Links with the past

This has been a fairly miserable week with little sun, lots of rain and not many opportunities to get out and about to delve into the natural history world. However, a few things were seen and on the dull but drier days, the chalet was partly painted. Janet also progressed well with a heavy weeding session and a wee redesign of parts of the rockery, a one tonne bag of gravel was delivered on Tuesday and by Thursday the weeds had gone, the gravel spread, a few new plants installed and the whole area looking like a work of art. The gooseberry bushes were also "attacked" and 20 lbs of berries picked, some were packed and frozen, others were topped and tailed and within a day had been neatly converted into regimented jars of gooseberry jam - delicious! A crumble or two also disappeared into the freezer along with a couple of trays of rasps and strawberries from Hardmuir Farm to get us through the winter. The last of the early lettuces were dined on and the other planted produce given a dusting of "miracle" rock dust, natural fertiliser, hopefully giving a late summer boost to their growing season. A displaying osprey overhead whilst in the garden was nice, perhaps Henry returning with dinner for EJ?

A good wander through some more of the bog woodland areas located even more of the big raft spiders guarding their nursery webs, in fact another thirty nests were found with a few guard spiders doing something I hadn't seen before - leaping off the nursery web and... plop, disappearing under the water. I realised a little later that it was probably my pale shirt that was making me very conspicuous and obvious as I moved, and the quickest way to safety for the spider was to jump and disappear under the water. Survival first, check the spiderlings second. The highlight of Ross's dragonfly afternoon on Wednesday was two of these big beasts posing for photographs, one with its nursery web and the other carrying its egg sac. Also seen regularly in the same bog area were capercaillie droppings, do the spiders make a tasty and satisfying meal? One bonus of my wander was finding a new site for mud sedge (Carex limosa seen left) a beautiful plant and one that has spread a little as the restored bogs continue to "mature" (right). A second bonus was finding a couple of quite big butterflies resting on the tops of the flowering heads of Deschampsia cespitosa - tussock grass, growing along the line of an old track through the Scots pines. It was obvious that the butterflies were fritillaries, but dark-green fritillaries in a wood? Well yes, that is what they turned out to be and, with a few nicely maturing thistle heads along the overgrown track, there was a ready food supply to hand. For further information see: http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?vernacular_name=Dark%20Green%20Fritillary#Habitat or http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/species/bdata/butterfly.php?code=dar is it near you, click on the NBN Gateway map on the second website.

Staff and their dogs have been wandering the forest this last week carrying out the annual count of capercaillie and black grouse chicks. This has not been a good summer for any of the ground nesting bird species, particularly those whose young forage amongst the deeper vegetation on the forest floor. Regular rain, cool temperatures and the chicks get very wet, find food hard to come by, probably call more because the going is so difficult and fall prey to the natural forest predators who pick up on the regular calls. June is the critical month and over the last fifteen years of brood counting it is known that when more than sixty millimetres of rain falls from the skies during that month, woodland grouse productivity will decrease. One hundred and thirty millimetres of rain fell this year and even during July, conditions have not been much better. Staff were amazed therefore when, on Thursday a female capercaillie with two chicks was found, followed by another with one chick. Finding any chicks shows that even under the worst of conditions some chicks can survive, but three chicks from the twenty females gives an average productivity of just 0.15 chicks per female. For the population to remain stable the recruitment rate needs to be no less than 0.6 chicks per female and for the population to increase then more than one chick per female is required. The latter rate of recruitment has only been achieved three times in the last fifteen years so you can start to appreciate how difficult it is for the caper population to grow. However, over the fifteen years the Abernethy population has just about held its own so we shouldn't worry too much when we get such a poor year as 2007.

