The Scottish Government’s advisor on nature is going to tweet interesting facts about the country’s wildlife and land.
Scottish Natural Heritage has amassed “fun facts” to share through Twitter and Facebook.
And some of the “natural know-how” to go out and about in the Borders will include information about the father of geology, Berwickshire’s James Hutton, whose findings at Siccar Point on the Berwickshire coast and at Inchbonny near Jedburgh, more than 200 years ago, helped him prove the earth was much older than was thought at the time.
Another will be: “Nuthatches only bred for the first time in Scotland in 1989, at Floors Castle and the Hirsel in the Borders. They have now spread across southern Scotland to Edinburgh, Perth and beyond, and there may be several thousand pairs. A result of global warming? Nobody knows.”
The officials will reveal the Scottish-English border “coincides with the junction between two of the Earth’s old tectonic plates. These were once separated by the Iapetus Ocean, which was the size of the Atlantic”.
And, says SNH, the best-surveyed site in the world for its soil biodiversity is the upland grassland at Sourhope, once a research farm, near Yetholm, Kelso.
SNH’s head of science, Ian Bainbridge, said: “Our experts on birds, mammals, insects, marine life, geology and more have contributed. These fun facts really show off how wonderful and unique Scotland’s nature is.”