This was another week with some noteable highlights but also tinged with great sadness, so let's take the week as it developed for the diary this week.
Firstly, many apologies to Henry the male osprey at the Loch Garten site (right). Having had time, after the panics of the fishing line episode last Friday (15th), we had a careful look at the DVD recording of the incident, and, more importantly, a look at the earlier recordings of the day before and the last fish arriving at the nest prio
r to the fishing line incident. From the earlier recordings it became apparent that all was not well with the newly hatched chick hours before Henry arrived with his fishing line. Late on Thursday evening the chick didn't seem well, and when a fish arrived at the nest early on the Friday morning, the chick didn't feed and was seen to be in roughly the same position as when the "treading" incident occurred. Watching the latter incident in slow motion it is evident that the chick was dead before Henry's entanglement and that he doesn't actually fully stamp on the chick when being dragged back by the fishing line. Sorry Henry.
Saturday 16 June 2007.
A normal chalet change over, saying cheerio to Ann and Geoffrey, and getting everything ready for Jenny and Sid. Once duties were complete I went down to the Centre to see how things were, and everything seemed fine with incubation of the remaining two eggs progressing normally. The cooler weather ensured the hirundine spectacular (swifts, sand martins, swallows and the odd house martins) over Loch Garten carried on into the weekend. A few RAW digital photos were processed in the evening - great system but you don't half have to spend some time at the computer to ensure you get the best results!
Sunday 17 June 2007.
The mobile phone beeped early with a message to say that the second egg had hatched at 11.30 on Saturday evening and that everything seemed okay and the chick had been fed early that morning. We spent the morning travelling to look at a house Laura (our daughter) was hoping to purchase, getting back home in the early afternoon. The day was looking a bit drier so the camera-gear was loaded into the car and on my way to look at some of the wetter bits of the woodland close to Loch Garten I called in to the Centre to be told that everything was as normal and the newly hatched chick had had two feeds by mid-afternoon - phew! I had hoped to photograph the swifts and sand martins over the loch but with a decent rise in the air temperature most of the birds had pushed off as there would have been plenty of food probably nearer to their nesting sites. With the mixed weather I hoped to find a few perched-up dragonflies so I wandered off to some of the wetter bits of the woodland but failed miserably to find any - where do these insects go to roost / perch -up? Not the first time I have failed in this quest.
However, I did find something just as amazing - a huge raft spider Dolomedes fimbratus. These
amazing spiders live in a few of our better quality bogs in the UK and have the ability to run across the waters surface (left) to catch their prey as well as being accomplished divers to
catch prey below the water surface when the need arises. The spider photographed was carrying a large egg "sac" under her body, between her eight legs (right). The spider, despite its British name, does not build rafts. In Europe is is more appropriately known as the "fishing spider" as it hunts mainly, by sitting by pools of water, its first (front) pair of legs resting on the water's surface to detect the presence of insects, tadpoles or even small fish, which it hauls out of the water! If threatened, it can drag itself down stems of water plants and is able to remain below the surface for about an hour. Amazing! 
As with some other spiders, courtship can be a hazardous pastime for the males - they sometimes end up being eaten by the female! The female carries the egg sac until the spiderlings start to hatch at which time she deposits the eggs on a piece of vegetation and then spins a protective "nursery web" around them, she then stands guard over the web until the spiderlings emerge. I will hope to show you pictures of this event later in the summer. Sorry if you don't like spiders, but this is one brilliant beast!
Monday 18 June 2007
Cycled to work at Forest Lodge (right) only to be met by Dave, one of the osp
rey team, who told me that the osprey chick was dead! In fact it would would appear, after checking the DVD recordings, that it was actually dead at 10.30pm on Sunday evening. We went down to the Centre to support and commiserate with the rest of the osprey team and wondered what would happen next!
In the evening another landmark was reached with my Operation Osprey talk in the Boat of Garten village hall. A new village hall is being built and this talk, after twenty-six continuous years of village hall talks, will be my last in the old hall. The current talk covers the history of the ospreys from when they disappeared from Britain in the late eighteen hundreds to the present day. The update of the current osprey season at the end of the talk was probably the saddest I have yet had to give and I had to be honest and suggest I didn't think the third egg would survive - everything crossed that I was going to be proved wrong.
