Thursday 19 June 2014

A Timberman, Twinflower and Taphrina reunion in a sad month

The ground truthing work with local aspen stands ended early in May with paper maps suitably annotated and recording sheets filled before returning to John to add to the master maps, completing the area to the north and east of Grantown on Spey.  As mentioned last month, as well as checking tree locations aspens were also checked for catkins in what was hoped to be a
A single Taphrina johansonii fungus
good year for seed production.  Where female catkins were found I had a second aim, to see if any seed producing catkins had provided a home for the rarely found aspen tongue fungus - Taphrina johansonii.  This unusual, banana shaped ascomycete fungus infects aspen flowers, causing them to swell, and turns yellow, but not becoming easily visible until the catkins are well grown and the leaves are just about to appear.  In this part of the UK aspen trees are usually the last ones to come into leaf, quite an aid when undertaking mapping work.  At the end of April there was a hint that the fungus was starting to grow on catkins on a young aspen near the village church, the last time found on trees in this area in 2001.  On that occasion its discovery was helped enormously by a one-day conference held on 25th May in nearby Kingussie titled “The Biodiversity and Management of Aspen Woods”.  Local mycologists Ern and Val Emmett gave a presentation on Fungi on Aspens and along with the regularly occurring Phellinus tremulae bracket fungus and the wee fungus on dead twigs Encoelia fascicularis, they mentioned a rarely seen fungus in the UK, the aspen tongue.  The fungus is only rare because
More aspen tongue fungi
aspens seldom produce seed, but 2001 was, by chance, a year when this was happening.  On the same day as the conference, staff and volunteers working on Operation Osprey were heading to the local pub in Nethybridge to celebrate the hatching of the first osprey egg, and after getting back from the conference I set off to walk to the Heatherbrae to join them.  The pub just happened to be on the same road as the young aspens near the church and as I walked past them I remembered about the fungus which had been found in the past on aspen flowers.  Yep, you’ve guessed it, several of the flowering catkins had oddly shaped banana-like growths and I wondered if this could be the rare fungus.  One catkin was carefully removed and carried to the pub where someone produced a matchbox into which it was placed for safe keeping.  A second coincidence also happened in May 2001.  Gordon Dickson and Ann Leonard, two members of the Peter Orton fungus recording team that made annual September visits to Abernethy, were
How the photos were
obtained
staying in Nethybridge, and first thing next day I popped round to show them what I had found.  Great excitement, and the strange growths were confirmed as Taphrina johansonii.  Within an hour Ern and Val Emmett joined us at the aspens to view and photograph this rarely seen fungus.  This find was the first time it had been seen in the UK since a find in Essex in May 1996 and possibly the first time it had been recorded in Scotland.  An undated record from Peebles possibly related to a painting of the fungus that had appeared in the artist’s garden.  It was the 8th UK record, and until this year has only been recorded once since: in Braemar in 2004.  Having checked the same aspen trees every year since 2001 it was with great excitement that 13 years on, the fungus was once again growing.  Through April I made regular visits to check on progress and by the end of the month the fungus could be seen on about six different aspen flowers, mostly just ones and twos, however one catkin had the more typical “bunch of bananas” appearance as had been seen in 2001.  Time for a photograph, and for that I would need Janet’s help.  I end up in all sorts of slightly embarrassing situations often found lying on the ground taking photos or peering into the occasional bush, but to get my photographs Janet had to steady a step-ladder so
Taphrina johansonii cut in half
the fungus just visible on outside
that I could ascended to the same height as the fungus so as not to threaten snapping off the branch by pulling it down to eye-level.  Not too many cars or people passed as the photos were taken, and after a wait of many years I had, at long last, a decent photo of the catkins complete with fungus.  Aspen map man John had also been visiting flowering trees to collect the occasional small branch so that the catkins could then be grown on “in captivity” then, as the flowers/seeds
The fungus x1000
matured the fluffy, wind dispersed type seeds could be easily collected and forwarded to the Highland Aspen Group’s nursery for sowing.  Growing aspen trees from seed is a very rare event and John has done a great job making collections from a wide area to ensure future tree plantings can comprise a mix of trees from different aspen clones in the hope that when flowering occurs some time into the future, cross-fertilisation might be achieved.  John also passed on a twig complete with catkin and fungus and this was put to good use by being able to see how the fungus operated.  Where were the spores produced?  I first cut a section through the
Taphrina johansonii spores and bud-spores x1000
infected flower and found the centre of the flower was still full of the immature fluffy seeds.  Could the fungus be on the outside?  A careful check of the cut section showed lots of wee pimple-like growths all-round the outside, creating the yellow colour.  Carefully a small section was cut and squashed and checked under the microscope and sure enough lots of spores were visible.  A long wait but a very educational reunion with one of my local aspens.

