Christmas in the Cairngorms: visiting reindeer and Glencharnoch Wood

Grab your hot chocolate (or mulled wine!) and get into the festive spirit with our Christmas special as we meet some reindeer, talk Christmas trees and explore a small but mighty wood with huge value for nature in the snowy Cairngorms National Park. We discover fascinating reindeer facts with Tilly and friends at The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, and step into a winter wonderland at nearby Glencharnoch Wood with site manager Ross. We learn what makes a good Christmas tree, how the wood is helping to recover the old Caledonian pine forest of Scotland, why the site is so important to the community and which wildlife thrive here. You can also find out which tree can effectively clone itself, and is so tasty to insects that it developed the ability to shake them off!

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Transcript

You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. 

Adam: Well, today I'm in the Cairngorms in Scotland. In Scottish Gaelic, the area is called – I’m going to give this a go - Am Monadh Ruadh. Apologies for my pronunciation there, but we are in the midst of a mountain range in the Highlands, of Scotland obviously. Generally we're about 1,000 metres high here but the higher peaks I’m told get to about 1,300 metres odd, which is going on for, I don't know, 4,500 foot or so. So this is a very dramatic landscape. We have rocky outcrops, boulders, steep cliffs. It's home to bird species such as the dotterel, snow bunting, the curlew and red grouse, as well as mammals such as mountain hare. But the reason of course we are here this Christmas is because it is also home to Britain's only herd, I think, of reindeer. Now, the reindeer herder is Tilly. She is the expert here and I've been braving, I am braving the snow and icy winds to be introduced to her and the herd. And from there after that, we're going to take a drive to what I'm told is an amazing wooded landscape of Caledonian pine to talk all things pine, and of course, all things Christmas trees. But first of all, let's meet Tilly, who looks after the reindeer. 

Adam: OK, we are recording. 

Tilly: That's good. OK. I'd better not say anything naughty then. 

Adam: I'll cut out any naughtiness, that’s fine. 

Tilly: This is a bit of a rustly bag. It's more rustly than normal but never mind. 

Adam: What do the reindeer actually eat? 

Tilly: Well, so. We're now up in their natural habitat and we're looking across a nice heathery hillside with sedges as well. You can just see them poking through the snow and they'll pick away at the old heather of the year and the sedges. 

Adam: Right. 

Tilly: But we manage the herd and we like to feed them. So what I've got in my bag is some food for them, which they love. 

Adam: Right. And what's in your Santa sack of food now?  

Tilly: Oh, that's a secret.  

Adam: Oh, you can't tell me. Oh, God. 

Tilly: No, no. I can tell you. So it's a cereal mix and there is something similar to what you would feed sheep. Bit of barley, bit of sheep mix. 

Adam: That's awesome. So not mince pies and carrots? That's only reserved for Christmas Eve. That's probably not very good for them, I would have thought. 

Tilly: Yeah, no, I hate to say this, but reindeer don't actually eat carrots. 

Adam: Oh right okay, well, that's good to know. 

Tilly: But if ever children bring carrots for them, I never turn them away because we're very good at making carrot soup and carrot cake. 

Adam: Santa’s helpers get the carrots. 

Tilly: And I'm absolutely certain that Santa eats all the mince pies, so all good. So anyway, come on through here. We're going now into a 1000-acre enclosure. It just hooks on there, that's perfect, it goes right across. We could actually once we get close to these visitors are coming off from a hill visit this morning. So you’ll be pleased to hear that I am the boss. I'm Mrs. boss man and I've been with the reindeer for 43 years. Now, their lifespan is sort of 12 to 15 years, so I've gone through many generations. I've known many lovely reindeer and there's always a favourite and you would have seen some real characters there today. And you couldn't see them in better conditions. Anyway, do get yourself down and warm yourselves up. Oh, you've done very well to bring a little one like that today. 

Walker: He did pretty well until now! 

Tilly: You've done extremely well. Of course they have. He's got very red, a bit like Rudolph. The thing is there's just that wind, and it's the wind that drops the temperature, that chill factor. 

Adam: Yeah. So where are we going, Tilly? 

