Friends of Nevis volunteer Ali Stewart has nominated one of the Future Forest's Scots pine in Glen Nevis for the Woodland Trust's annual Tree of the Year competition. The story behind the tree is great: the seed gathered from veteran Scots pine growing on the crags of the south side of the glen, then sown and raised by local groups and planted by school pupils from Fort William. Who knows what its life will see and hold. 
Please go to the site below to support our tree or search for Tree of the Year Scotland 2019.
https://campaigns.woodlandtrust.org.uk/page/48130/data/1?supporter.questions.285154=Tree%202

Friends of Nevis volunteer with our Tree of the Year nomination

For more details go to the Events page

• Curling Ponds work party Wednesday 2nd October
• Footpath Work Party Polldubh Sunday 13th October
• Friends of Nevis AGM & Guest speaker Friday evening, 1st November
• Autumn Litter Pick Sunday 17th November

Provisional dates for Drop in Bird Ringing at Glen Nevis Visitor Centre:
(Dates all subject to weather conditions)

• Sunday 20th October
• Sunday 24th November
• Saturday 15th December

Patrick and Lindsay Nevis at Dun Deardail hill fort

Patrick and Lindsay Nevis who live in California, have supported Friends of Nevis for a number of years. They were visiting the Lochaber area this week and it was a great opportunity to meet up with them to say thank you for their support and show them around some of the projects that Friends of Nevis volunteers have worked on including footpaths, Future Forests and Dun Deardail. Hopefully they can recruit some more international Friends of Nevis when they return to America!

Over the last couple of years BTO licenced bird ringer John Owen has been running bird ringing events at Glen Nevis Visitor Centre. He has done this together with a group of trainee ringers, include Friends of Nevis Volunteer Kirstie Ross, who gained her C licence earlier this year, well done Kirstie! Kirstie has provided a summary of this year's work:
"We've managed ringing in February, March, May, July and August.  Siskin and Chaffinch are the birds we ring the most.  
The Siskin we are catching in Glen Nevis are proving to be exciting travellers.  Two birds we caught that already had rings on them turned out to have travelled from Aberdeenshire and Callender.  A male Siskin we ringed, travelled 606km (377 miles) all the way down to Thetford Norfolk where another ringing group caught it.  We also caught a Coal Tit ringed in the Glen by another Bird ringer which is 3 years old.  This is quite old for a little bird. 
This year we've caught a few new species - Song Thrush, Common Gull, Pied Wagtail, Bullfinch and Willow Warbler. 
Our August event was maybe a bit too hot, too sunny and probably too much natural food about as we only caught 19 new birds and retrapped 5 previously ringed birds.  It was nice to see a Goldcrest and 2 Wrens as well as a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. 
Thank you to everyone who comes along and takes an interest.  It's great for us to hear your bird watching stories."

Watch this space for dates for more ringing events running this year together with volunteer work parties