Bennachie Weekend

First weekend in November, it must be the Haddo Christmas Fair, organised by the National Trust for Scotland. The run up to this two-day event started for Janet just after the summer holidays, with her little sewing machine working all hours to ensure there was enough tweedcrafts to keep her stall well stocked for the duration of the weekend. So, on the 2nd, and with the car filled to the gunnels, we headed over to the agricultural heartland of Aberdeenshire, stopping off at daughter Laura’s for lunch along the way. This craft fair attracts artisans from across Scotland and there were greetings from a few regulars as we parked by the

Haddo House theatre to unpack and set up the stall in readiness for the 10-o-clock start on Saturday. Duty done, it was back to Laura’s for the night and to Michelin star fare expertly prepared by Douglas. Once again the fair hit a weekend of frosty weather with brilliantly sunny days and once Janet and Laura were happy that the stall was ready for the hoards it was time for me to say cheerio and head off into the surrounding countryside. The wee bit of searching of family background covered in the October diary linked to Granny Ross had lead me, via her birth certificate, to her place of birth, Balbithan on the outskirts of Kintore, not that far from Haddo

House. Being in the general area and knowing that Kintore was on the way to Bennachie/Mither Tap where I had planned my day out, I thought it would be interesting to see whether the farmhouse of West Balbithan still survived. According to the current OS map it did and was located at the end of a track leading to East and West Balbithan and sure enough, when I drove along the minor road towards Kintore, an old signpost by the road pointed the way to the two houses. I parked the car in a layby at the end of the track and decided to walk to the house intending to politely enquire from anyone in residence whether I had found the right house. East Balbithan was modernised but generally as it would have been in Granny’s time. Passing a group of farm buildings (Granny’s parents were farmers) West Balbithan started to appear, but the old farmhouse was

now a group of buildings comprising several let properties, with several more modern buildings in the immediate area. Knocking on a few doors produced no response so I took a few photos before following the track back to the car. My Granny moved over to Deeside when she married whilst other members of her immediate family remained in the farming community close to Kintore. Life could have been very different if she hadn’t made that move all those years ago. The hill that dominates the Aberdeenshire landscape was visible in the distance – time to head in that direction.

The Forestry Commission car park at the start of the path to Bennachie was busy as usual, and not having climbed many hills in recent months the stroll upwards would be quite interesting, particularly as the reason for avoiding the hills was knee and hip protection. The hill though looked inviting and I was interested to see

if there were any unusual plants or lichens around the summit rock outcrop at just over the 500 metres contour. Either side of the track a massive forestry thinning operation had recently taken place. Although heaps of brash and stumps looked quite a mess if the removal of the spruces was to allow natural woodland to develop in its place, that would be a good thing, allowing a lot more light into the wood and track heading up the hill. The climb is quite easy really with the biggest test the repaired path up the steepest sections where pitching had created a series of “steps”, a good test for the thighs! Close to the top I cut off to the right and went to check another rock outcrop where cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) and fir clubmoss (Huperzia selago) were growing along with the usual mix of rock lichens. Approaching the top of Mither Tap (as the main summit of the Bennachie group is called) from the “back” leads you to a sheer face of rock but with a small amount of scree below, just the sort of place to have a root around. Hanging from the rock faces and in

small patches on the ground was the hair-like lichen Bryoria fuscescens and in other places a tight, spiky ball type lichen Cetraria muricata. Just time for a summit photo (above right) before heading off back to Haddo in time for the close of the first day of the Fair. Day two was again very frosty and the car park at Haddo was, in places, a bit like a skating rink. Just time for a helping hand to remove the covers from the stall before heading off to spend the day in the grounds of Haddo House. Previous visits had turned up many galls associated with oak and beech, so the targets today would be a tiny fungus growing on fallen beech mast (nuts, above left) and wee growths actually on the lichens on tree branches and twigs which are known as Lichenicolous fungi (non-lichenised fungi growing on lichens, all very complex, too much to try and describe here.). Wandering along one of the lesser used tracks lots of elder bushes were present, all with twigs covered in lichens but

none had been parasitised by the non-lichenised fungi, however in the woodland beyond I could see several huge, ancient beech trees which looked interesting. A bit of rooting around amongst the fallen leaves and beech mast and I quickly found what I was looking for; a beech mast with several small, white fungi growing from it. More rooting around produced several more, the tiny fungus going by the name of Hymenoscyphus fagineus. Leaving the beech tree and heading for a group of mature oaks I came upon several sapling ash trees and the twigs immediately caught my eye as they were covered in the right sort of lichens for the non-lichenised fungi. And sure enough there were a few groups of tiny red dots growing on what I call a spiky lichen (above right), one with long hair-like structures at the end of each lobe known as cilia. This lichen was Physcia tenella, a common lichen, and one of the main species to be regularly parasitised by a brilliantly named growth called Illosporiopsis christiansenii. Despite having found Illosporiopsis all over the place close to Nethybridge this appeared to be the first time it had

