Celestial happenings but with a pain in the butt!

With deadlines for the last couple of diaries being before Christmas and on New Years Eve, the last few days of the year were missed. For once in a while the family all stayed put for Christmas Day, with a gathering with Ruth and the boys on Boxing Day. All the time myself and Janet were having to sit on the news of the New Years honour! With a few casual suggestions of “would you like to come over for Hogmanay?” floated during December we had managed to get all the family to be at Firwood for the big announcement at midnight on the 31st! What we had completely misread was that with no newspapers printed on New Years Day the papers carry the honours list in their 31st December editions, and after the phone had been ringing on the 30th for interviews for local papers and Moray Firth Radio, I had to ring round the family later that day to break the news. And, sure enough, all the papers carried their stories the next day (http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2577847. ) and, somewhat eerily my name appeared in most of the major dailies as well. Now that’s something that doesn’t happen everyday. So, in preparation for the family gathering late in the afternoon of the 31st, I went for a quiet walk down on Tulloch Moor, mainly for the fresh air but always with an eye on what there might be to see. My last decent bird record for 2011 was a black grouse male out in the birches, and, with the weather being quite mild for late December, a couple of wood ants were actually out on the top of their nest, very odd. One birch tree at the end of the track was covered in the less than spectacular lichen Cetrina sepincola, but on the same twigs was another lichen which I thought I had seen on the British Lichen’s website, Melanelia septentrionalis (no, I can’t pronounce the names either! but see left). The books said that this lichen was a bit of a Cairngorms speciality, so I thought it worth checking out. Sure enough, it looked like the website photo but just to be sure I thought I would put the picture on iSpot (http://www.ispot.org.uk/node/242502 ), though the site now shows a few photos as I added to the original ID request to help the expert dealing with my request. The photos covered the two species mentioned above. The experts suggestion was that all the lichens were C. sepincola but I wasn’t so sure and a later second opinion confirmed my thoughts and indeed the lichen was the “rarer” species. I arrived back at Firwood just as the gang had gathered and, with a few bottles of bubbly keeping cool outside the backdoor, we were set for a good evening as we saw in the New Year.

New Years Day morning was crisp and sunny so before lunch we all had a walk up the road and along a bit of the Speyside Way, with Finlay accompanied by his red caterpillar shaped balloon. We waved everyone off about mid-afternoon, before nipping down the road to “first-foot” Bill and Rita. The next few days were a mix of a bit of babysitting for Ruth, an interview with my old local paper the Accrington Observer, and replying to lots of emails from friends and ex-work colleagues re the award. During this time a pain in my right hip, which had been on the go since early December, was getting worse despite the daily application of Pernaton cream, but, with a few “target” species in my mind to try and find, I plodded on in the hope that gentle exercise would help. Two of the target species grew on willows and came about as “species to look out for” after my find of the spring hazelcup fungus before Christmas. However, my gentle walk (!) to a brilliant bit of ancient willow woodland near Dulnain Bridge soon degenerated into something more physical as I came across a sheep with its head stuck in a rylock fence. If the sheep had had the sense to go into reverse rather than panic and keep pushing, I wouldn’t have had to intervene. With deep muddy hoof-mark holes on one side of the fence and very heavily grazed vegetation on the other, it was obvious that the sheep had been there for some while, and sore hip or not, I would have to pull the sheep out. Ouch! This group of willows are brilliantly big; many of the trees are on their sides but still well alive, all providing lots of niches for mosses, lichens and fungi – a real hidden gem. Despite the early frost, the sun had come out and a few robins and coal tits were singing away. There are more ancient willows here than at the site I found in Glenmore last year but size and quantity isn’t everything, and none of the important Lobarian lichens, so prolific at Glenmore were found here. The funny brown jelly fungus Exidia recisa was everywhere on the dead willow twigs but the fungus I was looking for, the brilliantly named Scarlet Splash wasn’t to be found. But, as I keep saying, when looking for one thing something else usually turns up, and when I came across a brown jelly fungus as above but growing on fallen birch twigs, a light went on in my head about a request last year on the Highland Biological Recording Group website, asking folk to look for something similar (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/LatestFiles/Exidia.pdf ). I checked the website once I got home and sure enough the jelly fungus was Exidia repanda, something I’d not looked for before. Could the distribution map on the website really be true, with only a couple of known locations in this part of Scotland, or was this going to be like the earlier “rare” lichen, and an oversight because of a lack of folk in the winter looking for it? Read on!