Tuesday 19 June 2007
As I only
work three days a week for RSPB this was a "day off", however, if the sun shone I was due to continue with the wee bee search. The bee doesn't usually become active until the sun is well out and the temperature has risen so, having dropped Janet off at work in Grantown, I went to visit the River Spey and do a bit of botanising. I have long-looked for the greater butterfly orchid Plantanthera chlorantha and today I was about to see it. In fact there were thirteen of them, dodging the trampling of dog-walkers, visitors and fishermen alike. Beautiful! Distinguished from th
e lesser butterfly orchid by the greater height, length of the flower spur and by the divergent pollen-masses within the flower. With the sun now shining, chimney sweeper moths were everywhere, a few small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies were on the wing and I saw my first small copper butterfly of the year. On the river a fisherman was casting his fly into the rougher water - ever hopeful. I thought the facial features looked familiar and sure enough it was local resident and ex labour spin-doctor Charlie Whelan! Charlie didn't catch anything whilst I was there but his friend did, and, thinking he had hooked a salmon, he shouted for Charlie to help him land the fish. Charlie dashed to help but both fishermen seemed really sad when the salmon turned out to be "just" a fresh run sea trout. It went for the pot anyway!
And
then it was off on my bee hunt. Forty miles of driving, about 6 woods visited, and three new locations found. As I have mentioned in earlier dairy pages the bee is very partial to bird's-foot trefoil and my search involves finding good patches, preferably along forest tracks and possibly where Scots pine trees are being managed or are old enough to provide lots of dead trees with the right sized long-horned beetle larvae emergence holes in their trunks, and then standing and watching to see if the bee visits the flowers to collect pollen. Don't be fooled by the size of the bee's picture left, it is small - about 10mm long and looks a bit like a small wasp rather than a bee. Anyway, it was great to find a few more locations I just wish the weather would help the search by being a bit sunnier for more than a few minutes at a time. http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=493 & http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html .
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Back to work today but a chance to see a bit of botanical research being carried out in
Abernethy Forest and a few other forests locally. The research is aimed at finding out more about the factors affecting pollination and seed formation in one of the iconic plants within the pinewoods - twinflower Linnaeus borealis, Carl Linnaeus's plant of the boreal/northern pinewoods. It is the only plant that carries his name despite the fact that he was responsible for establishing the binomial species nomenclature, systematically giving latin names to all species of plants and animals. See http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/linnaeus-link/ for more information on the great man.
Twinflower is a small, creeping, perennial shrub of the honeysuckle family. It is evergreen and is characterised by above-ground runners known as stolons from which numerous short aerial stems or shoots grow. The shoots are 4 - 6 cm. in height, up to 3 mm. in diameter and turn woody with age. They bear small round leaves which are opposite, meaning that they grow in pairs on opposite sides of the stems, and which persist for 12 - 16 months. The shoots are of two different kinds - the non-reproductive ones only have leaves on them, while the flowering shoots also have inflorescences which are up to 15 cm. tall.
The stolons also produce branches, and when a branch becomes separated from the main stolon, it grows on to form a new plant. This vegetative propagation is the twinflower's main method of reproduction, and as a result the species usually occurs as clonal patches, consisting of groups of plants which are genetically identical. (Alan Watson Featherstone - Trees for Life) . http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.twinflower.html
The research work follows on from work 
in 2006 when Andy looked at the main insect pollinators visiting the twinflower flowers. This year however, the work involves excluding the natural pollinators from several individual plants at several of the twinflower patches within Abernethy and then pollinating them by hand, with flowers from other patches, to see whether this increases the fertilisation rate and hence the rate of seed production. Because many of the twinflower patches are many kilometres apart there is a worry that cross-fertilisation rarely happens and this may be why seed production is so poor. Watch this space.
Firstly, many apologies to Henry the male osprey at the Loch Garten site (right). Having had time, after the panics of the fishing line episode last Friday (15th), we had a careful look at the DVD recording of the incident, and, more importantly, a look at the earlier recordings of the day before and the last fish arriving at the nest prio
r to the fishing line incident. From the earlier recordings it became apparent that all was not well with the newly hatched chick hours before Henry arrived with his fishing line. Late on Thursday evening the chick didn't seem well, and when a fish arrived at the nest early on the Friday morning, the chick didn't feed and was seen to be in roughly the same position as when the "treading" incident occurred. Watching the latter incident in slow motion it is evident that the chick was dead before Henry's entanglement and that he doesn't actually fully stamp on the chick when being dragged back by the fishing line. Sorry Henry.Saturday 16 June 2007.