For the second time in a year time was spent visiting a local wood, known as School Wood, to try and gather new information to add to yet another objection to a planning application by a local company, determined to build up to 58 houses in what looks like a young, but fairly natural, area of woodland.  Packed-in houses on School Road and more spaced out houses on Craigmore Road.  This new application had additional documents, one from Frances Thin from the Cairngorms Park and one from a forestry consultancy trying to rubbish the quality of the
One of the ancient trees, the red dot indicates to be felled
woodland and planning removal of lots of trees including several ancient willows, aspens, birches and Scots pines.  The Park document was almost a list of what would need to be done by the building company to allow the building to proceed – a very strange document, more worried about views and street lighting than environmental protection.  To be clear in my mind about what needed to be considered by the Park, the folk with the ultimate yes or no decision, and to try and evaluate the impact of the proposed tree removal and progressive opening up of woodland around the houses as proposed by the consultant, yet another visit was made to wander the site and photograph some of the trees which would be lost.  This is one of three applications to build houses in woodland locally where developers have bought woodland relatively cheaply with no other aim than to develop into housing estates.  Nothing new was found in the area planned for housing along School Road and as I cut across towards the other site I wandered through an area of Norway spruce.  Because of the ongoing planning applications, thinning of the woodland hasn’t taken place, really enhancing its value in nature conservation terms, and as I wandered up the strip of spruces I became aware of several trees that had been left where they had fallen over the years, some in an excellent state of decay.  On the root-plate of one I came across two green
The Buxbaumia viridis find
shield-moss capsules (Buxbaumia viridis), quite an interesting find, only to be outdone a little further along the wood as I found another population, this time comprising 8 capsules.  Sadly, both finds were outside the area designated for houses, but finding them indicated that the woodland had something which enhanced it “ancientness” and was a species missed by the environmental surveyors but had been suggested as possibly being within the wood at the time of my last objection.  It will be an act of environmental vandalism if this planning application is allowed to go ahead and the Park might as well tear up the Cairngorms Nature Action Plan because the woods meet a couple of its key objectives.  My objection was lodged on time and we now await the decision of the Cairngorms Park (priority for Tourism and Development) Authority planners.

