Witches and Waxcaps

We braved the rain on Saturday afternoon for a guided walk organised by Plantlife looking at the various mushrooms and fungi on the Haddo House lawn. The short, un-fertilised grass of the lawns and gardens is a rare habitat anywhere in the country and is a hotspot for amazing multi-colored waxcaps and weird coral fungi.

Probably due to the warm weather the waxcaps are coming out late this year and the show, especially on the parterre garden, is getting better by the day. You  have to get pretty close to the ground to get photos so wear waterproof trousers or be prepared to get very wet knees and elbows...

Going Bump In The Night

As the nights are drawing in, things are getting a little bit spooky and it's time to brave the annual Halloween Tea Party. Dress up in your best Halloween costume and join Griselda the witch, along with some other ghouls and ghosts creeping around the house. Places are limited so book as soon as you can to avoid disappointment!

If you want to try something genuinely nerve-wracking, Be Free are organising a Fire Walk in the park on Sunday afternoon. The event starts at 3pm with the actual fire walking happening around 5pm. You can find out more about Be Free on their Facebook Page and you can find details of the event itself here.

Project Works Update

There's been another little flurry of activity on the project this week. The asphalt his going gone down in the entrance way and outside the Pheasantry (which has intermittently required unplugging the power to my cabin and therefore removed my access to the kettle. I've worked at home a bit this week). The coloured resin path is due to be laid middle of next week and then the entrance way will be pretty much finished. The big machinery is continuing to be a massive attraction for the younger visitors. I'm considering abandoning the whole adventure playground idea and just parking a yellow digger and a tipper truck next to the path. They'll find it just as much fun.

The lovely black iron gates into the National Trust garden are back in place as well, and the painting on the Golden Gates is coming along beautifully. There are more new benches appearing and new cycles racks (and a fantastic horse hitching rail which looks like it's come straight out of A Fistful Of Dollars) outside the stable block.

Spies, Signs and Secret Squirrels

On Tuesday I had a visit from Steve the local Scottish Wildlife Trust Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels Officer. Red Squirrel aren’t always that easy to see- I’ve had just two glimpses of them since I’ve been working here. However, there are signs of them all over the park and I had a very instructive walk learning how to ID squirrel-eaten hazel nuts and squirrel-stripped spruce cones.

We’re looking at running some surveys to see which parts of the park the squirrels are using and then potentially setting up a ‘Squirrel-Watch’ point with feeders and a viewing screen. If you’d like to help out, see some squirrels, and could spare a few minutes to check a survey box while you’re walking round the park then leave a comment or drop a quick email to haddovso@btconnect.com to get involved.

One thing you definitely notice as you walk round the park is the amount of fungi springing up everywhere. Several of the dead or dying trees out in the park are covered in bracket fungus, big pale mushrooms or pale yellow Honey Fungus, making them look like the oozing swamp from a fantasy adventure movie. The lawns in front of the house are another good spot, with rare Waxcaps and coral fungus in the grass. If you want to find out more, experts from Plantlife are running a Fungi walk around the gardens and grounds from 1-3.30pm this Saturday, more details at http://www.plantlife.org.uk/things_to_do/activities/aberdeenshire_guided_fungi_walk or contact scotland@Plantlife.org.uk.

Unsolved at Haddo

For something completely different, how do you feel about becoming a spy this Sunday? Haddo are holding a couple of events as part of the Unsolved Festival- mystery tours, talks with crime writers and storytelling workshops held in National Trust properties across Aberdeenshire.

Here at Haddo, we’re hosting Operation Espionage- an event run by proper ex-intelligence and military officers (I’m told you can tell, should you be able to tell with a spy..?). Starting with a map and a few clues, you follow the spy trail around the park, meeting contacts and avoiding surveillance from suspicious characters hiding in the woods…

Once you’ve had some practice at being a proper spy, you can help David our local ranger and become a wildlife detective with Live and Deadly. Grab your detective booklet, follow the trail and solve the clues to unravel the deadly crime scene and claim your prize!