Tilly: So we're heading out towards what we call Silver Mount. They're not in here all year. Different times of year, sometimes they're all free range, some of them are free ranging, some are in here. 

Adam: When you speak about free range, literally they can go anywhere? 

Tilly: Yes they can. 

Adam: And they come back because they know where the food is? 

Tilly: Yes they do. They know where the food is, they sort of know where the home is, but they do wander out onto the high ground as well, more in the summertime.  

Adam: Right. And is that, I mean Scotland has different rules. There's a right to roam sort of rule here. Does that apply to reindeer? Is that the issue? 

Tilly: That is a moot point. 

Adam: Oh, really? We've hardly started and I've got into trouble.  

Tilly: No. Well, we lease 6000 acres, right? So we lease everything out to the skyline. 

Adam: So that's an extraordinary range for them. 

Tilly: It is an extraordinary range, but they know no bounds. I have to say reindeer sometimes do just pop over the boundary. 

Adam: And that causes problems with the neighbours? 

Tilly: Well, some like it, some aren't so keen. And we herd them as well, so we can herd them home. And we herd them by calling them. 

Adam: I was going to say, do you have a skidoo, or? 

Tilly: No, no. Absolutely no vehicular access on the hill. It's all by Shanks’s pony, everywhere. 

Adam: Really. So you walk, and then you just ring a bell to herd them, or what do you do? 

Tilly: And you ‘loooooow, come on now!’ and they come to us. 

Adam: Right. And so what was the call again? 

Tilly: ‘Looow, come on now!’ 

Adam: Come on now, is that it? OK, very good. OK, I now move. 

Tilly: Yes. But hopefully they won't all come rushing from over there. 

Adam: I was going to say, yes, we've now called out the reindeer. 

Tilly: We've just joined a cow and calf here, who have just come down to the gate, and you can see just for yourself, they're completely benign. They’re so docile and quiet. There's no sort of kicking or pushing or anything. They're very, very gentle creatures. 

Adam: And is that because they've been acclimatised because tourists come, or would that be their natural behaviour? 

Tilly: It is their natural behaviour, bearing in mind that reindeer have been domesticated for thousands of years. We're not looking at a wild animal here that's got tame. We're looking at a domesticated animal. 

Adam: Right. 

Tilly: It’s probably more used to people than some of the reindeer up in the Arctic. So we have domestication embedded in their genetics. 

Adam: So what we're saying is, genetically, they're actually more docile. It's not because this particular reindeer is used to us. But originally then, if one goes back far enough, they were wilder? 

Tilly: Yes so, it's a really interesting process of domestication of reindeer, which happened in the Old World, so Russia, Scandinavia, inner Mongolia, outer Mongolia. And that is reindeer and many, many reindeer in these Arctic areas, are domesticated. They're not wild. 

Adam: And that started happening, do we have an idea when? 

Tilly: Probably about 10,000 years ago. But if you go to the New World, to Alaska and North Canada, exactly the same animal is called a caribou. Caribou are never domesticated. The indigenous people of these areas never embraced the herding and enclosing of reindeer, which was caribou, whereas in the Old World it became very, very important to the men, the people's survival. 

Adam: And then the caribou, do they have a different character?  

Tilly: Yes, they're wilder. And it’s a little bit difficult to show today – you see quite strong colour variation in reindeer, which you don't see in caribou, and colour variation is man's influence on selecting for colour. So you'd get very light coloured ones, you'd get white ones in reindeer, you'd get very dark ones, but in caribou they're all the same, brownie-grey colour. Yeah, they felt that the white reindeer were important in the herd for whatever reasons, Germanic reasons or whatever. Interestingly, the Sámi - and I'm not sure if there could be a white one up in the herd here at the moment - describe them as lazy reindeer, the white ones. 

Adam: Why? 

Tilly: Well, I didn't know why until I worked out why white reindeer are often deaf. So they sleep, they don't get up when everybody else gets up and moves, and this white reindeer doesn't realise that the herd has left them. So they're not all deaf, but certain white ones are. 

Adam: Very important ques