It's been a good couple of weeks with progress on the BTO Bird Atlas front and with a couple of searches for "lost" plants. Roving recording for birds has seen visits to Loch Garten, Grantown on Spey, Loch an Eilean and a walk home from Boat of Garten. The general picture is that the breeding season is getting underway, although a bit delayed over the last few days due to adverse weather! Curlews, lapwings and oystercatchers are now back in numbers and it was nice to see a flock of 120 golden plover in the fields below Tomachrochar last weekend. These are newly arriving birds, feeding on the low-lying fields before heading off to the hills to breed. Black-headed gulls are also everywhere and the numbers of song thrushes continues to grow with one in the garden just a couple of days ago, a first for 2008. I also had my first meadow pipit locally on 16 March and Brian, our chalet guest had a red-throated diver on Loch Morlich yesterday whilst looking for the recently sighted ring-necked duck.
A few weeks ago Andy, a work colleague, just happened to mention that he had a few old records of plants growing fairly locally, that hadn't been seen for quite a few years - a challenge I couldn't refuse. Andy is the plant recorder for the old county of Banff for the BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) as well as a BSBI Council Member, and part of his role is to maintain an up to date plant list for that county as well as check through thousands of old plant records to ensure all are listed on the county database. Any doubtful records are listed as such until someone has checked them out, not easy when some records go back to the late 1800s. BSBI maintains a very good website and it is well worth a visit if you want to know anything about our current knowledge of plant distribution within Britain (http://www.bsbi.org.uk/index.html). The challenge? To check out a few sites for Dutch rush (Equisetum hyemale) and a single site for interrupted clubmoss (Lycopodium annotinum). The former has a scatter of sites throughout Britain but you will need to visit Scotland if you want to see the latter - check out the BSBI tetrad maps. Dutch rush (left) is a plant I have searched for locally but have failed to find though I did re-locate a si
te near Inverness which hadn't been recorded since the mid-1970s. The site near Inverness is a little odd in that the plants are growing on a wall rather than in a damp wood and there are just a few stems compared to the thousands that been recorded at other sites. Oddly named the plant is not confined to Holland nor is it a rush, but its other names explain it better - rough horsetail and scouring rush and its Latin name is even more helpful Equus = horse and setum = bristle and hyemale = winter. The non-flowering stems do look like rushes and as the Latin name indicates, they remain evergreen, so the plant that is easy to look for in the winter. The family Equisetum is the single surviving genus of a class of primitive vascular plants that date back to the mid-Devonian period (350 + million years ago), giant versions of which produce the coal deposits of today! The Dutch link comes from the fact that the plant stems have a high silica content and the Dutch folk used to gather the stems, tie them into bundles, and use them as pan scourers. The plant is listed alongside the ferns in plant books, though they aren't ferns and like the ferns, reproduces itself by means of spores. I digress. Armed 
with a series of known last locations I set off towards Forres and then on to Keith. At the first site, right by the River Findhorn, I was greeted by thousands of plants, at last I had seen it, in quantity, in its typical haunt. The second site was also on the River Findhorn but lower down the river and at this site there were even more plants but with evidence of tree planting near by. A few trees are fine but too many and the plant will struggle to survive. The third site near Keith hadn't been checked since the 1970s, well not by anyone who forwarded their records, so I didn't know what to expect. The site was by a small burn by a farm track and glory be it was still there, again, with thousands of plants on display (above right). I pushed my luck a bit by going to a fourth site where the last record dated from 1890 and apart from a pleasant wander round a damp wood I didn't see the horsetail. To see a little more about the Equisetum's go to http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Equisetum.pdf.