To test out my last thought I decided to visit the damp birch woodland at Rynettin in Abernethy Forest and on the first birch tree that I visited there were a group of brown jellies on a dead twig, a doubling of the number of dots on the distribution map in a couple of days for this part of Scotland. Most birch woods I have visited since have also produced records so the map is slowly filling up. A big problem with recording species which emerge in winter is that the keener folk who know quite a bit about plants and fungi (lichens and most mosses can be identified throughout the year) is that they, like some of our birds, are summer visitors, recording species whilst on holiday. In an effort to try and overcome this problem Scottish Fungi (http://sites.google.com/site/scottishfungi/ ) and the Highland Biological Recording Group (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/ see TRY) have suggested species for folk to look out for, with some success. The Rynettin visit was also very productive with a few black dots on dead but still attached leaves on Salix aurita (eared willow) turned out to be willow tar spot (Rhytisma salicinum) but at the bottom end of the wood came the find of the day if not month – the beautiful lichen Pannaria rubiginosa (above right) on a less than impressively sized willow tree (left). The tree was half dead and leaning at a severe angle, but was covered with this lichen accompanied by Nephroma laevigatum. This was only the second Abernethy reserve site for the Pannaria and the third for the Nephroma, well worth having cold feet with a finds like these and, not to be outdone, a lump of rotting birch close by had a couple of capsules of the green shield-moss. A couple of days later though, this find was trumped. Searching more willows in Craigmore (Abernethy RSPB) for the elusive scarlet splash I ended up in a group of fairly old hazels. To exit the deep gulley I had been in I had to make my way up through a group of these hazels and, stopping for a breather, I glanced up into the adjacent mature bush to see the main stem covered in the “other” Pannaria, Pannaria conoplea (right), and after climbing up into the tree to obtain a few photos I hurried home knowing that this could be a good find. Sure enough, the lichen turned out to be new for Abernethy and quite a rare lichen this far east. Brilliant.

Towards the end of each month the Times newspaper carries an article on what to watch out for in the coming month in the night-time skies and throughout most of the month of January they mentioned that brightest object high above would be Jupiter. On the 26 January they said that the planet would be quite close to the new crescent moon and that a couple of nights later they would also be joined by Venus low down in the west. So, on the 26th, over an intermittently cloudy Loch Garten, I waited to see the first of these events. One minute the crescent moon was shining brightly only to disappear as Jupiter appeared from behind its patch of cloud, despite the early evening being quite frosty. Momentarily both would appear together (left) and the opportunity to photograph the event arrived, but one or other had disappeared again before I could attempt another photo capturing the heavenly event as it was also being reflected on the water of the loch. Time to thaw out. The newspaper was right and a couple of nights later the moon and the two planets shone clearly from a frosty sky, getting even better a few nights later when all three were in a straight line (right), but, by now increasing in distance from each other. Inspired? You can see the whole thing again on 26 February. Sadly cloud obscured another, short-lived celestial event at around the same time, the Aurora Borealis, which, at times, was visible in our area.

Mid-month I was a little undecided as to where to explore that day and on the way to making my mind up I popped into Tesco Aviemore to do a bit of shopping. As I wandered the aisles I bumped into caper-man Kenny who asked where I was off to and my location was chosen when I said the rocky bits above Loch an Eilien. So thanks to Kenny I headed up through the trees to what looked like an interesting rock face. Hmm, crumbly rock, with little ledges covered with a thin layer of soil looked very interesting and before too long something that looked like bright green Solorina lichens were found. The first ones were very young and lacked the distinctive central black “eye” (apothecia) but as I wandered along a few more ledges munching my crackers and cheese and Janet’s home-baked bun (which almost escaped to run off down the hill) I started to find more and more of the lichen (left), with all the right features. This was Solorina saccata a lime-loving lichen and the rock outcrop had to be the source of the lime-rich rock which once fed the lime kiln way down below by the visitor centre. As I was approaching the rocks I knew I was roughly in the right area for the old quarry because along the way I was finding plants of wood sage and wild strawberry, plants of richer soils. All the bending and stretching to squint through my hand lens didn’t seem to be helping the sore hip, and I’m not sure that this was the sort of “gentle” walking it had been hoping for. Inevitably, a few days later after a 4” fall of snow had been cleared from the driveway as well clearing a few tracks for Bill and Rita down the road, I had to give up and, armed with a biography of Seton Gordon borrowed from Rita, I took to my bed.

