Natural Narratives Recap 2025-2026
Thank you to everyone who attended our Natural Narratives events this winter, we enjoyed seeing so many new and returning faces!
For those new to Natural Narratives, we run these events annually to help bring together Strathearn communities during the long, dark winter months and promote discussions around environmental issues and topics. Events run on the last Friday of the month from September to March (excluding December).
We started Natural Narratives back in September 2024 and have covered a great deal of topics in that time. Events from the 2024-2025 programme included everything from screenings of ‘Why Not Scotland,’ ‘The Bough Breaks,’ and ‘Serengeti Rules,’ to community discussions and talks on biodiversity, co-existence with beavers, and regenerative agriculture.
We decided to continue the programme again this past winter (2025-2026) with several new topics, events, and discussions we thought would be engaging and informative for everyone. Read below to find out more about what we did, how it went, and what unexpected or positive outcomes stemmed from our events this past year!
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Session #1: Supporting Local Heritage, Climate Change, and Red Squirrels
We started off the year by inviting Peter Harrison from Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels to talk about the squirrel monitoring efforts currently happening in Strathearn. St Fillans and our other local communities are part of Tayside, Angus & the Mearns, a critical area identified by Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels for preventing the spread of grey squirrels northwards into the Highlands. For those unfamiliar with the ongoing clash between these animals, grey squirrels (an invasive species) out-compete reds in the ecosystem and can also carry squirrelpox, a deadly virus that harms red squirrels wherever it spreads. It is crucial to prevent squirrelpox from reaching the remaining red squirrel strongholds in Scotland.
Inspired by this event, several members of the community have now signed up to become red squirrel volunteers with Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels! Peter Harrison held the induction this April and gave a great demonstration on how volunteers can monitor squirrels in Comrie using strategically placed squirrel feeders. A sticky label is attached to each feeder, which collects the hairs of hungry squirrels every time they come for a snack. These hairs are then collected, identified, and submitted as data to the wider monitoring scheme.
If you would be interested in helping out with the effort to protect red squirrels, you can report your squirrel sightings or sign up with the charity to become a volunteer. If you wish to help with the Comrie effort specifically, reach out to us and we can get you in touch with the local monitoring group!
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Session #2: Balancing the Scales Screening
For our second event we were delighted to return to a topic from last year’s programme about the ecological importance of beavers and the impacts of their reintroduction. We hosted a screening of “Balancing the Scales,” a powerful and thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between beavers and salmon created by the Beaver Trust. Concerns have risen in recent years about how conservation efforts for both species in the UK, and particularly in Scotland, may conflict with the needs of each other. The film concludes after careful monitoring, scientific study, and collected testimonies that both species can co-exist and even benefit from efforts to conserve the other.
For a Halloween twist, we decorated with specially carved pumpkins and held a quick quiz at the end to check whether everyone was watching, or whether we had some zombies in the room with us (luckily, no zombies were found)!
After the film we had an insightful panel discussion with Elliot McCandless from the Beaver Trust, Derek Robertson, Colin Smith from Comrie Angling Club, and Emma Martin from WWF. It was great seeing people from so many different backgrounds speak on their perspectives!
If you would like to see beavers in the wild for yourself, want to know more about how to spot their tracks and signs, or are curious about their history and ecology, check out our summertime River Watch tours! These tours run from May to October, and give you a good chance of seeing beaver, otter, bats, deer, owls, kingfisher, dippers, or goosanders along the river. If you have an evening free and wish to unwind and de-stress with the warmer weather, book your place here.
We are also continuing to monitor the local population of beavers along the River Earn, and have recently put out trail cameras to try and capture some footage! Hopefully we will have some videos to share with you all soon.
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Session #3: Hogscroft Hedgehog Rescue Talk and Fundraiser
In November, we invited Alison Middleton, the founder of Hogscroft Hedgehog Rescue, to give a fascinating and heartwarming presentation on her experiences taking care of ill or injured hedgehogs and their eventual release back into the wild. Alison also gave some practical advice on what to do if you ever find an injured hog or hoglet. If you do ever come across a hedgehog that needs rehabilitation, you can contact Alison or one of her volunteers here.