For the last few years I have been searching the local area for a small plant called marsh clubmoss (okay, I know we are back into the wet stuff - but I like the wet stuff!) Lycopodiella inundata. It used to occur in several places around Loch Morlich, but, with the development of activities on the water, the development of a large camping and caravan park along one shore and, being an attractive place to stop for a walk for the thousands of visitors travelling every year along the road to Cairngorm, the poor loch shore has become very heavily trampled leading to the loss of several rare breeding birds and plants. The clubmoss is one such plant. Some very good clubmoss type habitat does remain but as yet, no clubmoss has been found. On Tuesday a little bit more information came to light as to where it was last seen - in 1978. On Wednesday evening after work, I was there having a look. The plant does like the wet, it likes areas of ground which, for a good part of the year, is under water. At this time of year the habitat should be reasonably dry but, after all the rain we have had this summer, the 1978 site was still fifty percent under water. Nothing was found so another visit will be needed once Noah has released the animals two by two! The visit did, though, produce one unusual plant Drosera angelica the long-leaved sundew (above right). This is a plant which is fairly common in the west of Scotland, but decreases as you travel east, so Loch Morlich is on the edge of its "range". It's one of a group of insect devouring plants, the red blobs on the long leaves being very sticky, insects land, become stuck to the leaf, and the plant then devours the insect! Amazing. Something more amazing though was when Andy (local plant recorder for BSBI see last diary) checked for earlier records he found that a famous local botanist, Mary MacCallam-Webster had found the plant in the same area in 1918! The plant in the picture left is the long-leaved sundew's close relative, the round-leaved sundew Drosera rotundifolia, which is common in this area.

Another old record re-appeared this week. Wandering through a group of stunted Scots pines I could see something bright green on one of the needle covered branches (left). Immediately I knew they were sawflies larvae (like caterpillars), and common old pine sawfly larvae they would have remained if it hadn't have been for making contact with Andrew in Germany via Mark in Edinburgh (don't ask) regarding getting a large female adult sawfly identified (below right). The large fly though impressive in size, turned out to be just the common birch sawfly (or club-horned sawfly) Cimbex femoratus. I did happen to mention though, that I has recently photographed the green sawfly larvae I'd seen and Andrew asked to see the picture. The larvae turned out to be larvae of the pine sawfly Gilpinia pallida , a regular devourer of pine needles, so much so that in some years they can become quite serious pests (if you grow trees commercially that is) stripping trees of all their needles. Andrew kindly sent me a note from the handbook he was using to identify the insect which stated that " JJM King recorded the sawfly in Garten Wood near Loch Garten in 1922"! The same wood where I photographed the larvae eighty-five years later. I'm starting to feel old!

A lot of fungi are now starting to appear, the ground is nicely damp and the air temperature is starting to creep higher. Russulas are common along track-sides and a few waxcaps have popped up on the local football pitch. In some of the old track-side quarries or borrow-pits the first tooth fungi are starting to appear and one very impressive species is Hydnellum peckii, a brilliant Latin name is equalled by a very descriptive English name - bleeding tooth fungus. When young (rear red cap), this fungus has a cap that is covered in little red globules, very blood like, and even more so if rain falls onto the cap and all the globules join up to become a single covering of "blood" on the cap. These fungi have teeth under the cap instead of gills hence the name. This is one of the better specimens I have come across in recent days. Note also how the cap of the fungus has the ability to grow around the sticks that get in its way!

I couldn't resist putting in a picture of our grandson Finlay accompanied by his mum Ruth. The wee man seems to grow a foot every time we see him!

By the way, the sun shone today!

That's it, enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet

late night reflection at Loch Mallachie

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A blog on bogs and delays at the Barry Burn

Did you watch it? Having driven back from Forres listening to Radio 5, I got a bit caught up with the Carnoustie shoot out and at 5 pm assumed that it was all over as Romero took the lead. And then good old "Barry Burn" dropped in so I just had to watch the rest of the drama on the TV. Sort a few pictures for the diary via the software and then it was Casey Stoner time and Moto GP, so another Sunday night diary deadline had come and gone.

The summer season is drowning, few days of warmth and short spells of sun, and no-one has yet seen any chicks from either black grouse or capercaillie. Adam, Natasha and wee Sophie, saw redstarts, crossbills, red & black throated divers and a few crested tits during their week, so the other birds are still getting on with their breeding season. With young birds everywhere, the breeding season is rapidly drawing to a close. But as one reproductive season is just coming to an end, another one is just getting going and this one loves the wetter conditions. You know this new season has arrived when you see people wandering along road verges, looking down, and exiting the forest tracks clutching supermarket carrier bags full of.................chanterelles.

