Gotcha – but it took 126 years!

Let’s get the weather out of the way first.  Okay, so the south of England has been dry but so has this part of the world and March only produced 6.8mm of rain so lots of days out without having to worry about waterproofs.  19 days were completely rain free so lots of mosses and winter fungi were desperate for a bit of wetness.  The most amazing fact though was that this part of the UK was the warmest part of Britain (and near Europe) over several days late in the month with Deeside setting a new Scottish record for March of 24 degrees C.  According to Strathspey Weather (http://www.strathspeyweather.co.uk/index.html ) there were 126 hours of sunshine during the month, a monthly total beaten on only13 occasions over all months in the last 5 years.  All the heat meant that lots of plants were flowering early and larch and birch trees were bursting their buds by 31^st.  There were even signs of blaeberry flowers appearing – fully a month early, not too sure what the blaeberry bumblebee (Bombus monticola) will think of that when it emerges in late April.  A few butterflies also responded and

 there were records of small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock in the local area and quite a few moths were on the wing when driving along the forest roads in the early evening darkness.  Crossbill surveyor Bob ran a moth trap during this warm spell and along with the usual hebrew characters (left) and brindled beauties were engrailed, red sword-grass and in one nights catch 9 Red Data Book (RDB) Rannoch sprawlers (right) almost as many as I recorded (12) over five years of moth trapping on Abernethy Reserve on the edge of Tulloch Moor.  Perhaps the most amazing record was of a four-spotted chaser dragonfly zooming through the garden on 27^th the earliest record ever for the Highland Biological Recording Centre’s database.  The dry weather though wasn’t good news for the local farm wader population with all the wet hollows essential for bird breeding success dry enough to be accessible; most had been destroyed by ploughing before the months end.  Well, we do need to feed the world – but at what cost to wildlife?

A visit to daughter Ruth’s early in the month lead to quite a nice find.  RSPB Insh Marshes reserve on the way back produced the usual groups of whooper swans and grey lag geese and a few young aspens by the B970 were covered in the strange mite galls (Aceria populi) found way back in December.  My destination though was the Forestry Commission woodland at Inshriach and the wonderfully lime-rich rock-face to see if I had missed any Solorina lichens on my earlier visit.  On the way in I checked the willow Colin had found with a small population of green shield-moss capsules a year earlier, and there were a few new ones present, but only 3 compared to the dozen or so on the 2011 visit.  A wander along the base of the rock outcrop failed to find any

 Solorina lichens but a group of crustose (raised disc shaped in appearance) lichens (below left) looked like something  I had recorded elsewhere though didn’t look quite right so a small sample was taken to check.  On a wetter bit of rock the first flowers of purple saxifrage were just appearing a brilliant splash of colour from one of our earliest flowering plants.  Back home and the lichen certainly wasn’t the species I had recorded elsewhere so I set it up outside to get a better set of photos just in case I could get help to identify it, and with that the wee sample was left in the Petri dish and sort of forgotten about.  A couple of weeks later after another outing elsewhere, I was flicking through the photos on British Lichens (http://www.britishlichens.co.uk/speciesgallery.html ) trying to find something else I needed to identify when I came a cross a photo of a lichen that looked very like my sample from the rock-face, an RDB species which, if you know the species when you see it, shouldn’t be collected!  So photo and email was sent off to Brian who was 99% sure my ID was correct, but would need to check the sample to be 100% sure, and a few days later Gyalecta ulmi (Elm Gyalecta) was confirmed, a record from a completely new location.  The problem this lichen has faced in recent decades is hinted at in both its Latin and common name – and its link to elm trees and their decline due to Dutch elm disease.  Most known sites are now on dry, shaded, lime-rich, north facing rock faces with one site near Loch Ness on a surviving ancient wych elm, so it was nice to add a new location for this under-threat species.  Could there be more?  A visit to the Solorina rich ex-lime quarries near Grantown failed to find any but did produce lots of nicely developing frog spawn.  Geologist Donald had suggested that there might be another lime-rich quarry near Kincraig and after a bit of searching I found it producing the biggest population of Solorina saccata I’ve seen to date (right), but what was the crustose lichen growing in several places on the bare rock?  More elm gyalecta?  Hmm, not too sure, the rock in places was wet, some lichens were in full sun, and once the photos were checked at home the central part of the lichen’s disc was more of an orange colour.  Another email to Brian and on this occasion I received a very simple guide as to the difference between G. ulmi and the close relative I had just found G. jenensis.  The rare one looks like tiny raspberry jam tarts and the commoner one like tiny apricot jam tarts!  Now that beats ID via microscopes any day!  Apart from the Solorina the find of this quarry outing was a small population of a tiny Peltigera – P. venosa.