te near Inverness which hadn't been recorded since the mid-1970s. The site near Inverness is a little odd in that the plants are growing on a wall rather than in a damp wood and there are just a few stems compared to the thousands that been recorded at other sites. Oddly named the plant is not confined to Holland nor is it a rush, but its other names explain it better - rough horsetail and scouring rush and its Latin name is even more helpful Equus = horse and setum = bristle and hyemale = winter. The non-flowering stems do look like rushes and as the Latin name indicates, they remain evergreen, so the plant that is easy to look for in the winter. The family Equisetum is the single surviving genus of a class of primitive vascular plants that date back to the mid-Devonian period (350 + million years ago), giant versions of which produce the coal deposits of today! The Dutch link comes from the fact that the plant stems have a high silica content and the Dutch folk used to gather the stems, tie them into bundles, and use them as pan scourers. The plant is listed alongside the ferns in plant books, though they aren't ferns and like the ferns, reproduces itself by means of spores. I digress. Armed 
with a series of known last locations I set off towards Forres and then on to Keith. At the first site, right by the River Findhorn, I was greeted by thousands of plants, at last I had seen it, in quantity, in its typical haunt. The second site was also on the River Findhorn but lower down the river and at this site there were even more plants but with evidence of tree planting near by. A few trees are fine but too many and the plant will struggle to survive. The third site near Keith hadn't been checked since the 1970s, well not by anyone who forwarded their records, so I didn't know what to expect. The site was by a small burn by a farm track and glory be it was still there, again, with thousands of plants on display (above right). I pushed my luck a bit by going to a fourth site where the last record dated from 1890 and apart from a pleasant wander round a damp wood I didn't see the horsetail. To see a little more about the Equisetum's go to http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Equisetum.pdf. The interrupted clubmoss check on the other hand was a much more straight forward outing, a site from the 1990s complete with GPS location. Locally, this plant is fou
nd most easily on the open slopes of Cairngorm but, following finding a site in the woods close to Loch Mallachie, a few more low-level, woodland sites have been found. Within Abernethy several members of the Clubmoss family occur: Fir, Stagshorn, Alpine, Issler's (Diphasiastrum complanatum) and Lesser (Selaginella selaginoides). As its name implies the stems of the interrupted clubmoss are "interrupted" with usually a slight 'waist' halfway up the stem, hopefully visible in the picture right. The trip was successful and the patch, about one metre by two metres, continues to thrive. During the summer a 'cone' appears on the tip of each stem carrying the reproductive spore-capsules.
nd most easily on the open slopes of Cairngorm but, following finding a site in the woods close to Loch Mallachie, a few more low-level, woodland sites have been found. Within Abernethy several members of the Clubmoss family occur: Fir, Stagshorn, Alpine, Issler's (Diphasiastrum complanatum) and Lesser (Selaginella selaginoides). As its name implies the stems of the interrupted clubmoss are "interrupted" with usually a slight 'waist' halfway up the stem, hopefully visible in the picture right. The trip was successful and the patch, about one metre by two metres, continues to thrive. During the summer a 'cone' appears on the tip of each stem carrying the reproductive spore-capsules. During March we are starting to get onto familiar ground. Whilst out marking a couple of logs where the green shield-moss (Buxbaumia viridis) has been found previously and in the potential line of a new electric deer fence, I visited a couple of pools which I found last year, home to loads of 
frogs. I wasn't disappointed and the croaking warned me that the frogs were in residence well before I reached the pools. The pools are in an area of woodland where a large stand of exotic conifers was felled a couple of years ago, the pools being created by the wheels of heavy timber extraction machinery. Having removed the conifers the site is now being prepared for small scale tree planting operations, aspen trees initially, the electrified fence keeping the resident deer out of the site. Deer don't like crossing electrified fences, so, rather than a six-foot deer fence, with all the problems this creates for capercaillie and black grouse (flying into fence), a three wire electric fence is being installed to no more than stock fence height, to do the job. Watch this space. My aim of visiting the pools was to try and photograph the mating frogs but, to get close enough, I first had to disturb them meaning that all of them disappeared under the water. So I got 
myself, camera and tripod into place and waited. It then started to rain quite heavily so out came my umbrella to keep me and my camera dry. At this stage I was hoping that no one was watching me, man in wellies with camera under umbrella sitting on edge of puddle in freezing rain - not moving! After about twenty minutes the first frogs head appeared and the rain stopped but I dared not move to take the umbrella down. A few more minutes and a few more heads appeared. Ten more minutes and the sun was trying to shine and a few more heads appeared and the frogs started to croak again. The pool was alive with frogs some as singles, some as pairs. I counted sixty, so there had to be several more than that. The end of the pool where I was seated was where all the frog spawn was and it was around the spawn that the bulk of the frogs congregated, probably adding to mass of spawn. It was brilliant, after an hour I had my pictures but my feet were frozen and I had to move. Sorry frogs!