Mid-way through May I gave a talk as part of the Cairngorms Nature weekend, a second follow-on talk being given half an hour later by Roy Dennis.  When I arrived as the first permanent warden at the RSPBs Loch Garten Reserve in 1976 it was Roy, then RSPB Highland Officer, who showed me round the local area and introduced me to the key bird species both on and off the new reserve.  Roy was also responsible for overseeing much of the work aimed at protecting the then fledgling Scottish (and UK) osprey population which, at the time, was less than 20 breeding pairs.  I was asked one day by Roy if I was any good at climbing trees and, thinking back to my youth, suggested I didn’t think I was too bad.  “Perfect, you can help with the osprey ringing programme” which was to involve climbing to the nests before lowering the chicks to the ground for ringing.  All those years ago this involved mainly free climbing, the rope tied round my waist being needed for lowering the bag with chicks down to the ground rather than being clipped to the tree in case of a fall!  We survived, and the views from the tops of some of the 100+ foot trees
Reunited after about 18 years - twinflower
was pretty amazing and getting rings onto the chicks legs before they fledged allowed details of migration routes to be determined and provided a link as to how far the birds moved from their natal sites when they returned to breed.  Nowadays this is all done by satellite technology for the first couple of years of the osprey’s life, but rings are still needed to monitor the life-long comings and goings of the birds which we now know can stretch to over 20 years.  On one such outing Roy and myself were carrying the ladder to one of the nest trees, accompanied by the lady owner of the estate (the ladder was usually needed to allow access to about 40 foot up the tree, Roy having cut off any low branches to deter egg collectors). I noticed an unusual plant creeping all over the forest floor – a patch of twinflower (Linnaea borealis).  A days ringing might have involved visiting four or five nest sites, and with Roy driving I hadn’t a clue where we were as we disappeared up and down estate tracks so wasn’t really sure where we had seen the twinflower.  So, in between the talks I had just enough time to ask Roy if he remembered where the plant was so that I could go and check it for the wee
Horsehair parachute
also found
fungi I had been finding on its leaves over the last year.  Roy not only remembered the find but had seen the plant, at the location, within the last year, and was able to supply reasonable directions as to where to find it.  The directions were perfect and after a gap of around 18 years I was reunited with the twinflower patch which now covered an area of about thirty square metres.  Two leaf fungi were found but when I sent photos of the spores to Kew, I was informed that we might be dealing with another fungus – one for the future as quite a bit of work could be needed to arrive at the correct name.

An email from botanist Andy arrived just too late for one of our visits to the River Nairn mentioned in earlier blogs.  Despite good finds by Janet and myself on visits to this area, close to the Howford Bridge, I hadn’t spent enough time on the river shingle to find an unusual wee plant called Shepherds Cress (Teesdalia nudicaulis).  Without it being pointed out though as being a little unusual I might have passed it by as just one of those small white crucifers that we tend not to look at too closely.  Locally, the lower reaches of the
Teesdalia nudicaulis