During the winter there have been hundreds of Iceland gulls in various places along the Scottish coast-line but it was down to chalet visitors Richard and Margaret at the beginning of the month to find any locally.  On their way back from Aviemore they saw up to three in a field being ploughed by the B970, along with the black-headed gulls.  We passed the field the next day on our way to our weekly grandson-sitting session but the field was empty and I thought that was that as far as catching up with the rare visitors.  Duty done, we headed back home but popped into the recycling centre at Grainish with some wood and an old car trailer.  Once the wood was deposited in the skip we had to head to the scrape metal recycling yard via the road that takes you passed the landfill site.  On our way back our timing was perfect, and as another load of refuse was deposited all the gulls were up and scavenging for food scraps.  Despite there being 60+ gulls in the air an all white one was pretty obvious particularly as it circled and then perched on a high point on the edge of the

landscaped section of the tip.  As the large bulldozer worked away at levelling and landscaping the refuse the gulls circled and it looked like there were at least two Iceland gulls in amongst all the other big gulls and black-headed gulls.  The wee camera with its 40mm lens was only able to take a token picture as a record but perhaps it would be worth returning the following day with the telephoto lens.  Tomorrow however, turned out to be Saturday so first there was a chalet to
prepare and as I rolled up at the landfill site at 1pm it didn’t look like any refuse had been dumped that day and consequently there were hardly any gulls but, very obligingly, there was a single Iceland gull on the same high-point perch as the day before!  As I waited a few more gulls visited and circled including a second Iceland gull, but with little food available none were hanging around, so with a few photos in the camera and the smell getting a little unbearable, I headed off home.  I took the route along the B970 just in case the gulls were anywhere near the ploughed fields (nil) but at Loch Pityoulish there were three cormorants perched in their usual dead tree on the promontory on the edge of the loch. 

When I got home there was a message on the answer-phone about good numbers of curlews in the yet to be ploughed fields between the village and the River Spey at Broomhill bridge, so with the big lens still on the camera I drove down to have a look.  In the fields before Coulnakyle there were at least 20 feeding and between Coulnakyle and the bridge another 60 (right), all mixed in with lapwings, oystercatchers and black-headed gulls – quite a sight.  A similar spectacle occurs between Dulnain Bridge and Carr Bridge in the fields along the minor road known as Carr Road.  No doubt these birds had just arrived in the Strath and were making the most of good feeding sites before spreading out to their individual territories to breed.  With the good weather throughout the month I was encountering curlews well out on the hills by 21 March and on the visit that produced the frog spawn in the old lime quarries near Grantown, mating curlews were seen in typical damp, heathery hillside habitat.  Of note have been the high numbers of pink-footed geese in the area right through the month.  A few were regularly encountered in the Insh Marshes area with several hundred in the fields between Nethybridge and Grantown and similar figures in the fields along the Carr Road mentioned above.  With the warm weather grass has been growing and farmers have been busy letting off the odd shot gun cartridge or physically driving into the fields to get the geese to move on to try and save grass for their own stock.  When you add a few hundred pink-feet to the now resident flocks of feral grey-lags the grazing pressure from the geese on a few favoured fields is quite high and though there will be a sigh of relief when the pinks move on north, there is a building problem from the ever increasing numbers of breeding grey-lags.  A late afternoon visit to see how many pink-feet remained by the Carr Road on the 30^th revealed around 300 but in one of the ploughed and sown fields right by the road was a sitting oystercatcher (right), fingers crossed for fair weather for the next few weeks of incubation.

The night-time heavens were quite amazing all month long with the two planets Venus and Jupiter dominating the western sky between dusk and 10-11pm.  Side by side in the sky but millions of miles apart in reality the two planets glowed like a couple of car headlights on clear frosty nights.  They were at their closest (conjunction) over a few nights around 12-13 March as they “passed” each other, Jupiter highest in the partnership up to 13^th with Venus taking top spot after that as they slowly drifted apart.  But it wasn’t over quite yet and on 22^nd the new crescent moon appeared right next to them for a couple of nights before getting brighter and drifting further above the planets as the month ended.  With a few clouds around on the night when the planets were closest meant that I had to wait for another night to photograph them so with frost forecast the next night I headed to the shore of Loch Garten  in the hope that the water would be still enough to allow planets in the sky with a possible reflection in the water – well, it sort of worked (left above).  A whiff of wind and the tiny ripples meant that the reflection wobbled up and down a lot, and when I heard a splash to my left and then a series of mini-waves, I thought I had a goldeneye diving close by – in the dark?  The mini-waves settled down and then there was another plop to my right and in came the waves again.  Torch on, a couple of coughs and hopefully the culprit would move away and sure enough, everything settled down.  A short while later and it was time to walk back to the road and drive round to the head of the loch to see what the planets looked like from there.  As I put the car headlights on I could see a set of wet tracks heading right across the road in front of me, my feeding goldeneye turned out to be an otter.  Brilliant!  The planets couldn’t be seen from the head of the loch so it was time to head home to warm up.  On the night that the moon joined the group I took a quick photo from the drive of the house (left), just ahead of the moon and Jupiter disappearing behind the trees.  It is amazing just how quickly these celestial bodies are moving, try focusing a camera with a decent telephoto lens on the moon or a planet and just see how quickly you will need to move the camera to keep the object in the middle of the lens.  It all starts again in May 2013, but the planets then won’t be very high above the horizon, setting shortly after sunset. 