The book I had borrowed was “The Life and Times of a Highland Gentleman” by Raymond Eagle, published in 1991 by Lochar. Janet found what was happening hard to believe, me, lying in bed all day and, reading a book! Once I got into the book I had a job to put it down and at the end of day two I had read it from cover to cover. There’s lots about piping, Seton Gordon was an expert player and a well respected piping competition judge, but all through the book memories and events of my own time in the Highlands were stirred. A few days earlier a letter had arrived from the Lord Lieutenant of Inverness-shire congratulating me on my award. The Lord Lieutenant is Donald Cameron of Lochiel whose father was a close friend of Seton Gordon, and it was Donald Cameron who loaned me a very precious medal when RSPB celebrated the 50th anniversary of the return of the osprey in 2004. This medal (left & right) was presented to the then Cameron of Lochiel in 1894 by the Zoological Society of London in recognition of his work in trying to save the osprey from UK extinction an event which despite his best efforts, eventually happened in about 1916. Seton did a huge amount of pioneering work surveying and monitoring golden eagles and lugged heavy plate cameras huge distances to take some of the earliest good photos of eagles at their nests. In my first year at Loch Garten in 1976, one of the hottest summers of recent times, Seton Gordon dropped in, unannounced, at the Osprey Centre. He was in his 90th year and was driving himself over to Deeside to meet up with the Royal Family and probably to go on to watch the Braemar Highland Games. He even managed an outing into the Cairngorms with his friend, Adam Watson. I accompanied Seton round the viewing hide and then on to the forward hide where the volunteers maintained the twenty-four hour watch. It was a very hot day and the female osprey was on the nest, wings spread, shading the chicks from the sun. This action reminded Seton of a golden eagle he had photographed in possibly the 1920s, doing exactly the same thing under similar sunny conditions and as he left he promised to send me the photograph. Would a ninety year old man in the middle of a long drive remember such a promise? A few weeks later a thank you letter duly arrived and accompanying it was the photo of the golden eagle. As I progressed through the book I was amazed as I turned one of the pages to see the very same photo staring out at me. Golden eagle (left) © Seton Gordon Literary Estate. It was also a great honour in 2007 to be recognised, along with Seton Gordon as one of 36 “Highland Naturalists”. See http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/biography/seton-gordon and http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/biography/stewart-taylordnaturalists.com/biography/stewart-taylor . Amazing.

The couple of days in bed helped ease the pain in the butt and prolonged sessions with the ice pack also seemed to help. Currently, Kirsty the Grantown physio has me on a course of stretching exercises and there is a great improvement to report. Inspired, I wandered along the Explore Abernethy path by the River Nethy and, unable to help myself, I wandered into the fallen alders and leaning willows adjacent to the path. There were lots of the brown jelly fungus hanging from the dead willow branches and twigs but was that something a bit red growing with them? It sure was and at last I had managed to catch up with the scarlet splash fungus (Cytidia salicina right) and it really is just like its name implies – well done Liz for choosing such a truly descriptive name. To see Liz’s write up visit http://sites.google.com/site/scottishfungi/species-profiles/cytidia-salicinaprofiles/cytidia-salicina where a distribution map is also available – again, there aren’t many Scottish dots! Being around the house for a few days allowed time to catch up with birds in the garden and throughout the month a brambling (left) has been a regular visitor to the peanut feeder. It stayed around long enough to be one of 18 species counted on the 29th for the garden bird count. The most numerous was chaffinch with 30+ birds, 4 yellowhammers and a single goldfinch added colour and Janet managed to see a treecreeper in the apple tree. At the end of the count the records were forwarded to the RSPB and the BTO.

That’s it for another month, enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet






Starlings were rare in the garden this winter







Loch Garten sunset






Ice covered Cladonia lichen








Sunset Lochindorb


All photos © Stewart Taylor
Golden eagle © Seton Gordon Literary Estate

A wee note to end a fantastic year.........

After over three decades of work at RSPB Abernethy Forest Reserve, ably supported by colleagues and family, I am hugely honoured to have been appointed a Member of the British Empire for services to Nature Conservation in the North of Scotland in the New Year 2012 Honours List. Special thanks go to all the people I have worked with over that time who I assume put me forward for this great honour. Amazing!

