I
write this blog having just returned from a rally in Inverness, organised by
the RSPB, in protest at the recent killing of 5 buzzards and 14, yes FOURTEEN,
red kites near Conon Bridge at the northern end of the Black Isle. There could be more. The news of this killing spree broke on 25
March when 5 red kites and a buzzard were found dead but it was only after
wider searches of the area by RSPB staff and the police that the full scale of
the tragedy emerged. I have to remind
readers at this point that this is 2014 and not 1914, a date when just a few
red kites were clinging
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| Piper Davy & "ghost" kites & buzzards at rally |
on as UK breeders in a tiny area in Wales, the once
widespread population having succumbed to persecution during the 18th
and 19th centuries. All the
dead birds were found in a two square mile area to the south-east of Conon
Bridge, toxicology tests have shown that 9 of the kites and 3 of the buzzards
were poisoned. This is the largest
single find of dead birds of prey in many decades. To date, there has been no arrests of those
responsible but hopefully there will be something more positive to report in
the next blog.
The
first week of March was spent in Lancashire visiting Janet’s mum and catching
up with family. Pub lunches were to the
fore with mystery tours along quiet country lanes extending the outing until
late afternoon as mum recalled “cycling along here” and “if you follow that
footpath
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| Young cuckoo pint leaves |
down there it will take you to Grindleton”. Her memory for walking and cycling routes
hasn’t diminished despite her 90+ years and it was a great joy to be guided
along the narrow, wooded lanes. An hour
at the end of each afternoon allowed a little time to add locations for knopper
galls, beechmast candlesnuff, witches butter and shining cranesbill. The young leaves of bluebells and cuckoo pint
(lords-and-ladies) were everywhere showing the first flowers of spring were not
that far away.
Over
the last couple of months I have been helping the local community team with text
and photos for displays along the new village pond and birchwood walk and as we
arrived home a request had landed in the “inbox” for a few more photos to
complete the woodland display. A search
through the photo files and a bit of time at the garden feeders managed to
fulfil the
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| Encalypta moss to be identified |
request and by mid-March both displays were at the final draft
stage. Hopefully visitors to the village
will find them interesting. Having
driven around the limestone areas of the Ribble Valley without visiting any
whilst in Lancashire, I was in need of a “limestone” fix so an afternoon was
spent in the old quarry near Tomintoul.
The outing provided more queries than answers in the form of Collema and
Leptogium lichens with some requiring expert help (the heap is growing!) but a
bonny wee moss on some rock ledges was identified as being of the Encalypta
group and when the expert couldn’t identify from my photos a specimen was
sent. Possibly “Encalypta
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| Encalypta moss leaf x40 |
rhaptocarpa
but it doesn’t look right” and because the moss capsules were fairly immature
full identification will need to await the moss growing on for another month or
two when the capsules should be mature.
However, the email ended with the words “that it could be something unusual”
ensuring that I don’t forget to make a return visit. Encalypta rhaptocarpa has the wonderful
common name of Ribbed Extinguisher-moss.
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| Jonathan & Shaila with their find |
As
we were just about to leave Lancashire brother John informed us that Brent
would be heading north again the following week to complete work at RAF Lossiemouth
and he was hoping to get a lift with him.
So, three days after we arrived home John headed north once again
wondering
no doubt if it would be possible to add a few “new finds” as on his
first trip back In January. As he arrived
though, I had already arranged to meet Shaila and Jonathan from the Ranger
staff at NTS Mar Lodge, keen to see my local sites for the green
shield-moss. By seeing the moss and a
variety of locations where it grew, they were hoping to carry out some searches
on the Mar
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| Green shield-moss |
reserve in the hope of adding the moss to the reserve list of
bryophytes. The first site was a birch
log followed by an ant nest where brown shield-moss was growing in the hope
that both mosses
might be found on their reserve. Next we dropped into a Norway spruce site
where, to date, the most capsules at one multi-log site had been found. It didn’t disappoint and as well as me
showing them capsules on logs they managed to find their own, adding a couple
of new logs to those previously found with the moss. A wood ant nest with the moss was visited
where a third capsule was found (extra pairs of eyes) before we headed down to
the River Nethy to see a fallen goat willow with 60+ capsules. To end their visit I took them to see some
alder tree sites where the moss had been recorded previously but where
currently no capsules had been seen.
Shaila
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| Welcome back! |
soon cured that by finding a capsule on an ancient lump of alder
which I had hoped in the past would one day be a site. As we wandered a little further Jonathan was
walking towards us saying he had just found a knife stuck in a tree! Well, would you believe it, the Swiss army
knife I thought had dropped out of my pocket last month had actually been left
stuck in an alder tree, marking the location of an old green shield-moss
capsule. Well done and thank you
Jonathan!