The edible fungi though, are only a tiny part of the important fungi flora growing within Abernethy Forest, and in one way, this is a very sad season regarding this aspect of the reserve. Every year, for the last twenty-five years, I have been involved with some very important people in the fungi recording world. The first of these was Peter Orton (left, my picture but copied from the website below) a major figure in the mycological world. Peter became seriously involved with fungi after realising that many of the big, bright mushrooms he was seeing didn't seem to have names. Whilst working at Rannoch School, he recorded fungi regularly in the nearby Black Wood of Rannoch, spending many hours in the field collecting and recording and even more hours spent looking at fungi spores down the eye-piece of his trusty microscope. More importantly, he described in great detail, what he was finding. The first person to describe and name a species adds their name to the full Latin name given to that species. If you want to see a little of Peter's handiwork, have a look in Roger Phillip's illustrated guide to Mushrooms, by Pan Books. Look at Nolanea lucida Orton, or at Peter's most important Cortinarius group Cortinarius caroviolaceus Orton. The pinewoods of The Black Wood gave Peter a good introduction to pinewood fungi and when he moved to Nethybridge in 1988, he was ideally placed to carry on his work at Abernethy. Peter last visited Abernethy in 2004 in his eighty-eighth year, passing away in April 2005. Peter compiled a list of about 650 different species of fungi from the reserve during his annual visits. For further details of Peter's life visit http://www.exrannoch.com/p8.htm an electronic link that would have somewhat horrified him!

Peter was helped over many years by Gordon Dickson and Ann Leonard (below with Janet), Gordon being a UK expert in the "toothed fungi" like the Hydnellum peckii left, and Ann specialising in the micro world of rusts and moulds. Together this formidible team added greatly to our knowledge of the fungi of Abernethy, and were always great fun to be out in the field with. Gordon, sadly, has been battling a bout of illness since April, and will not be able to visit Abernethy this year, so, for the first time in many years the fungi will be left to their own devices and the shouts of Canth cib, Bol bad and Su var (shortened Latin names) and debates as to who's turn it is to taste one of the hot or bitter fungi to aid identification, will be sadly missed.

In keeping with the wet weather I have been visiting wet habitats this week to carry out a bit of recording. One habitat was a natural system of freshwater runnels where the aim was to re-locate one of Britain's smallest orchids - the bog orchid Hammarbya paludosa . Because of its size (4-12cm high) this wee orchid could be under-recorded, but generally, good botanists know roughly where to look. However, in UK terms I would say that the plant is fairly rare. The map left show records compiled by the Botanical Society of the British Isles since year 2000, each dot confirming a record in that particular 10 km map square. To access the database for all the BSBI maps go to http://www.bsbimaps.org.uk/atlas/ and type in the name of the plant you are interested in. Better still, support the work of the BSBI by joining! The picture right shows the orchid but doesn't really give you an indication of size, the plant pictured is about two inches high - beauty in miniature. This plant is growing in a natural, undisturbed part of Abernethy, close to runnels of spring water running slowly down a hill-side. Not so the next couple of creatures also living in a watery habitat.

In common with many other boggy sites, parts of Abernethy were drained and planted with exotic conifers during the 1970s, when, with tax breaks and somewhat misguided advise from some forestry companies, these wet habitats were seen as "unproductive" and, without the knowledge that we have today of the importance of the bogs, many were badly damaged. Some were just drained and planted and others, more damagingly, were drained, ploughed and planted. One such site was bought by the Society in 1984 from a pension fund and over the next few years the planted trees were removed and I introduced a novel bit of management, log and peat dams which were installed along many of the drains. The changes witnessed, often just overnight, were amazing as dried out bogs filled up again with water and, with time, the natural plant species and sphagnums started to recolonise them. A restored bog with dam in drain can be seen above right, the good thing being that the water level on either side of the dam is roughly at the same level, showing that the series of dams along that particular drain, are doing their job. For bogs to work and develop properly, the water-level has to be maintained as close to the bog surface as possible. The dam in the picture is about twenty years old, not bad to say it is built of peat and wood! Fifteen years later wet woodland restoration became part of a European Union funded LIFE Project and between 1998 to 2002 more work was completed at Abernethy and at three other Scottish sites, see

http://wetwoods.org/wtype_bog.htm and click on Abernethy to see what else we have been getting up to.