A normal chalet change over, saying cheerio to Ann and Geoffrey, and getting everything ready for Jenny and Sid. Once duties were complete I went down to the Centre to see how things were, and everything seemed fine with incubation of the remaining two eggs progressing normally. The cooler weather ensured the hirundine spectacular (swifts, sand martins, swallows and the odd house martins) over Loch Garten carried on into the weekend. A few RAW digital photos were processed in the evening - great system but you don't half have to spend some time at the computer to ensure you get the best results!
Sunday 17 June 2007.
The mobile phone beeped early with a message to say that the second egg had hatched at 11.30 on Saturday evening and that everything seemed okay and the chick had been fed early that morning. We spent the morning travelling to look at a house Laura (our daughter) was hoping to purchase, getting back home in the early afternoon. The day was looking a bit drier so the camera-gear was loaded into the car and on my way to look at some of the wetter bits of the woodland close to Loch Garten I called in to the Centre to be told that everything was as normal and the newly hatched chick had had two feeds by mid-afternoon - phew! I had hoped to photograph the swifts and sand martins over the loch but with a decent rise in the air temperature most of the birds had pushed off as there would have been plenty of food probably nearer to their nesting sites. With the mixed weather I hoped to find a few perched-up dragonflies so I wandered off to some of the wetter bits of the woodland but failed miserably to find any - where do these insects go to roost / perch -up? Not the first time I have failed in this quest.
However, I did find something just as amazing - a huge raft spider Dolomedes fimbratus. These
amazing spiders live in a few of our better quality bogs in the UK and have the ability to run across the waters surface (left) to catch their prey as well as being accomplished divers to
catch prey below the water surface when the need arises. The spider photographed was carrying a large egg "sac" under her body, between her eight legs (right). The spider, despite its British name, does not build rafts. In Europe is is more appropriately known as the "fishing spider" as it hunts mainly, by sitting by pools of water, its first (front) pair of legs resting on the water's surface to detect the presence of insects, tadpoles or even small fish, which it hauls out of the water! If threatened, it can drag itself down stems of water plants and is able to remain below the surface for about an hour. Amazing! 
As with some other spiders, courtship can be a hazardous pastime for the males - they sometimes end up being eaten by the female! The female carries the egg sac until the spiderlings start to hatch at which time she deposits the eggs on a piece of vegetation and then spins a protective "nursery web" around them, she then stands guard over the web until the spiderlings emerge. I will hope to show you pictures of this event later in the summer. Sorry if you don't like spiders, but this is one brilliant beast!Monday 18 June 2007
Cycled to work at Forest Lodge (right) only to be met by Dave, one of the osp
rey team, who told me that the osprey chick was dead! In fact it would would appear, after checking the DVD recordings, that it was actually dead at 10.30pm on Sunday evening. We went down to the Centre to support and commiserate with the rest of the osprey team and wondered what would happen next!In the evening another landmark was reached with my Operation Osprey talk in the Boat of Garten village hall. A new village hall is being built and this talk, after twenty-six continuous years of village hall talks, will be my last in the old hall. The current talk covers the history of the ospreys from when they disappeared from Britain in the late eighteen hundreds to the present day. The update of the current osprey season at the end of the talk was probably the saddest I have yet had to give and I had to be honest and suggest I didn't think the third egg would survive - everything crossed that I was going to be proved wrong.