frogs. I wasn't disappointed and the croaking warned me that the frogs were in residence well before I reached the pools. The pools are in an area of woodland where a large stand of exotic conifers was felled a couple of years ago, the pools being created by the wheels of heavy timber extraction machinery. Having removed the conifers the site is now being prepared for small scale tree planting operations, aspen trees initially, the electrified fence keeping the resident deer out of the site. Deer don't like crossing electrified fences, so, rather than a six-foot deer fence, with all the problems this creates for capercaillie and black grouse (flying into fence), a three wire electric fence is being installed to no more than stock fence height, to do the job. Watch this space. My aim of visiting the pools was to try and photograph the mating frogs but, to get close enough, I first had to disturb them meaning that all of them disappeared under the water. So I got 
myself, camera and tripod into place and waited. It then started to rain quite heavily so out came my umbrella to keep me and my camera dry. At this stage I was hoping that no one was watching me, man in wellies with camera under umbrella sitting on edge of puddle in freezing rain - not moving! After about twenty minutes the first frogs head appeared and the rain stopped but I dared not move to take the umbrella down. A few more minutes and a few more heads appeared. Ten more minutes and the sun was trying to shine and a few more heads appeared and the frogs started to croak again. The pool was alive with frogs some as singles, some as pairs. I counted sixty, so there had to be several more than that. The end of the pool where I was seated was where all the frog spawn was and it was around the spawn that the bulk of the frogs congregated, probably adding to mass of spawn. It was brilliant, after an hour I had my pictures but my feet were frozen and I had to move. Sorry frogs! I've been in the forest bogs again, that little appreciated wet habitat within
the bigger forest and full of diddy trees, small, but also very old. I visited this particular bog as I walked back from Boat of Garten, I seemed to remember having seen fir clubmoss there in the past, a plant that isn't that common on the reserve. This bog was much better than I remembered it, stunted trees but lots of small pools with open water. It was along the edge of this bog that myself and John Miles, Osprey Warden in 1980, installed the first log and peat dams to block up the drains carrying masses of water out of the bog. The dams are still there! I couldn't find the clubmoss but I did see lots of new flowering 
shoots of cotton grass (left & right) but with their less obvious white/yellow flowering heads rather than the white cotton seed heads that will appear in May. It is the sphagnum moss that is the real boiler-room of these bogs, the moss acting like a sponge holding and raising water-levels above the surface of the peat, and the growing and decaying of moss along with plants adding to the development of new peat. 
Bog pine and pool system, a return visit will be needed later in the year to see which dragonflies are on site and to see if there are any of the special bog flowers growing. Perhaps sphagna also.
The ants are getting active again and, before the weather made its dramatic change, many of the big wood ant nests were covered with a mass of ants as the first spring sun warmed their nests and the ants mingled together on the nest cap.
The snow during the last few days will have had them scurrying back into the warmer depths. I hope we see them again soon.
Yes, as with much of the rest of the UK we have had snow, snow and more s
now. An inch or two a day since 20 March, overcast skies, and windy at times which saw a few drifts developing on the roads. Six or seven yellowhammers, thirty to forty chaffinches, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds, woodpigeons, rooks, jackdaws have piled into the garden during the last few days and the wonderful show of snowdrops and crocuses have disappeared below a white blanket. I dug the vegetable patch in the hope of planting the onion setts early - no chance. Minus 6 degrees C forecast tonight, and the Holden clan due tomorrow for a week, I hope things warm up a bit so that Great Gran Holden 
can get round to see everyone. A few visits have been made to the outer reaches of the forest since the snow arrived in the hope that the sun might bless me with its rays and help to brighten the scene. It didn't quite happen so the colour photo has reverted to a sort of monochrome but under these conditions you realise how scattered the Scots pines are once you get out towards Ryvoan bothy and Ryvoan Pass. The snow out here is knee high so a few days yet before we see the meadow pipits arrive on site. Despite the snow black grouse have been lekking and dippers could already be on eggs. Brrr...That's it, enjoy the read.
Stewart & Janet
Crocuses before the snow arrived
Happy Easter
All photos © Stewart Taylor
All photos © Stewart Taylor