River Nairn is the main stronghold for the plant, but in our local area there are few records and several of them are quite old so worth a bit of time to search for.  The plant likes sandy, gravelly areas, often found on these type of deposits where rivers overtop their banks or where two river join, often creating the same sort of habitat.  The first place that sprung to mind worthy of checking was the Spey/Feshie confluence so this is where I headed and on the first suitable area of sandy river deposits, there it was, in quantity.  It was found in quite a few places on these river deposits.  Checks of similar habitats where the River Nethy and River Dulnain meets the Spey drew blanks, so obviously not as easy to find as my first encounter lead me to believe.  It was found in a couple of other sites along the Spey where it had been recorded previously but the River Nethy in Abernethy Forest again drew a blank.  One to keep an eye open for at the start of next year’s growing season because without the white flowers as a guide the plants with just seeds would be quite difficult to find.  The ribbed extinguisher moss (Encalypta) find from the ex-lime quarry earlier in the year continues to baffle despite samples being sent to the species expert, so one to keep in the diary for the new flush of growth next season.  On the bird front the season continues to progress at a pace with young long-tailed tits, blackbirds and robins all appearing in the garden.  An email from the woodcock survey organiser in 2013 didn’t bring good news.  The results from the survey across the UK last year appeared to show a massive decline in roding birds when compared to the results of ten years ago and there was a request for surveyors to repeat the survey again in 2014, to back up the data.  So, once again, the rucsac was packed for the late evening visits to the mixed forest
What, no woodcock!
habitat near the River Dulnain.  In all, the 75 minute count takes just over 3 hours to complete when drive and walk-in time is taken into account, but if it produced half as many unusual “encounters” as 2013, the effort would be well worthwhile.  Perhaps the survey results from 2013 were correct because on the first visit no woodcocks were seen or heard apart from one on the way into the count site.  The count site was fixed by random selection when the first survey was started eleven years ago, so this bird couldn’t be included in the count.  The next visit on the 27th May was a little better – one bird contact was recorded, a set of poor results compared to the regular fly-past of birds in 2013.  As I waited for any bird contact I did a mini-survey of all the plants I could identify before it got too dark to record and ended up with 22 species, not a great haul, but from a 30 metre square in a forestry plantation not too bad.  On the day of the second count there had been regular heavy rain and the woodland scents as I made my way down to the Sluggan Bridge and up into the pine/spruce forest were amazing.  No late night encounters with humans
Devastating grouse moor management!
though as last year, but then there is one count to go in early June!  The weather right at the end of the month also allowed the second visit to my “high” BTO breeding bird square, the one over the 500m hill with cairns and a phone mast, but also nice patch of cloudberry on the boggy high section.  This was the tenth year I had covered this one-kilometre recording square, another of the random BTO selected sites to ensure folk don’t just survey the easy, well-populated bird sites, but this was to be my last.  Despite there being few birds once the edge of the forestry area has been left behind, there is always developing views and occasional plant or insect along the route to add greatly to the visit.  On this visit a new patch of cranberry (Vaccinium microcarpum) was found, and wandering a little from the transect route to check a dead sheep (in case of unlawful acts, but thankfully natural causes), a covey of red grouse chicks erupted at my feet, another first from all the visits.  Despite trashing of the heather moor for red grouse production (mammal traps, heather burning on a
Last visit to BTO BBS hill before retiring
large scale and all tree removal), few have ever been recorded, so a family group was a huge surprise.  A bit of time was also spent making contact with three landowners about allowing access for a survey of ancient trees by members of the Ancient Tree Forum.  Jill and Andrew from the Woodland Trust made a recce visit on behalf of the Forum and were pleasantly surprised by the ancientness quality of trees at the sites visited, and were left with lots of options to add to the ancient tree database.  More about this visit in June, for when the recording visit was planned.