I next have a tale about a sewing machine, the one that was a present to Janet a few years ago but one day decided to jump off the sewing room table, fatally injuring itself.  The machine was bought in Keith (Banffshire) and right next to the town is a brilliant wood which has featured in this diary once before – Mill Wood, so I was a very willing volunteer to return the sewing machine to the shop for repair.  On the day the machine was to be delivered the weather was quite poor so I decided to pay a visit to Auchindoun Castle, built on a lime-rich rock outcrop (right).  The castle ruin is well worth a visit but the rocks failed to provide any lichen records of note so I wandered back down the hill and headed off to the bridge over the River Spey at Carron, near Aberlour.  Here, a very unusual lichen grows on submerged rocks – in the river!  I didn’t have precise details of where this lichen – river jelly lichen (Collema dichotomum) had been seen previously but one note said “under the bridge at Carron” so this is where I headed.  This is a very popular spot for fishermen and sure enough, there were a couple flicking their rods and flies out across the water.  Under the bridge the bedrock forms the base for the bridge supports and all over the rocks, in and just above the water-line was a strange, green leafy type lichen (right), a bit like a stubby seaweed.  Surely this couldn’t be the rare lichen I had read about, but it was in the water and it was under the bridge.  The lichen is too rare to be collected (RDB and licence needed) so lots of photos were taken (left) before heading off home to check out what I had seen.  Thankfully, Plantlife have produced an online pdf file about the lichen (see http://www.plantlife.org.uk/uploads/documents/PLINKS%20River%20Jelly%20Lichen%20Course%20notes%202008%20FINAL.pdf ) and it was obvious from the first page that I hadn’t found it.  However, the document also lists other lichens found with river jelly lichen and on page nine I found the species I had photographed - Dermatocarpon luridum.  Amazingly this species isn’t shown on the NBN database despite being so close to a rare species growing on one rock nearby in the river!

So the sewing machine had been delivered and a week later it needed to be collected, and, the sun was shining.  11am and I was heading for Mill Wood, an SSSI for its botanical interest and mixed broadleaved woodland, but of archaeological interest is its industrial sized lime kiln (right).  I had forgotten that this was a wood dominated by hazel and with all my recent finds in local hazel woods, I got a bit side-tracked initially stopping to check too many that I passed, but quite interesting to see a slightly different lichen flora to that in Strathspey.  The map I had seen on “Grab a Grid Ref” (a brilliant site) showed an old quarry, inside the woodland, the source of the lime for the kiln, but outside the boundary of the SSSI, so this had to be the target during the visit to the site.  A tiny burn runs through the wood with its origins in the old quarry, so this was the line to follow zigzagging in and out of the trees along the way.  The leaves of woodruff plants (right) were just appearing along with those of celandine and wood sorrel, but overall this visit was just too early for botanising.  Interestingly, when compared to entries in my notebook from visits to my local hazel stands, there were few records of note from the rocks by the burn or the trees along the way, though the amazing alder tongue fungus (Taphrina alni) was found.  A few mounds of tussock sedge (Carex stricta) were present in the flooded base of the quarry but little else of note was found so I turned round and started to make my way back down the burn following a sort of “path” possibly created by the passage of sheep.  I had followed the same path in so wasn’t it lucky that I followed it out again because there, by the side of the “path” was rough horsetail (Equisetum hyemale left) and a wee bell in my head was tinkling.  Photo taken and GPS location recorded I made my way back to the car via the amazing lime kiln so well hidden within the woodland, but falling down and badly in need of a bit of TLC.  An email to Andy, the BSBI County Recorder for the woodland area about my horsetail find, let me know why the bell had been tinkling in my head.  The last time this plant had been recorded in the wood was in 1886 some 126 years ago!  I then remembered my last visit of a few years ago was to try and find this very plant but without success.

So, no room to discuss the England rugby team’s recent exploits (but well done) or to tell you about the first woodcock
roding on the 18^th, the brilliant Inverfarigaig Glen or the realisation how good some of our juniper bushes are for rare lichens.  I can tell you though that whilst out with grandson Archie a funny pink thing on an ash twig caught my eye and I managed to identify it as Marchandiomyces aurantiacus a bonny wee thing which is known as a lichenicolous fungus and is living on the grey coloured lichen in the photo (Physcia adscendens).  This record was, at the time, the most northerly in Britain and a new species for Highland Region so thank you Archie.

Diary work in progress with new Google Blogger layout!
Enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet 

 A neat little jumping spider on my jacket

Rooks over local rookery

Wood ant squirting formic acid as I photograph brown shiled-moss

All photos © Stewart Taylor