For more information about the Unsolved Festival, and the events at Haddo see http://www.nts.org.uk/Unsolved/WhatsOn/Diary/ and follow the links for Sunday’s ‘Operation Espionage’ and Saturday and Sunday’s ‘Live and Deadly’ events.

Project Update

View from the portacabin window this week

The regeneration work is still creeping towards a finish. Benches are starting to appear, the weather has helped some of the grassed areas green up much more quickly that I had expected, and there’s turf going down in places where the seeding hasn't quite taken. The asphalting hasn't started (a bit delayed by half term and the wet weather) but there's a nice selection of kit parked outside the office window (and delighting quite a lot of 6 year old boys) just waiting for it to start...

Settling In...

Three weeks into the job and I've just about managed to walk round every section of the park at least once (I even managed to find Kemble's seat on Tuesday after walking past it about five times in the past fortnight). I'm sure there's still a few paths and hidden corners I've not discovered yet but at least I'm not likely to get lost any time soon.

One photo of a bird. Many, many photos of empty
water and ripples.

The far end of the lake is becoming one of my favourite bits of the park. The Bullfinch I mentioned in the last post are regular in the trees by the bridge. You don't always see them, but you can hear them making their slightly sad little calls as you walk past. There's also lots of very shouty Treecreepers running up the pine trunks in the Craigie Wood. On the water there's a couple of families of Little Grebe (or Dabchick if you're from down south...). They're fantastic and frustrating in equal measure, if you've got a spare half an hour try and see if you can get a camera on whatever random spot one reappears in after it's dived...

Friends of Haddo

While I've been pottering around looking at birds (and doing a bit of proper work in between), the Friends of Haddo have been doing some heavy lifting in the Discovery Garden just by the car park. On Thursday, along with some Community Service volunteers, they dug the footings for the wooden bridge that's going to go by the big pond. There's a bit of spoil out side the garden which will be moved soon, and just be careful of the holes if you're in the garden over the next week.

We're hoping to organise much more volunteering over the next year, including a regular Volunteers Day once a month to tackle some of the big jobs in the garden and park. 

One of the only two Fallow Deer
in North East Scotland.

If you're think you might be interested in volunteering, of joining the Friends of Haddo then come along to the Friends annual open evening in the tearoom on Thursday at 6.30pm. It includes a free talk from Glenn Roberts of NESBReC on recording local wildlife, and it's a great way to see what the plans are for the Friends area over the next year. 

If you can't make Thursday evening, then drop into the portacabin any time (when I'm there!) and you can pick up some information or just have a chat about helping us out.

Haddo Arts Festival

The Arts Festival has been going on all this week, and runs until Sunday evening. Most of it have been running in the evenings but there was a Tea Dance on Wednesday afternoon which meant there were lots of frilly dresses and smart shoes mingling with the dog-walkers' waterproofs and wellies in the car park. You can find this weekend's schedule of concerts (including a comedy night tonight with Fred Macaulay and Tweedy the Clown) by clicking on the link at the side of this blog.

Project Update

The major regeneration project in the park is creeping towards its end now, and some of the individual projects (the new Cascade Bridge, the Well) are just about finished.

The Scots Mile Bridge is looking very smart and is open again and at the top of the Scots Mile, the two Fallow Deer are back on their plinths.

Sneek Peak. Like the floor tiles!

The new toilets in the Pheasantry are essentially finished too, although we can't open them- until the path along the front of the building is safe to use- I'm told the asphalt for that and the new entrance path will go down some time next week. Most excitingly (for me, anyway) the new Visitor Centre and office are well on the way, the flooring went down early this week and the electrics have gone in as well.  I'm keeping my eyes peeled for the new interpretation boards which should be the final thing to go in before I can move me and my laptop and the kettle into our new home.