Early in the month an email arrived from Simon of Maramedia about the possibility of filming the “punk” beetle of the native pinewood areas, the timberman (Acanthocinus aedilis).  This beetle, the male has antennae up to six inches from tip to tip if held out sideways, is a member of the longhorn family and is only found in areas of older Scots pine woodland where there is
Any mimic - Thanasimus formicarius
adequate standing or lying deadwood for it to breed in.  I have managed to find the beetle on three other occasions for TV and film crews to record but the challenge this time would be much more difficult should I become involved.  Following a major fire, the “famous” Forest Lodge sawmill no longer exists, a place where pine logs waiting to be processed proved to be a mecca for the beetle and other deadwood breeding insects (see web-link below).  If the beetle was to be filmed, it would have to be found by cold searching, wandering the forest, checking any recently fallen Scots pines in the hope of finding breeding/mating beetles.  Simon was happy to employ Stephen Moran our local invert specialist and contract surveyor to lead the search, and on a couple of outings I would take Stephen to places in Abernethy where I knew there were possible breeding sites.  Abernethy has a proactive approach to deadwood retention and creation,
Xylophagus cinctus egg laying
felling trees in some areas to create the deadwood habitat needed by so many birds, insects and fungi, and a habitat that is fairly scarce in woodland that over the last century has been managed primarily for timber production.  In some areas, “sanitation” felling still take place – ie removing dead and dying trees in case they “infect” adjacent trees, a very damaging mis-conception but something recommended by the forestry consultant for the School Wood housing application mentioned earlier.  Sorry, I digress.  Stephen had just a couple of days available due
Can you find the 3 timberman beetles?
to other work commitments, so visit days couldn’t be linked to when the sun would be shining, which is when I seemed to have had more luck in finding the beetle.  On the first visit day it was warm but dull and later in the day we had heavy downpours.  Fallen trees were visited and search but without finding any timberman beetles.  As is usual though with these sorts of visits, other interesting things were found, the first was an ant mimic beetle called Thanasimus formicarius, and, eventually when I managed to catch up with it, a strange fly first found wandering around on a couple of fallen pines and backing up to small holes in the bark to extend it “rear end” into the hole to lay its eggs.  With expert help on site Stephen named it as
Endocronartium pini fungus
the red-belted awl fly (Xylophagus cinctus) a species with few records in Britain, but, with a few sightings, something quite at home in Abernethy thanks to the RSPB’s positive deadwood creation.  Despite these good finds, the timberman remained elusive.  The second site we visited was the area of wind-blow created in the December 2013 gale and which featured in an earlier blog.  The trees here are fairly old trees probably in the 80-120 years of age bracket, but possibly a little bit too “fresh” for insect breeding sites currently.  An indication of how suitable the deadwood is, is the signs of beetle frass on the bark of the fallen trees, quite a bit being created by
Egg laying female timberman protected by male
the tiny bark beetles which featured also in an earlier blog.  Whilst frass was present, there wasn’t much, and possibly these trees will be more suitable for deadwood invertebrates next May.  Again, there was no sign of the timberman.  Something else though was found, a fairly scarce fungus that attacks trees that are probably in the first stages of dying.  This fungus, Endocronartium pini (synonym
Cronartium flaccidum), erupts from the bark of the smaller limbs of the Scots pines with large areas of the tree Stephen found, covered in mini-volcanoes all spewing masses of orange coloured spores.  Stephen had a second, damp day looking for the beetle but without luck, so another visit was planned when other work allowed.  In the meantime
Buxbaumia aphylla producing spores
I visited another bit of Abernethy where some trees had been felled for deadwood and where a few additional trees had recently come down in the gales, but along the way got a little distracted, visiting a stand of mixed pine with birch and juniper.  The root-plate of an older blown Scots pine looked interesting and once again a few capsules of the green shield-moss were found but a little further along the trunk of the tree three brown shield-moss capsules (Buxbaumia aphylla) were growing, the first time, I think, the two species have been found growing on a tree rather than on an ants nest as found in the past.  Eventually I reached the area
A first? Both Buxbaumia mosses
on a single tree
with the older dead pines but with the clock having ticked on, I had to dash off back home, already late for our evening meal.  The next day saw an early morning visit to the dentist, and as the numbness was wearing off the phone rang to say a farmer was spraying fields near Cromdale which had good numbers of young lapwings and oystercatchers.  The sun was up and probably ideal conditions for spraying fields to ensure the lapwings and oystercatchers didn’t sprout any nettles or docks (!).  Once again all birds, their nests and eggs are not protected by law, particularly if on agricultural lands!  I was too late to photograph the event, but could see several families of chicks wandering along the tram-lines left by the tractor, one to take up with RSPB, SNH and the Park folk.  Goodness, the sun was up and it was warm, possible timberman weather, so I dashed back to Abernethy and made my way to the area of deadwood visited
Weed-free oystercatcher family
briefly the previous day.  First tree, a mating pair of timberman beetles, with another female and two males close by – amazing!  As the mated female finished egg laying I carefully picked her up and popped her in a plastic container along with a bit of bark and moss, doing the same with the other beetles, and once home a few flower-heads of stitchwort and hawthorn were placed in the containers for food.  Arrangements were then made for Stephen to expertly look after the
Filming the timberman, but all you will see will be the beetle
beetles until the cameraman could get on site and film the beetles on the log where they were found.  Phew, what a bit of luck.  The cameraman arrived a day later and Stephen did a good job shepherding the beetles on the log for filming and as the last two were released where they were found the cameraman was lucky enough to film what beetles have to do to ensure the next generation of timberman beetles will be around on new dead logs in a couple of years time.