Happy New Year
Stewart & Janet










All photos © Stewart Taylor

Just 7 hours of daylight on the shortest day

As I type, one of my winter landmark days (the shortest of 2011) is just passing; the low and lazy sun rose today at 8.49am and was setting at 3.20pm – hardly worth getting up for! However, I can report that the temperature currently (9pm) is a balmy 9 degrees C, and slowly the sheets of ice outside are disappearing fast. The white stuff, well the brown slushy mess that the snow gradually turns into, is getting a real shift and I am quite happy to hear that we are likely to have a mild Christmas. Bah! Humbug! to all this white Christmas stuff, after two winters when it was almost impossible to move anywhere on the 25th, it will be quite nice to embark on a pre-dinner walk without looking like Nanook of the North (http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/98-99/9500048s/project/html/nanook.htmnanook.htm ).
It’s been quite a month for weather and it was possible to enjoy snow free outings to search for things until the 5th, when 2” of snow arrived. The following day it was -3 degrees C, and finally looking like winter had arrived. A deepening low brought more snow on the 7th before we really had to batten-down the hatches when, on the following day the barometer dropped dramatically, heralding a gale much more severe than any in my recent memory. The weather folk said it would arrive about lunch-time. By 2pm the TV signal was lost followed by the power, and as darkness started to fall, out came the candles and the wee 2 ring calor gas stove, last used when we were building the house. I tried some batteries in the “modern” DAB radio, but it had lost its signal in sympathy with the digital TV signal. Thankfully the old faithful analogue radio accepted the batteries quite happily and despite there being nothing available on the VHF band, the good old long-wave was still proudly broadcasting Radio 4. So as darkness fell we had the flickering light of the candles, the hiss of the calor stove and the horrors of the shipping forecast (hurricane force 12 no less in some northern sea areas!) at 5 to 6 on the radio. All very romantic but I disappeared off to bed at 8.30pm once the battery on the laptop gave out and Janet pretended she was a 1920’s crofter and managed quite a bit of sewing, by candle-light, in readiness for the next farmers market. In a hazy dream at some time during the night I heard the words “answer on” from the answer-phone indicating that the Hydro-board folk had braved the gales to join the broken cables together. 165mph on the top of Cairngorm was almost a new UK record (-8mph) and at Nethybridge level we were in the 60 to 70mph region. In places in the forest a few trees have blown over and some snapped in two but overall deadwood creation ie tree damage, was far less than during the heavy snows of the last two winters. The last few days have seen a mix of snow, rain and frost creating treacherous conditions underfoot. On many local roads “invincibles” in their 4x4s found that they didn’t quite grip the tarmac as the sales brochures had claimed!

My final visit to the lime-rich quarries above Finlarig had a bit of an archaeological feel to it. The OS maps at 1:25,000 scale show “cup marked rocks & stones” and as I made my way round to the final quarries to be checked I could see a few very impressive rocks higher up the hill-side. I have often seen the references to cup-marks on maps but have never known what to look for. A few weeks earlier I had met up with Sue from Boat of Garten and she had mentioned visiting the same area on an archaeological outing and had seen these very things, small, round cup shapes, chiselled and ground into the rocks by our ancient ancestors. No one is sure why these marks were made but one website suggests the following: “The reason, or reasons, behind these carvings is unknown. Various suggestions have been put forward since early antiquarians identified them as prehistoric; including maps of the world, maps of the stars, sites where fat was set alit for religion, records of ownership or boundaries and so on”. Purely by chance one of these big rocks had a set of these very “cups”, not one but four, three in a row with an additional one above, no doubt the pattern meant something to the folk who created them. On my way to the quarries I had to pass several more big rocks and on two of these I came across a set of what can be best described as “scratchings” as though a giant tiger had pawed at the rock. These rocks were not identified on the OS map so I passed on my photo to a local archaeologist and I await his suggestion as to what they are.

Mid-month Janet attended two farmers markets, and having helped her set up, I just had a couple of hours before returning to lend a hand to dismantle everything. Amazingly, both of these short outing produced good finds. On the first outing, after a brief visit back to Firwood, I just had time to nip to Loch an Eilein with the intention of checking out the location of a possible lime quarry. Being a bit too ambitious I realised I was short of time and decided to head for an impressive rock outcrop on the edge of Ord Ban, overlooking Penny’s Pottery instead of searching for the quarry. Despite the light covering of snow, most of the rock outcrop was snow-free and, in places, free of anything growing. However, I was drawn towards a few young aspens clinging to the rock and was puzzled by the small ball-like growths on most of the branches (right). These had to be a gall of some sort, but having looked at lots of aspens locally, I couldn’t remember seeing anything quite like them so a photo was taken along with a sample just in case a critical examination would be needed by an expert. A slightly more vegetated section of crag then revealed what I had hoped might be growing there, a tiny patch of Peltigera britannica lichen, with its dark, dish like black growths (cephalodia) on the upper side of its bright green “leaves” (thallus), something new to Ord Ban. Arriving home after helping Janet to pack up her stall I typed “galls on aspens” into Google, and after checking a few of the results I had what looked like the right name for my gall, Aceria populi, and this was confirmed a couple of days later after sending my photos to expert Ian. Interestingly the NBN map shows only one location dot for this species in the UK (http://data.nbn.org.uk/gridMap/gridMap.jsp?allDs=1&srchSpKey=NHMSYS0020190426 ), Ian did say there were at least a dozen records still to add, but obviously this was an interesting find.

