Boosting Birds at Gailes Marsh

Gailes Marsh Wildlife Reserve is a rare pocket of wetland and mixed woodland in the fairly open, generally dry habitats along the Irvine coast.  It supports good numbers of birds but there is the potential for more including several of conservation concern.

Through this project, Scottish Wildlife Trust staff and volunteers installed a new sand martin bank, providing up to 48 nesting holes for these threatened birds. A check of the bank in late 2020 found that 20 of the holes had nesting material which was an excellent result for the first year, and a visit in April 2022 recorded 47 out of the 48 nesting chambers seeing some sand martin action!

A shoveller was reported, which could be attributed to the bird scrapes created through this project earlier the same year.

Gailes Marsh has a hardworking team of horses which manage the land through grazing. While they do an excellent job, there are some sections which are better served growing out more. To that end, we have installed 750m of new fencing, making sure that certain sections of the reserve are in better condition for insects to thrive.

Similarly, we have also created piles of brambles and logs which will scrub over, providing nice, shady habitats for birds, insects and more.

Gailes Marsh is at the heart of a programme to re-introduce the Small Blue Butterfly to Ayrshire so this site is also part of Garnock’s Buzzing.