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 th
e 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 formi
dible 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 or
chids - 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, man
y 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 ri
ght, 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, seehttp://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 comple
ted is the northern coenagrion damselfly (Coenagrion h
astulatum), 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 larv
al 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
