – group display areas in populations with a high density of bucks.

A fallow deer scrape in Taymount Wood

What’s coming up next?

  • Progress Meeting with Forestry and Land Scotland and the Scottish Land Fund on 28 October.
  • Planning for WSWG winter events programme.
  • Ongoing work by the Shadow Board members to pull together the WSWG Business Plan and CATS Application.
And finally, a red admiral butterfly was sunning itself on the forest floor on a warm October day in Taymount Wood. It closed its wings and stayed stock still when approached, showing only its camouflaged underwings.
Red admiral butterflies top left and bottom right, with peacock butterflies (summer time on white buddleia).

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Previous Articles

Community Monthly Update – October 2024

Let’s start with a big thank you to PKC for the great job they have done resurfacing the U38 road from Five Mile Wood car park to Stanley past Active Kids. All done within the scheduled closure period and neatly tied in with a recessed tarmac apron at the car park. So much safer and more comfortable for everybody now the potholes and rough edges are no more.

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Community Monthly Update – September 2024

Latest on Stanley Wildwood (Rookery Wood). You may remember that we dedicated our July Monthly Update to making the case for community ownership of Stanley Wildwood, with subsequent mailouts and Facebook posts to encourage our members and supporters to vote in PKC’s recent public consultation for a community-based future for this small but important woodland in Stanley village. We are therefore delighted to tell you that the Council has reported that 65.6% of respondents in the Stanley postcode area were in favour of a community outcome for the woodland. Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the consultation. WSWG and Tayside Woodland Partnerships are now in discussion with PKC to explore further the option of bringing the woodland into community ownership and management. We will keep you posted including ways individuals and the wider community can get involved going forward.

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Community Monthly Update – July 2024

Something quite different has cropped up for WSWG and Stanley village recently, so we have decided to make it the sole topic of our update this month and a simple appeal to you at the same time. PKC who currently own the 0.56 acre Stanley Wildwood (the Rookery wood) have decided it is surplus to their needs. They have launched an on-line consultation to find out whether the local community thinks it should be sold to a private neighbouring resident as an extension to their garden ground or sold or leased to a willing community organisation. The area owned by PKC is shown in yellow. It has had a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) since 1987. We believe the best interests of the Wildwood and rookery will be served through community not private ownership. Please support our goal by voting for Option 2 in the PKC consultation, using the link shown.

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Community Monthly Update – June 2024

Our main focus this month has been collaboration with all sorts of people and organisations in our ongoing programme of events in Taymount Wood and outreach activity for the WSWG Project. Each and every event has been a source of real joy at seeing so many people benefitting in so many ways from spending and sharing time in our lovely woodlands on a diverse range of activities. Whilst we cannot claim to have beaten the record set in 2019 for our oldest participant at a WSWG event (she was an amazing 96 years old!), at only 5 weeks old a little treasure beat the record of our youngest attendee to date by a whole 11 weeks! How cool is that? Read on to find out more about these wonderful, moving and uplifting events.

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Community Monthly Update – May 2024

We are really delighted this month to start with the announcement that the winner of the WSWG April Photography Competition in the Children’s category is Dougie from Highland Perthshire. His stunning and clever photograph was taken at the head of Loch Rannoch, looking west, on Saturday 20 April. Such a beautiful, calm scene in our precious Perthshire countryside, but just look at the perfect capture of the beautiful splash effect at its heart. A truly super photo.

Congratulations, Dougie. Thank you very much for taking part in this competition and your well-deserved prize will be making its way to you very soon.

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Community Monthly Update – April 2024

On Sunday 14 April, a lovely bunch of people turned out for a WSWG Guided Climate and Biodiversity Walk in Taymount Wood to celebrate the start of the new Perth & Kinross Climate Action Hub (PKCAH) for which funding has been secured from the Scottish Government.

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