The next farmers market was held just a week later, in Aviemore Village Hall, and once Janet’s stall had been organised, there was time for a quick shop in Tesco before heading off to Kinrara Estate just south of Aviemore. The day was very icy and with a dusting of fresh snow so I would need to find somewhere on the estate where there would still be something to see. I decided to visit a brilliant ancient alder stand close to the River Spey to see if there were any alder cones on the trees and thereby the possibility of finding the alder tongue fungus which had yet to be recorded from this end of Strathspey. The gales of a few days earlier had snapped one big tree and had brought down a few branches so I was hopeful that there would be a few old and possibly new cones to look at. This though, wasn’t the case and very few cones were found. At one location, whilst checking a branch on the ground something else caught my eye, and again I was linking what I was looking at with something I thought had seen in one of my books. The alder branch which was detached from the tree was about 2” in diameter, and bursting out of the bark were a few fungi (right), some like elongated blisters and some, a little more developed, looking a bit like stars. For some reason I had read the description for the fungus I thought I was looking at and I remember it had something to do with dead hazel branches but that it had also been found growing on dead alder. More photos and, because I could see plenty of fruiting bodies, a small sample was sliced from the branch. A tall plant with many seed-heads growing by the branch also had me scratching my head and was something I should have been able to name so another photo was taken. Back home, Janet put on the kettle whilst I unloaded the farmers market goods from the car and then it was a dash for my Collins mushroom and toadstool guide flicking through until the brackets and other fungi growing on wood section was found and there, on page 308 was the spring hazelcup fungus (Encoelia furfuracea), looking remarkably like the fungus I had found. A reply from my email to Liz confirmed my identification and once again, highlighting the fact of how few people there are on the ground recording “things”, this was a new species for Highland Region! A bit odd really, this was winter not spring and the host species was alder and not hazel! My tall plant turned out to be figwort. Inspired, the following morning I headed for my brilliant green shield-moss alder wood near Forest Lodge in Abernethy, and after a couple of hours of searching the fungus was found on a branch on the ground (left) and also nearby on another detached alder branch but this one was off the ground and stuck in a tree. And what was I looking for when I found the fungus on the branch in the tree? The alder tongue fungus – of course. Looking for one thing will always find you something else, so never give up.

Having worked for RSPB for over 30 years it’s quite odd that on many days when I head off out nowadays, I have a hand lens round my neck rather than binoculars – though I do hear all the birds in the areas I visit! In the last couple of weeks though I have made a real effort to catch up with some of our most beautiful winter visitors. On my way to Loch an Eilein I spied a large number of whooper swans feeding in a flooded field where the farmer had struggled to harvest the cereal crop. I only had my wee camera with me so I dashed home to collect my better camera and the big lens. The flood was right by the road to Broomhill Bridge so the birds were quite used to cars driving by and they kindly allowed me to drive up reasonably close so that I could try and get a decent photo. It wasn’t all photography and I twice counted the group to find that there were 33 swans feeding, with just 1 juvenile in their midst. When the sun was out the birds glowed against the dark, watery background, and all the time they were calling to each other with their distinctive trumpeting calls. Overhead a buzzard was having fun with three carrion crows. Brilliant.

And then, a few days ago, I met Dave (http://davepullan.gyrnet.co.uk/aboutv2.htm ) in the village and he told me that the king eider at Burghead was “showing well”. My last “twitch” was the scarlet rosefinch in Nethybridge accessible by bike, but, in my past, several trips to Golspie had failed to let me see a king eider. According to the record books, the Burghead bird is a regular visitor to the harbour, and, with little to search for locally under a covering snow, I thought his would be a chance to possibly catch up with this most colourful of birds. So, after salting neighbours Bill and Rita’s frozen paths to sheds and drive to road, I headed off to the coast hoping to see at least distant views of my elusive bird. Between Findhorn and Burghead I drove along the edge of the now defunct Kinloss airbase, and saw what could have been army personnel moving into the ex-airmen’s houses. It’s so sad to see this once thriving base looking dead and deserted. “Thanks for protecting us you men and women of RAF Kinloss, your Christmas card this year is your P45!” Sorry, this was to be a nice day out. Over the humpy bridge by the Diageo processing plant, turn left and straight on to Burghead. It is possible to drive right onto the harbour but I always tend to drive to the headland where the coastguard station is located from where you can quickly scan the harbour. With camera gear loaded, I made my way down to the harbour and could see a couple of birder’s cars parked on the other side of the harbour – there was a chance the king eider was around. Within the harbour there were 50-60 eiders, but none with the nicely coloured head that I was looking for. I made my way towards the end of the harbour wall stopping to scan the eiders bobbing around on the choppy sea just outside the harbour mouth. And there it was, quite a way off, but at last I had caught up with a king eider. Slowly I made my way to the light at the end of the harbour wall where I could at least see the bird, just, through my camera lense. Hood up, gloves on, and I got ready for a wait to see if the bird would come closer. Another scan with my binoculars and I couldn’t find it. After a few minutes I though I should check within the harbour and there it was, bobbing around with a dozen eiders. I quickly made my way back along the harbour wall, completely out of sight of the eiders, occasionally looking carefully over the edge of the harbour to see what was below. I now had the bird just below me in the water so I took a few photos before I lost it again, before realising that the folk on the other side of the harbour were looking right into the harbour where the boats were tied up! Time for a quick exit and up to the harbour flats and down towards the boats, carefully edging towards the side of the harbour each time the bird dived. Amazingly, it was now with a crab in its bill right below me, again with other eiders! All the birds continued to feed for about 10 minutes before heading back out towards the sea. Phew, and totally unexpected, twitches don’t usually end up like this! A less welcome “tick” was the one I removed from my ankle during the first week of December, a time when I thought they had all disappeared for the winter!

