St Andrews Links Blog

A new habitat on the Links

The past few weeks have seen the teams across the Links perform one or two marvellous environmental tasks including building new and innovative habitats from recycled materials.

The roof of our water holding tanks has long been a tipping ground for old pipes and surplus greenkeeping equipment so a plan was recently put into place to develop it to a valuable and interesting habitat.

Firstly, all the debris was removed and either used elsewhere or placed into the relevant recycling skips. The second task was to strim the area down to ground level and remove any arisings – this was a painstakingly long process but greenkeepers from the Old, New and Eden all lent a hand. Another team helped out with the grass collection too; Elmwood College students lent a hand and in return they got a guided tour round the Links! The final task was to incorporate wildflower seeds onto the bare areas in the hope of attracting bees and butterflies to the nectar which will be on offer during the warmer months.

There’s an invertebrate hotel there too now! Old pallets were stacked up and stuffed full of compost, wood, woodchip and grass so if any passing beetle decides it requires a rest then there’s plenty of rooms to rent at The Home of Golf!

There have been many wildlife sightings lately including roe deer at The Castle Course, field mice on the Jubilee and at last, snow buntings at Outhead! The bunting in the photo below is a female which had recently been tagged in another country! A little detective work resulted in us finding out that this beautiful passerine was tagged by a French bird enthusiast on 2/2/2015 in Calais, France. Therefore, this little bird has flown a distance of almost 1000km on its way back to Scandinavia, or beyond! We wish her luck and maybe she’ll be back to see us next year.

Our old friend the fox seems to be quite at home with many images coming in most nights from our infra-red camera. The rooks and crows seem to hoover up any scraps we leave out so we have started to bury them to attract as many stoats and foxes as possible. These animals are nature’s way of keeping the rabbit population down but it is imperative that we keep the ecological balance correct – too many foxes and stoats means no rabbits, and possibly a great reduction in birdlife too as both will take ground nesting bird’s eggs.

We’ll keep an eye out for any migratory birds which may be on their way but with four queen bees noted last week I’d suggest that the warmer weather isn’t far away.

Words by James Hutchinson, Environmental Officer