Surveying for bugs at Fallin Bing!

If you have taken a walk on Fallin Bing in the last few months you may have seen someone armed with a net running around chasing after insects.  Well that person was me!  I am Niall Currie a TCV Natural Talent Apprentice with Buglife.  I have been carrying out invertebrate surveys on brownfield sites around Stirling and Alloa including Fallin Bing.  When I first saw the Bing last winter it was hard to believe that it would become the colourful, flower rich place that photos of the previous summer suggested.  Although spring remained cold for longer than expected, the transition from a bare and dead landscape to one flourishing with wildflowers and buzzing with insects has certainly taken place. 

Niall surveying the bing for invertebrates

Insects are very useful creatures to survey because as well as being fascinating in their own right they are very sensitive to environmental conditions and can tell you a lot about a place.  The information I collect from these surveys will be used to decide how the site should be managed in the future. 

A Common carder bee feeding on a Red clover at Fallin Bing

Fallin Bing is a great haven for wildlife, especially invertebrates because it has a mixture of different types of vegetation as well as some nice bare patches, which help cold-blooded invertebrates warm up.  The south side of the slope is especially good for this.  There is also a diversity of wildflowers at the Bing which provide many bugs with food and homes or places to hunt.  Invertebrates have so many different ways of life so to survey a good range I have had to employ lots of different methods to find them.  This has included crawling around searching for them by hand to sweeping the vegetation with a thick net and using a thin meshed net to catch flying insects.

Read more next week about some of the interesting bugs I have found!