The best bits of this repair work came with time and comprised the re-establishment of insectivorous sundews and butterworts, sedges, frogs and toads and some specialist insects, one of which featured in the last but one diary. So, if you don't like spiders, look away now! I did say watch this space and from the female raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus) in that issue carrying her egg sac the season has progressed to where she has now built her nursery web and the eggs have hatched into tiny spiderlings - hundreds of them! A wander through one of the restored bogs last weekend saw many nursery webs so despite the rain, the spider seems to be doing well. The picture shows a big female spider guarding her nursery web and all the little dots below her on the web, inside the "nursery", are the tiny spiderlings. Amazing! I am fully convinced that not many colleagues, despite their involvement, realise just what has been achieved in the bog restoration work.

Another insect (in addition to the midge and mozzie) that has increased massively since this work was completed is the northern coenagrion damselfly (Coenagrion hastulatum), the species the decking viewing platform (earlier diaries) was built for. At least five restored bog areas have become home to this damselfly, an important increase when you see from the distribution map (left) how rare it is. At a few of the Abernethy sites the population is numbered in 10's of pairs so the picture remains quite healthy. The damselfly itself looks almost the same as the common blue damselfly but is easily identified by having green eyes, the common blue has blue eyes. The markings on the first segment of the abdomen is also key to identification.



Whilst photographing the damselfly I also noticed a very pale insect on one of the horsetail stems - it was a damselfly just starting to emerge from its larval case. I was lucky to get the first picture, the damselfly emerged fully within a minute.


I have yet to get a full identification of which species but I will let you know. The first picture was taken at 08.45. Within minutes the damselfly was out and starting to expand its wings and body.

The picture left was taken at 11.00 and shows the wings now fully expanded and starting to colour up and the body is also fully extended. I returned to the site at 17.00 but the damselfly had gone so I retrieved the larval case to aid identification. What an incredible thing to have witnessed and one of the wonders of the insect world.

With the season now well on all the data from the breeding bird survey (BBS) for the BTO was written up and sent in. Over breakfast on Tuesday I witnessed something quite amazing. A thump on the glass doors leading into the garden saw a stunned chaffinch land on the decking. I was just about to get up to pop it into a box to recover, when a sparrowhawk landed, grabbed the bird, looked at me, and was off. The panic generated by the sparrowhawks arrival was probably the reason the chaffinch hit the window, I was quite surprised just how quickly it realised breakfast was lying on the decking!

That's it, happy reading.

Stewart & Janet

Viviperous fesue grass produces plantlets not seed

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Our Uist holiday

Hello and sorry to have missed the last two weeks. As we waved cheerio to Ian and Eidith on the Saturday, we packed our own bags and headed west on the Sunday - Inverness, Loch Ness, a brief stop at Eilean Donan (right), Kyle of Lochalsh, across Skye to the port of Uig in time (just!) for the CalMac ferry to Loch Maddy on North Uist. A short drive to Solas and we were at our cottage, home for the next two weeks. Lapwings, snipe, oystercatchers all visited the garden and the first bird over our heads as we unpacked the car was a male hen harrier - what a place to find, well done Janet. The Uists have to be seen to be believed, waders are everywhere and in amongst the drumming of snipe you can hear the trilling calls of dunlin, and alarm calls of curlew and redshank, indicating that were were visiting just as all of these birds had young, most of which were just about to fledge.

So no wordy diary this week, but a few pictures of some of the highlights and a wee complaint to the Western Isles Council about the lack of deck-chairs on their beaches!

Colour. A lasting memory of any visit to the Uists is the sheer blaze of colour and the scent from the flowers wafting in the breeze. Corn marigolds and buttercups were the main yellow colours.

Views. Huge, open vistas to the west with tiny specks of houses dotted along the skyline. More hilly/mountainous to the east with peat bogs (still cut over for fuel) and heather and eagles! Crofts are still the main agricultural holdings, mostly small scale and some managed to help the corncrake population as well as flowery meadows to support some of the country's rarer bumblebees. Not bees again - sorry, but just a wee mention of one of them.

