The upper limit of salmon migration on the Lugar catchment

We annually visit Glenmuir Water (aka the Shaw Burn) to download temperature data from our logger high on the Lugar side of the Ayr catchment.

The ruin of High Dalblair

It is a long trek out there even in a 4×4 but it is a lovely but barren place to visit. Salmon numbers have crashed on this burn with increasing  frequency in recent years and yesterday we found worryingly low numbers of juveniles in a site that just 10 years ago was thick with these fish. We are considering the causes of these results but are fairly certain it is linked to low numbers of returning salmon from their marine migrations.

Here is a video clip that we shot yesterday. The entire burn from Kyle to Glenmuir Waterfall (aka The Devil’s Back Door) was filmed and edited into a short 7 minute video. It is a barren but beautiful landscape within the Muirkirk and North Lowther SPA (Special Protection Area) due to its outstanding interest for the variety of upland habitats and breeding birds (but not native riparian trees!).

If you have never been to the Devil’s Back Door, then watch this film and enjoy perhaps the first video and drone footage ever recorded of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JeezpCHT6A