Next
day to Tulloch with brother John parking near the old telephone box before
heading off to do a circuit of the Tulloch farms. The hazels near Easter Tulloch were hanging
thick with catkins and we spent about half an hour trying to get good backlit
photos as well as pictures of early bees visiting the catkins. Fieldfares were feeding in one field as were
a pair of mistle thrushes –
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| Female hazel flowers |
the breeding season was almost upon us. A distant calling green woodpecker was
unusual, a rare bird locally. The sun
was out, it was warm and we had lunch near the Mains of Tulloch watching pied
wagtails leaping about trying to catch flies.
The next surprise occurred by the outbuildings at the farm – house
sparrows! Were they always here or were
they just visiting? Having lived in
Tulloch in the past I thought that all the local house sparrows had long
disappeared but here we had six birds behaving as though they lived here. One to re-check in a month or two’s
time. Flowering dove’s-foot cranesbill
was photographed by a bridge and I showed John the mass of scale insects found
a year earlier on an aspen whilst checking lichens. The tarmac road lead us back along one of the
sections of my annual butterfly transect before
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| Grianan 1977, just built |
reaching Grianan, the house Janet
and myself first lived in when we came to Loch Garten in 1976. We discussed the photo of my mum with Janet
and my uncle standing at the end of the
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| Grianan 2014. It's there somewhere! |
track installed by yours truly to allow
the new house to be built. Having sorted
through many of dad’s slides, added to by some I sent to him, John remembered
the photo, so we did a re-take with me standing where my mum had been in the
original just to show how the woodland around the house had developed in the
last thirty-odd years. What a change,
with the house hardly visible now from the tarred road. We cut back along a track from Tigh Ban
towards the car when I spotted a small wood ant nest that looked interesting
and providing the final find for
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| Brown shield-moss Buxbaumia aphylla |
the day a new location for the brown
shield-moss (Buxbaumia aphylla), just two capsules, but as last time, outings
with John seem to turn up something new.
Something unwelcome also turned up – the first tick of the year. Next day we headed for Abernethy Forest
planning to walk the Rynettin circuit.
Heading up to Rynettin an old birch tree with a dark stain caught my
eye, the stain being caused by an old sap-run.
These stains are always worth checking and as I examined the edges of
the brown stain I could just make out the shape of pin-head lichens which I
pointed
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| John & his Sclerophora find |
out to John. As I took a GPS
reading and photo John said “there’s more round this side” and sure enough the
whole side of the tree was covered in Sclerophora peronella pinheads. Well done John. I thought it would be worth photographing the
big population also and as I went about this task John pointed down to
something growing on a fallen birch branch buried a little in the ground
vegetation that I had disturbed. A small
white fungus was growing out of the slightly rotten branch and when I checked
it with my hand-lens I could see what looked like tiny blobs of
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| The dewdrop bonnet |
liquid all
along the stem of the fungus. “This
looks like something I’ve seen in the fungus book, possibly dew-drop fungus?” I
suggested. So, very carefully a sample
was taken and packed in moss in my collecting box, trying to retain the drops
of water in the stems in situ. One for
later. Lunch was taken at Rynettin
watching a few mistle thrushes feeding in the field and having a good look at
the drying kiln section of the old farm building, now an archeologically
important
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| Hemimycena tortuosa stipe hair |
link with our past. A quick
scan of the mountain tops produced a distant golden eagle as we headed off down
the track back to the car. Back home a
check of the fungi guide showed that I was in the right area re a name for the
fungus – the dewdrop bonnet (Hemimycena tortuosa) but only fully confirmed once
the spores had been checked along with spending some time finding the
cork-screw hairs on the stem (stipe) of the fungus. Another interesting link re this fungus is
that the late Peter D. Orton, long-term Abernethy fungi recorder, was the first
person to describe it.
This
month saw the loss of support for the excellent Windows XP operating system on
my laptop, and though I gather it will still work, there are likely to be
problems with security. So a new laptop
arrived, complete with Windows 7 so it was goodbye to the very simple and
functional XP to the most complicated set of symbols, boxes etc in Word and
Excel – this, we are told, is progress.
Much faster processing yes, but why so much clutter and searching for
how to carry out a simple operation like “print selection” in Excel. One good bit of help from Microsoft was free
access to PC Mover Express which, when downloaded onto old and new laptops,
moved
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| Young aspen catkins |
all the files in an operation that took 5 hours! Having typed this blog I just hope that it
will be visible on your screens once launched.