So that’s it for another year. A few highlights from 2011 are given below. And what to look forward to in 2012? The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics and no doubt many more surprises.

Stop press: Legal challenge from Friends of the Earth and two solar energy companies upheld saying the government’s bid to rush through cuts to solar tariff payments are illegal. Perhaps the industry can be saved after all.

Enjoy the read and have a very happy Christmas and our best wishes for 2012.

Stewart & Janet






January Archie’s first steps

April Paula’s marathon

July Round-leaved wintergreen Mar Lodge

August Sue and Cliffords pine marten in garden

September Hydnellum gracilipes Rothiemurchus

November Solorina heaven

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Dammit, I forgot the photo of the doll!

I thought it would be useful to start this months diary with a wee bit of information about one of my main targets - lime kilns (left) and their quarries. Archaeological evidence of lime kilns date back to 2450 BC, in Mesopotamia, and kilns have been found in Britain dating from the Roman period. Lime kilns were built to convert limestone (calcium carbonate) to quicklime (calcium oxide), by burning it. The burning process drove out carbon dioxide leaving calcium oxide in the form of a powder – quicklime. By adding water to it in a controlled manner (a dangerous) process called “slaking”, the quicklime was changed to calcium hydroxide used in the construction industry for mortar, plaster and lime-wash. In its “un-slaked” state the quicklime was taken out onto the fields and spread evenly before being harrowed into the soil, “slaking” naturally with time. Adding quicklime to fields reduced the acidity of the soil, increasing fertility by allowing absorption of nitrates like those contained in animal dung. So what has this got to do with Taylor’s diary? Well, a lime quarry was mentioned in the last diary and, the more I have been enquiring about these archaeological relics, the more are turning up. In this general area acidic soils predominate so in the 17th Century if local folk could find a small or large outcrop of limestone or base-rich rock, they would quarry it, burn it, and spread the resultant quicklime on their fields. Today, the limekiln structures can be found in many places, and with a bit of searching, or help from geologist friend Donald, the source of their limestone can usually be found. The small quarries on Laggan Hill were the ones visited in the last diary, but Donald suggested there were many more to the west, so, on the next available day, I headed once more up the hill to the quarries at Upper Finlarig, and wow, they were huge and there were lots (right), several days-worth of searching would be needed to see what plants and lichens could be hiding there. It took four visits over four part days to systematically work my way through the now mostly vegetated quarries. There was just a chance that something might be lurking in the grassy quarries and sure enough more locations for quaking grass were found. Despite this being November, dove’s-foot cranesbill (left) was still in flower, as was thyme, milkwort and in a couple of water-filled quarries what looked like iris leaves turned out to be branched burr-reed (Sparganium erectum) and even a couple of these had fresh seed heads. The best quarries for lichens were those with a bit of exposed rock and in 5 of these, the rare Solorina spongiosa lichen from the last dairy was found and in the base-rich water of one lochan mare’s tail (Hipperis vulgaris) was emerging from the water. On the way in to the quarries a strange tall plant with big round seed-heads and huge, dock-like leaves turned out to be Tibetan cowslip (Primula florindae) an escapee from the garden of the “big hoose”. I thought one of my best finds was a section of rock full of fossils but thankfully Donald was able to let me down gently by explaining that these rocks were too old, around 700 million years, and were formed about a 100 million years before most structural life-forms wandered the earth. Amazing, and puts my 65 years on earth into perspective. What I had actually found was probably dolomite crystals but in an unusual string form which lead me to thinking they were fossils. Dolomite was often deposited by hot fluids mobilised by the earth’s mountain building process all those years ago. Something more mind boggling is that the earth is thought to be about 4,600 million years old, time to stop! A little blue blob on the geology map lead me off in a different direction and as a thank you to Donald I found a new tiny limestone quarry along with its very own kiln. Amazingly this little quarry was home to the other Solorina lichen S. saccata and, can you believe it, a MIGRANT hoverfly by the name of Scaeva pyrastri.