Tuesday 19 June 2007
As I only
work three days a week for RSPB this was a "day off", however, if the sun shone I was due to continue with the wee bee search. The bee doesn't usually become active until the sun is well out and the temperature has risen so, having dropped Janet off at work in Grantown, I went to visit the River Spey and do a bit of botanising. I have long-looked for the greater butterfly orchid Plantanthera chlorantha and today I was about to see it. In fact there were thirteen of them, dodging the trampling of dog-walkers, visitors and fishermen alike. Beautiful! Distinguished from th
e lesser butterfly orchid by the greater height, length of the flower spur and by the divergent pollen-masses within the flower. With the sun now shining, chimney sweeper moths were everywhere, a few small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies were on the wing and I saw my first small copper butterfly of the year. On the river a fisherman was casting his fly into the rougher water - ever hopeful. I thought the facial features looked familiar and sure enough it was local resident and ex labour spin-doctor Charlie Whelan! Charlie didn't catch anything whilst I was there but his friend did, and, thinking he had hooked a salmon, he shouted for Charlie to help him land the fish. Charlie dashed to help but both fishermen seemed really sad when the salmon turned out to be "just" a fresh run sea trout. It went for the pot anyway!And
then it was off on my bee hunt. Forty miles of driving, about 6 woods visited, and three new locations found. As I have mentioned in earlier dairy pages the bee is very partial to bird's-foot trefoil and my search involves finding good patches, preferably along forest tracks and possibly where Scots pine trees are being managed or are old enough to provide lots of dead trees with the right sized long-horned beetle larvae emergence holes in their trunks, and then standing and watching to see if the bee visits the flowers to collect pollen. Don't be fooled by the size of the bee's picture left, it is small - about 10mm long and looks a bit like a small wasp rather than a bee. Anyway, it was great to find a few more locations I just wish the weather would help the search by being a bit sunnier for more than a few minutes at a time. http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=493 & http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html .Wednesday 20 June 2007
Back to work today but a chance to see a bit of botanical research being carried out in
Abernethy Forest and a few other forests locally. The research is aimed at finding out more about the factors affecting pollination and seed formation in one of the iconic plants within the pinewoods - twinflower Linnaeus borealis, Carl Linnaeus's plant of the boreal/northern pinewoods. It is the only plant that carries his name despite the fact that he was responsible for establishing the binomial species nomenclature, systematically giving latin names to all species of plants and animals. See http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/linnaeus-link/ for more information on the great man.Twinflower is a small, creeping, perennial shrub of the honeysuckle family. It is evergreen and is characterised by above-ground runners known as stolons from which numerous short aerial stems or shoots grow. The shoots are 4 - 6 cm. in height, up to 3 mm. in diameter and turn woody with age. They bear small round leaves which are opposite, meaning that they grow in pairs on opposite sides of the stems, and which persist for 12 - 16 months. The shoots are of two different kinds - the non-reproductive ones only have leaves on them, while the flowering shoots also have inflorescences which are up to 15 cm. tall.
The stolons also produce branches, and when a branch becomes separated from the main stolon, it grows on to form a new plant. This vegetative propagation is the twinflower's main method of reproduction, and as a result the species usually occurs as clonal patches, consisting of groups of plants which are genetically identical. (Alan Watson Featherstone - Trees for Life) . http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.twinflower.html
The research work follows on from work 
in 2006 when Andy looked at the main insect pollinators visiting the twinflower flowers. This year however, the work involves excluding the natural pollinators from several individual plants at several of the twinflower patches within Abernethy and then pollinating them by hand, with flowers from other patches, to see whether this increases the fertilisation rate and hence the rate of seed production. Because many of the twinflower patches are many kilometres apart there is a worry that cross-fertilisation rarely happens and this may be why seed production is so poor. Watch this space.
Text message on mobile 5.30 pm to say that EJ has removed the last egg from the osprey nest!
Thursday 21 June 2007
At work again today. Warm sunny morning. Bang! Spectacular thunderstorm for about an hour in the afternoon with torrential rain. Rivers in spate by the end of the day.
Friday 22 June 2007
No work today and little sun in the morning. A bit more sun in the afternoon allows one bee site to be visited - by bike as Janet has the car. No joy but did find a rhinoceros beetle -Sinodendron cylindricum (about 15mm long) whilst at the trefoil site. Yes, it does have a horn-like projection on its head. (Type the name into Google for a picture). Cycled back
via Speyside Way to check for dingy skipper butterfly, no joy but did see small heath, common blue, northern brown argus (right), small pearl-bordered fritillary, green-veined white, peacock and red admiral all in about half an hour.And the Stewart link to Seton Gordon? On Friday evening Stewart & Janet were invited to Scottish Natural Heritage's offices in Inverness for the official opening of an exhibition celebrating 300 years of the study of nature and wildlife in the Highlands as part of the Highland Year of Culture. Thirty Highland naturalists were involved in the exhibition, fifteen past and fifteen present. Seton Gordon, Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, Gavin Maxwell, John Harvie- Brown were some of those having contributed to our knowledge in the past and Sir John Lister-Kaye, Roy Dennis, Margaret Barron, Laurie Campbell, Graham & daughter Ellen Rotheray amongst those in the future along with little me! What an honour.
Happy reading and sorry about the sad osprey news.
Stewart & Janet
Red squirrel on new feeder at Firwood
all pictures © Stewart Taylor