A tap on the house door in May 2012 was amazing.  A few weeks earlier we had received a letter from long-time friend John Kirby to say that he would be visiting Strathspey, probably for the last time, because, as he said at 90 the drive was just too much!  It was a trip to visit the Loch Garten and Abernethy area and particularly Loch Mallachie, woodland, loch and mountain views that held so many memories of wildlife encounters John had had over all the years that Janet and myself had been involved with the RSPB Loch Garten Reserve.  I can’t remember our
John recorded the first green sandpiper flying over Loch Garten
first meeting but it could have been at the garden sheds that then comprised the “Osprey Centre” or, more than likely, we bumped into each other on the track between Lochs Garten and Mallachie.  John was a brilliant wildlife sound recordist and if I thought I was out early in the woods to undertake common bird census work, John would have been there since dawn.  And it wouldn’t just have been John, Marion, his wife would also have been with him.  In 1976 when the Loch Garten area came into RSPB ownership the tracks by the lochs were relatively quiet and, believe it or not, there was a capercaillie lek in the middle of the circular path that links the two lochs.  However we met, I ended up helping John to get a rope/string over one of the high branches in the Scots pine where the dominant male lekked so that he could get a recording microphone close to the distinctive “popping” sounds made by the male.  All went well and once the recording was made, via very long cables running well away from the tree, we returned to retrieve the microphone only for the string to become tangled after the microphone had been lowered and try as we may the string refused to release itself and for several years afterwards a wee bit of string could be seen flapping in the wind, high up in the tree.  The capers continued to lek but with the build up of visitor numbers they soon gave up the site.  John would also spend time down with the osprey volunteers in the forward hide, the front-line of defence against egg collectors, but John was there to record the comings and goings of the birds and any other key species like crested tits and crossbills.  It was whilst doing this that John suggested that he could make a couple of
Installing John's microphones for the
first time, one just visible  top left
in tree
microphones to help with the night-time guard on the nest, one to be by the nest, and one on the ground to alert the volunteers to anyone approaching the tree.  Two kitchen sieves made up a bowler-hat shaped cover for the microphone head, all fixed to a circular piece of bakalite, with a cable running all the way back to the volunteers’ hide where the whole system was powered by a couple of car batteries.  It worked, and before too long the system was extended so live sound could be heard in the public viewing hide.  When I introduced the closed circuit TV system, live pictures and sounds added greatly to the visitor experience.  It is only in the last few years that the system fell out of use overtaken by modern technology.  At the end of every season the equipment was taken away and serviced by John and returned all ready for use in March the following year.  In November 2002 John and Marion attended the RSPBs members AGM in London to be awarded The RSPB President’s Award for outstanding voluntary contribution to the work of the Society.  John’s recordings were carefully obtained and edited and some were used in the 1970s and 80s by the BBC natural History unit and Anglia TV.  These were recordings made not on the tiny recording devices of today but on a monster reel-to-reel tape recorder complete with a hand-held parabolic reflector microphone.  For many years John produced cassette tapes to help folk learn bird song and calls with at least three different ones being stocked and sold by RSPB.  With his acute listening gear John was able to pick up bird song and calls over quite a distance and several of my unusual finds (like my first wryneck) originated from John’s equipment.  Likewise I was able to point John in the right direction of the
John in action recording "mad" caper
Photo © John Kirby family
unusual knowing the location and the species would remain totally confidential.  Sadly, John’s hearing deteriorated in his latter years so, in typical John fashion, he found the best kind of hearing aids and went really “modern” by buying a digital recording system so as not to be detached too far from his beloved wildlife.  If John didn’t latch onto an unusual bird call Marion would, a working partnership probably enjoyed by few husband and wife teams anywhere.  Marion passed away in 2008 and she was sadly missed when John made the last of his annual visits, complete with news from the dales and the traditional chunk of Wensleydale cheese.  Thankfully John made that 2012 visit.  The letter that arrived at Firwood in early May from John’s son Matthew told us that John’s time with us had also come to an end.  John, like Marion will be sadly missed, but we celebrate a life that achieved such a lot whilst he was with us.

That’s it for another month.

Stewart and Janet

The Biodiversity and Management of Aspen woodlands.  The Proceedings of a one-day conference held in Kingussie, Scotland, on 25th May 2001
The Ancient Tree Forum
The timberman beetle BBC video
Maramedia
Are all birds, their nests and eggs protected by law?  The RSPB thinks so
Highland Biological Recording Group
and how to join HBRG

Orange-tip male and friend
Arctosa perita spider also found during timberman hunt
Early morning Loch Garten in memory of our friend John Kirby

Photos © Stewart Taylor