410 tonnes and what do you get? Well, in this case, a huge hole in the ground for the bits of the wind turbine that you don’t see, and a part of the process that I feel few folk are aware of – the scale, that is. Most of the objections to the sprawl of these monsters across our landscape are for the bit that you see for miles around (and for all the other problems unearthed see Concerned About Wind Turbines at http://www.cawt.co.uk/index.php ) and there is little mention, if any, about the groundwork’s required to hold up the tower and blade. As you know from an earlier diary (Come back Nellie May 2010) I was involved in carrying out an independent bird surveys of the site of a wind-farm proposal, close to daughter Laura’s house, for the local residents objecting to the proposal. Despite the Planners turning down the application, the farmer had appealed and I was back over to lend support for the visit of the Reporter, who was tasked by the Scottish Government with looking at the appeal. Whilst there, Laura asked if I had seen the work being carried out nearby on the base of a soon to be installed turbine, the scale and engineering of which was completely mind blowing. Inside a hole in the ground had been arranged 65 tonnes of steel reinforcing rods and the site was just about ready for the first pour of concrete – 53 wagons of the stuff would be needed – amounting to 345 cubic metres or a whopping 700 tonnes! Just in case the figure is queried it was derived using Google figures a maximum of 2.5 tonnes/cubic m or a minimum of 1.7 tonnes/cubic m, the average of the two was used. Installing the turbine to cut down on CO2 emissions means the turbine has to work for quite a while to pay its way. Best figures found via the internet shows that to make 1 cubic metre of concrete 190 kilogram’s of CO2 is produced and to make 1 kilogramme of steel, up to 2.5 kg is produced. So, excluding the tower and the blades and the energy used to dig and fill the hole and deliver the concrete the CO2 produced = 228,000 kg or 229 tonnes (on figures from 2007)! The companies installing the turbines and the folk whose land they are built on are often quoted as saying “the sites will be returned to their previous state once the 25 year FIT (feed in tariff) payment period is ended. At the end of the project’s operational life the wind turbines would be decommissioned, the principle elements removed, and the site restored leaving little if any trace. The wind turbines would be removed from the site and the foundations covered over with topsoil and re-seeded.” It makes you wonder what Tony Robinson and the Time Team would make of the lump of concrete and metal in a few hundred years time.

Thankfully, the work at Firwood in early November required no concrete, was completed in 8 hours, and was producing electricity by the end of the day. I’m talking about solar photovoltaic panels of course, 16 of them, all blending in nicely with the dark blue of the metal roof, and, on a good day, producing 4-6 kilowatts of power. Installing PV’s though in November is not the best time to harvest the sun’s power with just a month and a half to go until the shortest day. The inverter in the house (DC power to AC power) doesn’t kick in until about 9am and has knocked off by 4pm, so I look forward to ticking off my annual landmark dates, shortest day, Christmas and New Year, birthday in February and then onwards to snowdrops and clocks going forward in March and then lets see what the panels can produce. Thankfully our contract was all signed, sealed and delivered a couple of days ahead of the criminal act of this coalition government when they announced that the Feed in Tariff, with six weeks warning to the renewables industry, would be cut by half on the 12 December. Okay, the tariff level of 43 pence per unit was set a bit high to tempt folk to invest in the scheme, but to cut the level in half with so little warning will result in massive financial losses to those small to medium businesses that have done exactly what the government has been asking them to do by investing in new industries and employing lots of people. Already the solar industry is laying off huge numbers of trained staff, adding to the dole queues and proving what many folk knew couldn’t be true when Cameron and Co stated they would be the greenest government ever! A bit like many of their other promises I’m afraid. Sorry, this is the season of goodwill, and I’ve stepped down from my soap-box, but thankfully for now, I am just so glad my money is stuck to the roof rather than stuck in the bank.