been recorded in Aberdeenshire. To show just how overlooked it was I also found some growing on lichens on a nearby beech twig. The amazing spiral spores of I. christiansenii are shown left.  By early afternoon the temperature had dropped and the frost was setting in. As I started to make my way back towards the big house I flushed a buzzard from the base of a wall running parallel to a small burn and immediately I could see the bird had something wrong with it as it almost ended up in the water. Slowly, I walked up to it and it was so weak that there was little resistance as I bent down to pick it up. There was no food in its crop and the bird’s breast-bone was sticking out like the bow of a ship, it had obviously not eaten for quite a while. Thankfully I always carry a black bin-liner for occasions like this, though quite often they are used to bag dead birds of prey. The buzzard was carefully wrapped so that it could be carried back to the car without attracting any attention. Back at the car the bagged buzzard was left as comfortable as possible in the passenger foot-well before I returned to the craft fair just in time to mingle with the last of the visitors ahead of packing up the stall. Back at Laura’s the shattered sales team

were able to relax over a cuppa whilst I went out to check on the buzzard, but the bird, sadly, had died. Arriving back in Nethybridge the following day I had just got into the house when the phone rang to ask if I could attend a meeting with a registered osteopath in Inverness as part of the insurance claim following our car crash OVER A YEAR AGO! No wonder our insurance premiums are so expensive. Perfect timing as the buzzard could be delivered to the Scottish Agricultural College vets to see why the bird had died, and a few weeks later it was revealed that a form of pneumonia was the cause.

A few days in the first half of the month were spent checking local oak stands to see what galls were visible before the leaves parted company with the trees. No more knopper galls were found but in some of the stands foraging jays were present. Checking amongst the fallen leaves for galls I encountered a few spindly,

tiny fragile fungi belonging to the group called Mycena, growing from the main veins on some leaves. Time to put my training with Liz last month to the test. This wouldn’t be too easy without the fungal identification books which I have yet to buy, but on the internet there is a brilliant guide called A Key to the Mycenas of Norway, (http://home.online.no/~araronse/Mycenakey/list.htm ) describing 120 species, with photos and microscopic descriptions. The laborious bit is having to check each of the species individually, but eventually you can narrow the identification down to one or two species. Then the tricky work is needed to carefully slice out one of the tiny gills, and then if that wasn’t enough, the gill then has to be cut into tiny slivers before squashing a couple of the slivers on a glass slide and checking under the microscope. A couple of hours later the fungus turned out to be Mycena smithiana with the view down the microscope producing amazing

views of tiny spores all of which had a ‘punk hair-style’ sets of projections from the broad-end of each spore. Click on Mycena smithiana on the above website to see what I mean and just about visible in the attached photo (right). Brilliant!

The winter thrushes have mostly now headed south and all around we now have fields full of grazing geese, mainly greylags. Few reports, as yet, of the unusual geese that appeared last year, white-fronted and bean. A local green woodpecker is very unusual and if the weather remains reasonably kind perhaps we will see a repeat of the breeding which occurred during the 1980s. The local tawny owls have been calling, setting up their territories for 2013 and with the shortest day upon us, I can’t wait for the lighter days of spring. One bird that has been quite regular during November has been the waxwing, with 20-30 in most of the groups I was lucky enough to encounter whilst looking for galls and lichens. Most birds were found finishing off the

last of the rowan berries (top of tree left) and at a couple of sites, much rarer hawthorn berries. It was great to hear their tinkling bell-like calls as I wandered from tree to tree in local aspen woods looking for the beautiful but rare script lichen Schismatomma graphidioides. In one aspen wood thirty plus trees have been found with the lichen and considering just a tiny bit of the wood has been surveyed, this could turn out to be quite an important site in UK terms for this species. Several other rare lichens have already been recorded in this wood during a short survey in 2001 – so it is turning out to be a very special piece of woodland indeed. Another bit of woodland that has been saying “come and visit me” is a tiny sliver of mainly birches running away from the A9 Perth to Inverness road just to the west of Slochd Summit, clearly identifiable to those

travelling north by the phone mast perched on the highest bit of the hill. A few nice things were recorded and, because I left it late to make my visit, I will have to return again one day. As I climbed out of the gulley, close to the mast it was getting quite late and with darkness falling I had to make a quick call to Janet to let her know I was still alive! Knowing there was a track leading from the phone mast back to the road I headed towards it and was pleasantly surprised by the sight of rows of lights from vehicles thundering below me on the A9. Perfect, and just time for a long exposure photograph before heading back down the icy track to the car. If you go down in the woods today, do keep an eye open for strange growths on the tips of new growth on Norway and Sitka spruces. A morning walk with grandson Archie took us up through the spruces on Forestry Commission

land above Insh Marshes, and whilst Archie used his stick to attack the dead stems of bracken, I noticed several slightly bulbous growths on the tips of several Sitka spruce branches, so I popped a couple into a tub for checking once I got home. Under the low-power microscope I cut one of the growths in half and was amazed by what I found (left), more than a dozen empty galleries which during the summer would have been full of aphids. The aphids belong to the family Adelgidae and the gall is known as Adelges cooleyi. Thanks Archie.

That’s it for another month.
Have a very Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2013.
Stewart and Janet

Happy Christmas

Somewhere over the rainbow – with Archie

Sorting out the Christmas card!

Bennachie sunset


Photos © Stewart Taylor