Data entering was also caught up with later in the month with a slight
muscle strain after gate lifting ensuring I stayed put for a few days. Gentle walking helped so the perfect excuse
for visits to the nearby stands of aspen to see if any catkins had started to
appear in what was predicted to be a good flowering year. Scanning the trees by the play-park and
football field failed to find anything and the mature trees by the village
river walk were bare. However, the old faithfuls
on Dell Road by the church were showing signs of catkins bursting forth and another couple of older
trees nearer the village hall also looked promising, though all the young
catkins were quite high up. As mentioned
in earlier blogs most aspens regenerate from underground suckers so are
genetically the same as the mature, surrounding trees. These stands of identical trees are then
described as “clones” and by studying the clones
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| Older aspen catkins (female) |
over the years it has been
possible, at catkin/flowering time, to determine whether the clones are male
trees or female trees (dioecious) and whether stands of male and female trees
are close enough together to allow fertile seed to be produced. Trees actually flowering is a rare event and,
with many stands of male and female trees often far apart, the production of
seed is even rarer so checking the trees through this growing season can only
continue to add to our knowledge of where the two sexes are, allowing for a
little bit of infill planting of males or females to help with seed production
in the future.
The
statement “we have to feed a growing world population” continues to destroy
habitats locally for our farmland waders and driving back from Grantown one day
I could see lots of rough grassland being burnt off removing typical curlew
breeding habitat and the invertebrate populations it supported. As I crossed the Spey by Broomhill Bridge I
also witnessed the final
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| Wader habitat goes under the plough |
area of damp, rush dominated grassland being put under
the plough completing the removal of all the areas at Coulnakyle Farm favoured
by our “nationally” (now becoming a joke) important Strathspey wader
population. Puzzled lapwings,
oystercatchers and curlews watched on.
Re-visiting a few days later a lapwing had decided to “go for it” and
was preparing a nest site in amongst the plough-lines (a good nest site)
unaware that within days the ploughed ground would be revisited to convert the
nest site into a finer tilth ready for sowing the seeds probably for a crop of
barley to continue to “feed the world”. I
thought that birds, their nests and eggs
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| Hey, you've missed a bit! |
were protected by law, and no doubt if
the farmer saw me pinching the lapwing’s eggs I would end up in court. Should the lapwings persist with their
nesting attempt, which they are likely to do, then they will need to watch out
for the heavy roller that will arrive to ensure a flat field, squashed eggs but
a good crop. Am I missing
something? This will be followed by
applications of fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides ensuring a nice, clean
crop. The conservation organisations
continue to deliver fine words and “initiatives” whilst the annual loss of
wader habitat continues apace. Sorry…
rant over!
Red
and roe deer poo continued to test and puzzle me as more of the tiny urchin
like fungi were found growing on dung deposited in the slightly damper
areas. The new finds didn’t look like
the orange Lasiobolus macrotrichus fungus found
last month. One of the new ones was faintly
orange whilst the other was white and under the microscope whilst the spores
looked similar, the pointed hairs didn’t.
Guidance from expert Liz put me in the right direction suggesting I
should also check for the species Cheilymenia as well as Lasiobolus and then
everything fell into place.
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| Lasiobolus ciliates (white) low left & x2 Cheilymenia fimicola right |
The whitish
one turned out to be Lasiobolus ciliates and the pale orange one Cheilymenia
fimicola. Sorry to go a little further
along the dung line but it’s quite amazing what happens when you keep a few animal
dung pellets in a wee tub with a bit of water to keep them damp. Slowly the “bigger” species mentioned earlier
(if you can class something 2mm diameter big) started to decline and I was just
about to throw them out when I noticed the ideal growing conditions had brought
out another tiny fungus, and unlike the other species with round discs
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| Coprinopsis cordispora - an inkcap about x40 |
with no
stems (these are ascomycetes) the new fungus had a stem and a cap, a genuine
Agaric-type fungus, but in miniature form.
Could I do anything with this?
Unsure, the wee tub was put to one side and forgotten about for a few
days. Eventually I remembered about the
tub and contents and on removing the lid I found lots of tiny fungi some a few
millimetres high just emerging and other about 2 cm tall and bent over with a
few stuck to the side of the tub. It was
the latter that provided the clue that would lead to their identification, the
stems of the bent
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| Coprinopsis cordispora spores x600 |
fungus and the side of the tub were covered in tiny black
dots that looked a bit ink-like. Could
this be an inkcap? So small? The Collins photographic guide to mushrooms
and toadstools didn’t help but the other Collins Fungi Guide with hand drawings
but very detailed text did. The spores
also helped, and before going near the internet I had already seen that they were
slightly angular (I’d thought 5 sided) and had what I called a “pip” (germ
pore) and book and internet lead me to Coprinopsis cordisporus, an inkcap found
on herbivore dung. Phew!
