Water Voles Released (x144)

On thursday and friday of this week, we finally received our consignment of captive bred water voles destined for the Darley and Slaphouse Burns. A total of 144 water voles were delivered to ART by Jay Humphries who transported them from Derek Gow’s  breeding...

Burrowing animals

Of course water voles live in burrows and in order for them to get a good start in their new habitat, Alex (an MSc student from Glasgow University) and I went out today armed with soil augers to make a few short runs for them to take refuge in. During the course of...

Water Voles in Transit (or more likely a Hilux)

Derek Gow, our water vole breeder has sent our young voles on their journey back to their native homelands. The 450 mile trip from Devon to Ayrshire is the start of a new life and opportunity for these captive bred animals that originated from Ayrshire and Lanarkshire...

Spate Conditions

All the Ayrshire Rivers are now dropping back after the almost predictable Glasgow Fair rain. I expect that the grilse should arrive in numbers now and there will be plenty of anglers on the water from now on. I dropped off at the Girvan Dykes on my way to the...

River Ayr Trout

I was given a couple of trout from the River Ayr to compare yesterday. Both came from the same stretch near Failford and were almost identical size at about 13″. The captor complained that one of the trout fought like a ‘Goldfish’ while the other...

Girvan salmon fry electrofishing survey

With the assistance of  Tommy Thomson, the River Superintendent, we surveyed eight sites on the Water of Girvan today, starting at Tairlaw Bridge, close to the upper limit of natural salmon access. We found good numbers of salmon fry here and they were significantly...

Girvan Weirs lower fish pass open

The nice spell of dry weather provided excellent conditions for the work on the lower Girvan Dykes weir. The concrete works is now finished and the weir was opened today. The river was -1″ on the gauge today, about as low as it normally gets,  but there was...