Early in the month, and in brilliant weather, we made our trip to the NTS Haddo House Christmas Fair. All Janet’s hard work over the last few months was put on display and the mix of colours from the tweed bags, robins, Scottie dogs and of course, Dammit Janet dolls (left), looked stunning. The stall was set up on the Friday evening and from the doors opening to visitors on the Saturday morning until their close late on Sunday afternoon, there was a steady flow of shoppers to the stalls. Thankfully daughter Laura was on hand to help which allowed me to disappear off into the surrounding countryside to see what was to be found. The grounds of Haddo were given a good search last year so I headed off towards the coast but on the way I passed through an ancient bit of mixed woodland with a small burn running through it. I thought it was worth a quick look but ended up spending a few hours there. Whilst checking a few beech leaves for galls, I could hear splashing from the burn behind me, and on turning round expected to see a mink hunting through the water. No mink but more splashing so I crept closer to have a look and as I did so it dawned on me that the splashing was probably caused by a fish and being early November, that fish had to be a salmon! Sure enough as soon as I could see the water there was the distinctive tail and fin out of the water as the female fish splashed around creating the gravel “redd” in the burn bed in which she would deposit her eggs, ready for the male to fertilise. The wee camera with its fixed, 40mm lens wasn’t really able to show what was happening, so I watched for a while before wandering off down the burn to check a few ancient alders for green shield moss capsules or the alder tongue fungus when I came upon more splashing, in fact at any obstruction in the burn there seemed to be salmon splashing about. At one location the salmon


were right below my feet so I tried the video facility on the camera which worked quite well. Quite an amazing experience and totally unexpected. Back at Haddo there were still lots of folk visiting all the stalls so I just had time to have a wander out past the house and round the loch as the sun was starting to depart for another day. At the top of the loch I spied a few old, well grown alders and to provide a fitting end to an interesting day, there were several alder cones blowing raspberries at me – a brand new site for the alder tongue fungus and quite a way from any previous find. So, a good couple of days and Janet had at least covered our petrol money.

Back home news filtered through about several bean geese having being seen in the Insh Marshes area, but I failed to find them, with the same result when possibly the same geese turned up at Broomhill, just outside Nethybridge. Whooper swans, greylags and mallards feeding in cereal fields though weren’t too bad a consolation. During the month I was involved in making a bunk bed (right) with ladder for daughter Ruth, and as I was knocking off at half-nine one evening, I thought I should fill up the seed feeders for the birds for the following morning. As I rounded the edge of the chalet I was aware of something scampering about and running up the hawthorn bush by the squirrel box feeder. As I froze the automatic outside light knocked off casting me into darkness but I was sure that whatever I had disturbed was still in the bush and sure enough a little while later something started to growl at me. This went on for about a minute before I was aware of the animal descending from the bush and heading off, along the ground, and into the woods beyond. I’m only guessing, but I think this is the first time I have been growled at by a pine marten!

Around the same time I heard that the time had arrived for the pylons, running close to the Speyside Way, to be felled and removed from site. The cables had been removed about a month earlier but now the contractors were back to finish off the job and this was something I had to see. Just 3 people were undertaking the work, one man on a converted Hymac digger and the other two doing the cutting and felling work. At each pylon a wire hawser was attached close to the top of the structure and the other end to the arm of the Hymac. All the metal-work around the two pylon legs closest to the Hymac was cut (left), leaving the section of the L girder nearest the Hymac untouched. The hawser was then tensioned and the two guys cut right through the two legs furthest away from the Hymac. A gentle pull on the hawser and the pylon started its journey down to earth with the two bits of uncut girder gradually bending, controlling the fall and stopping the bottom of the pylon from flying up into the air. The bent girders were then cut to sever the structure and the Hymac, complete with metal cutting jaws dismantled the pylon into sections suitable for extraction from site later in the week by helicopter. Finally, the cutting jaws were replaced by a digger bucket and the four concrete leg bases buried in the ground. A few days later the same guys were back on site working as ground crew, attaching the cut sections to the hook at the end of the cable slung below a PDG helicopter. All the sections were then taken to a central site for cutting into smaller sections before being deposited into a couple of huge trailers ready to be transported from there to a recycling yard up on the coast at Portsoy. Quite a slick operation, 8 pylons felled and removed from site in 5 days. Now all that needs doing is for Google Earth to re-photograph the site and for the Ordnance Survey folk to amend their maps. And for the tree-less ex-powerline wayleave running through Abernethy? Who knows, trees will eventually fill the gap, but perhaps parts of the wayleave could be kept tree free to benefit the many wood ants already nesting there, particularly the rarer narrow-headed wood ant (Formica exsecta) which has developed a particular liking to these linear gaps in an otherwise wooded landscape.

Enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet





Sunset over Haddow House









Highland Biological Recording Group 25th Anniversary, 5 Chairmen, 1 Secretary and Stephen Moran who made it happen






Rynettin sunset (again!)




All photos © Stewart Taylor