The
month ended with a trip north to the Highland Biological Recording Group’s
Spring Gathering in Strathpeffer where, along with the normal business side of
the meeting there were two brilliant presentations. The first, given by Stephen Moran (a
brilliant invertebrate specialist) covered the life of a past member of the group
the late Philip Entwistle. This
fascinating talk covered Philips life as a leader in the field of insect
pathology, working for the Government body Natural Environment Research Council
(NERC), before retiring to live in the Highlands near the
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| The harvestman Megabunus diadema identified by Hayley |
Spinningdale oakwoods
in Sutherland. Here, his passion for
insects and insect breeding and recording lead to hundreds of new records, a
species new to science and many papers on the species he studied. Stephen is currently working his way through
Philips insect collections, sorting and cataloguing before the whole collection
is deposited with the national collections in Edinburgh. The second talk was by Hayley Wiswell on
spiders and the recently formed Highland Spider Group. With few people recording spiders in our area
Hayley was hoping that by covering some of the common and not so common species
and by having a “try to find” list a few more folk might be tempted into the
field of spider identification. An
inspirational talk with an outing planned for later in the year to seek out a
few species.
The
last big outing of the month sent me off trying to re-find a bonny wee plant
called shining cranesbill (Geranium lucidum) as well as trying to get a photo
of the aptly named golf club moss (Catoscopium nigritum). The area, close to the A939 Tomintoul road has
been visited by myself a few times in the past undertaking moss and lichen
hunts. As well as trying to photograph
the moss I was checking to ensure I hadn’t missed a couple of other lichens
found recently in other
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| Unidentified snails on £1 coin |
lime-rich areas.
The rapid drop of 220m from road to the small burn starting point was
the easy bit, with the ascent on the opposite side of the burn a climb back to
the starting height. Nothing new was
found by the old lime kiln or on the surrounding rocks so I made my way to a
small seepage running from the hillside where very lime-rich water runs down
the hill. The remains of tiny snails
were found in the small runnels so a few were photographed to see if expert
Richard could identify any. Treading
very carefully I started to look for the moss eventually finding it on the
slightly drier parts of the flush. The
next tricky bit was getting a photo without getting too wet achieved by
kneeling on my orange survival bag. One
target species found, one to go, though the second would be much trickier, the
grid reference for the flower was pre-GPS and gave an approximate 100m square
to work in. This flower can be found in
quite a few sites but
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| The golf club moss Catoscopium nigritum |
not many are classed as “natural” many plants having
become established from garden stock. At
this reasonably remote site and with a genuinely lime loving flora all around,
the plant was classed as truly native so it would be good to know if it was
still present. Having seen the plant at
its other natural site near Huntly’s Cave I had a rough idea of where to look,
but after about an hour of wandering up and down rocks and scree I was thinking
of making my way back to the car. Faced
with a dense stand of juniper I had to decide whether to go left by the rocks or
right by the burn, I chose left. A good
decision and as I skirted the junipers I spotted the tell-tale
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| Shining cranesbill re-found |
leaves of the
cranesbill, not a lot, but enough plant leaves to know that this must by the
location recorded as “in small quantity” by the late, great Mary McCallum
Webster in 1974. There was frog spawn in
some of the small pools by the burn and after thanking the site for a good day
out I turned for the half hour climb back to the road. It was easier climbing through an area of
birches but the route produced another small burn to cross with a moss and
lichen covered rock in its middle.
Always worth a glance and as I checked the side of the rock I couldn’t
believe my
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| Peltigera venosa lichen |
eyes when the tell-tale signs of small round growths on the edge of
greenish “leaves” suggested Peltigera venosa (fan lichen) something I had only
seen twice before. A very strange place
to be growing on a rock in a burn, and with evidence that the rock became
inundated after heavy rain, but that’s what I was looking at and, for a change,
there was quite a good population rather than the tiny scraps of the lichen
found previously. A nice find and the
climb back to the road didn’t seem so bad buoyed with this last find of the
day.
That’s
it for another month, enjoy the read.
Stewart
and Janet
Bird
of prey killings
Highland
Biological Recording Group
and
how to join HBRG
Hayley
Wiswell Spider ID chart via HBRG
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| Robin in garden |
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| A micro-moth Amblyptilia acanthadactyla |
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| Grandson Harry on a roll |
Photos
© Stewart Taylor