Beaches. Just a few. Real problems with visitors, occasionally we met someone on OUR beach! Couldn't get a deck-chair anywhere! Walks along the beaches were always different, sandy, shelly, pebbly occasionally rocky. Common gulls, arctic, common and little terns overhead, ringed plover running ahead of you, leading you away from nearby chicks. With every tide the shoreline changes and we were happy walking for mile after mile intrigued by the natural art created by the mix of wind, water, seaweed and shells. And the shells differ from beach to beach, limpets on some, razor shells on another, cockles and winkles on others, the mix of shells here were seen on Eriskay. It is from the breaking down of these shells that the famous flowery machair originates, the shells create lime rich soils which support the amazing variety of flowers.

On one of outing we popped in to see Bill Neill, a wildlife artist based in South Uist ( http://www.swla.co.uk/SWLAmembers/neillw/NeillW.htm ). Bill is an expert on the bees of the Uists and has a link to our last trip to the islands last year, when a small bee that I managed to catch, turned out to be the Northern Colletes bee (Colletes floralis). This bee lives in the sand dune habitat along the coast, living in loose colonies and digging into the sand to create a breeding chamber. The bee is very rare and its main stronghold is the Uists. Having caught the bee Bill checked out the general area of the capture on Eriskay, and found a small breeding colony. http://www.snh.org.uk/scottish/species/invertebrates/colletes.asp So part of the visit this year was to look for more colonies as we wandered along the sand dunes. On Eriskay we located 9 colonies, another one on the Balranald RSPB reserve, and holes at two other sites that look like the bees excavations, but, without any sun during the visits, no bees were seen. Watch this space!

How about that! Whilst waiting for the ferry from Berneray to Harris, an otter popped up right by the causeway joining Berneray to North Uist. We went, without the car over to Leverburgh in Harris, had an enjoyable walk and returned on the ferry in mid-afternoon. Otters were still visible, and, thanking Janet for her patience, I disappeared onto the causeway to see if I could get a picture of one. An adult appeared, diving for butterfish, close to the ferry, and each time it dived I got into a better position amongst the rocks on the causeway. Unbelievably, the otter surfaced amongst the seaweed covered rocks just below me and continued fishing. Eventually it hauled out of the water and I got the picture I had hoped for. We also had an otter in the garden of the cottage!

It is nice to see that a few more of the derelict "black houses" around the islands are being restored either as tourist accommodation or, better still, as places of residence. One of the earliest restoration projects took place on Prince Charles's favourite island of Berneray, in the form of the youth hostel (left). Close to the youth hostel a group of four properties have been restored and elsewhere there are more to be seen. The thatch has been sourced sustainably from the lime grass growing on the local sand dunes. I have no doubt the houses are now much more comfortable to live in that when the previous inhabitants lived there.

A few butterfly species were seen, red admiral, painted lady, green-veined white, common blue and dark green fritillary, and at one stop Janet spotted this pair of six-spot burnet moths. The orchids are also just about everywhere on the machair but I won't try to name them all correctly, various forms of common species have developed on the islands. The frog orchid (left) is usually found on the shorter cropped grasslands on the dunes. In some of the damper fields we came across varying quantities of lesser butterfly orchids. At two sites there were so many butterfly orchids that we had to stop and do a count to add to the information Scottish Natural Heritage is gathering on the numbers and distribution of this vanilla smelling orchid.

One of the main incomes on the islands comes from the sea, lobsters, scallops, fish farming and fishing. At almost every small harbour we visited there were piles of lobster pots showing that, with the rocky make-up of the west coast, lobsters must be plentiful. We have always wanted to try lobster but have been put off by the enormous cost of ordering lobster in a restaurant and, without "training" knowing how to break up the shell to get at the meat. Visiting one harbour Janet spotted a shop and found that within a smallish lobster could be bought for a mere £4! So we bought one and, with guidance from the lady in the shop, set off home to try our first lobster. It was delicious, but we were a little worried when we compared the amount of shell shed to extract a smallish amount of meat.

So a great couple of weeks, lots of wonderful memories, tons of pictures, just a pity that it was back to work today!

Happy reading

Stewart & Janet

cotton grass on a windy moor

starlings and cattle

short-eared owl hunting

All photos © Stewart Taylor