Fungi, Boats and Pumpkins

Mark is in Aberdeen, where hair from a grey squirrel has been in found in feeder boxes. That might not sound very unusual, but the city was close to eradicating the non-native species which spread disease, killing the native red squirrels. James Kennedy from Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels shows Mark the area the greys are thought to be.

Anne McAlpine is in the village of Tomatin in the Highlands to find out about a development which is aiming to tackle issues around rural housing. She hears how local groups have worked together with the Scottish government to make the project happen.

In this week’s Scotland Outdoors podcast, Mark visits Stobs Military Camp near Hawick to discover its history from a training camp in the early 1900s to a resettlement camp after the second world war. Andrew Jepson of Archaeology Scotland is his guide, and we hear an excerpt of Andrew showing him around.

Hopetoun House near South Queensferry is closed to visitors at the moment. However, there is one annual event which always goes ahead in autumn - a fungi walk. Mark meets ranger Emma Parker, who shows him the rather spectacular array of waxcaps on the lawn and tells him more about what makes Hopetoun such a great place for them to grow.

At this time of year, boat owners are busying themselves to ready their boats for winter, making sure everything is ship-shape for potential bad weather ahead. Anne McAlpine is at Dunstaffnage marina near Oban and hears about the different jobs that owners and the marina carry out.

It’s the season for pumpkin patches, and they seem to have grown massively in popularity over the last few years. Laura Guthrie visits Ethiebeaton farm in South Angus, where the McDonald family enjoy opening up their field to the public once a year to show them how pumpkins grow.

Anne is on a photoshoot in Glenshee with a portrait photographer using Scotland’s landscape as her backdrop.

And Bright Green Nature is the name given to an initiative in Selkirk where the local community is encouraged to protect their green spaces. Mark meets up with biodiversity officer Lisa McLeish and some volunteers.