Before the talk, we also held a fundraising event for Hogscroft Hedgehog Rescue complete with a hedgehog-themed fun fair, baking competition, and raffle! Many tried their hand at our hedgehog games, including a spinning prize wheel and such creative titles as ‘Hoop-a-Hog,’ ‘Pick-a-Spine,’ and ‘Pin the Nose on the Hog,’ which we had a lot of fun brainstorming beforehand! The winner of our baking competition was Daisy Murray, who made an excellent (and exceedingly delicious) hedgehog with chocolate button spines. Several other lucky winners of our hedgehog raffle took home prizes including work from local artists and makers as well as some lucky finds or donations from friends and staff.
Earlier this year, we were delighted to take a group of conservation and animal management students from Merrist Wood College to visit Alison and the hogs from Hogscroft Hedgehog Rescue again as part of an adventurous week discovering local wildlife, tracks and signs, and conservation organisations. Perhaps there will be some new up-and-coming hedgehog rehabilitators in the near future!
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Session #4: Flow Screening
After a brief break over the winter holidays, we returned to Natural Narratives and welcomed in the new year with a delightful family-friendly experience! We held a screening for “Flow,” a critically acclaimed film from the perspective of a cat and a group of animals surviving a world overwhelmed by global floodwaters and rising sea levels. The film is entirely dialogue-free and relies on its gorgeous visuals and animation to convey its environmental themes. We all enjoyed a cozy escape from the fittingly rainy night in St Fillans, complete with popcorn and drinks!
After the film, we held discussions over multiple tables on how flooding has impacted our own communities, and what we can all do (or what local authorities could do) to prevent future disasters. The results from these discussions are now being used for the Community Resilience Action Plan in St Fillans, which is currently in development. Keep an eye out, your suggestions might be translated into real community impacts!
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Session #5: Power Station Screening
In February we held a screening for “Power Station,” an inspirational film about a people-powered and community-led energy revolution! The film is directed by two artists in the UK who embarked on a journey to get solar panels installed for their entire street. From idea to reality, their movement asks each of us what we can do alongside our communities to tackle the climate crisis. Hopefully, the film sparked some interesting discussions about how we can all generate our own community energy schemes.
We decided to show the film at the Comrie Community Cinema rather than our usual location in St Fillans. If you enjoyed the change in venue, keep an eye out for our future events. This may be the first of our many collaborations with the community cinema!
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Session #6: Guest Speaker Polly Pullar
Our final event of this winter featured Polly Pullar, an extremely well-spoken (and well-written) advocate for all things wildlife! Polly is an acclaimed nature author, naturalist, photographer, and wildlife rehabilitator based in Aberfeldy, Perthshire. You might know her work from “The Horizontal Oak,” “A Scurry of Squirrels,” or “A Richness of Martens.” We were thrilled to invite her to speak to our community about her experiences and stories as a wildlife rehabilitator, including her close encounters with everything from red squirrels to roe deer. We were all treated with pictures of baby red squirrels and hedgehogs, and a whole menagerie of other wildlife from her past encounters. After the presentation, Polly was kind enough to hold a Q&A session, where many people asked for her perspectives on issues in conservation and the current state of wildlife in the UK. Polly ended the night with a message of hope, and with a sale of her books (which many people took home with them).
For those curious as to what Polly is up to now, she has recently rescued a baby red squirrel and is hand rearing it for release!
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Thank you again to everyone who joined us, we enjoyed introducing you all to some more amazing people, complex concepts, and discussions surrounding wildlife and nature. If you liked this winter’s programme, we would love to see you again for our next season of Natural Narratives (2026-2027) where we will continue hosting speakers, screenings, and other events for you to enjoy!
If you haven’t already seen it, please remember to fill out our feedback form. We want to continue making our events as engaging and accessible as possible for everyone and are interested in hearing any topics you wish to see covered next year.
If you are interested in speaking at one of our events, please contact us at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you!
See you in September for the next Natural Narratives!
~ The Aquila Team