Goodness, where did May, and for that matter, June go? The 1st May saw Janet and her
craft tent at the Nethybridge Spring Gathering, another successful day for all
those organising and attending. In
between helping put up and take down the tent, I sneaked off to return to
stumps where the stump lichen (Cladonia botrytes) had been found in the
previous week to carry out stump size measurements. More about this bonny wee lichen a little
later. The next day it was off to the
damaged Spey Bridge aspen wood near Grantown on Spey to try and help Gus from
the Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group with photographing areas showing
some of the most damage to fallen aspens, felled hazels and general lopping off
chunks of trees because they looked ‘untidy’!
At the site where the ancient aspen supporting a big population of aspen
hoverflies in 2015 it was very difficult to show the damage done because the
tidying up had been so efficient.
However, I noticed a
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| Glisrochilus quadripunctatus beetle |
small red and black beetle in the depression
created by where the trunk of the fallen aspen had lain and when expert Stephen
saw the photo back came the name Glisrochilus quadripunctatus, a beetle with
just a few old records in our area. We continued
to be amazed by the lengths the contractors had gone to where they hacked off bits
of live trees and in a few locations we noticed that what had been
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| A section through an aspen bracket fungus (right) and showing penetration into branch |
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| UK distribution Phellinus tremulae |
cut off was
the aspen bracket fungus Phellinus tremulae, a fungus new to the UK as recently
as 2000, and with a current distribution mostly in the aspens stands along our
section of the River Spey. However, it
is not rare! At a couple of these
locations the cut section through the fungus showed clearly its link to the
living section of the aspen tree. A more remarkable record the same day was that
Leicester City had been crowned Premiership Champions on a budget a fraction of
the teams below them in the league! A
breath of fresh air! A morning was also
spent sorting out maps for this summer’s BSBI/CNPA plant survey, targeting
again under-recorded 2x2 km squares (tetrads) in the Cairngorms National Park,
a commitment to five of which will keep me occupied for the rest of the summer.
On the 5th, daughter Laura popped over for a few
days with the Saturday evening outing being the start of a run up to a big
family event – daughter Ruth’s hen party ahead of her June wedding. Through May a rather ‘posh’ wedding dress had
been residing in one of our bedrooms and had
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| Laura and Harry out for a walk |
accompanied Ruth on a few of her
college days in Elgin for up to the day fittings. Janet has been busy on her sewing machine
preparing napkins, tablecloths and table decorations for the wedding meal and
Lewis’s (husband to be) mum and partner have been extremely busy re-designing
their house garden for the fingers crossed, open-air wedding booked for the 18
June. Just to complicate things a little
Janet and myself would disappear off for a holiday at the end of May, booked
ahead of the wedding date, only getting back home nine days before the big event. Watch this space…
Early in the month the first BTO evening woodcock survey was
completed, a survey which is developing into an annual event because of the
serious decline in UK woodcock numbers identified by other BTO breeding and
atlas surveys. This first outing saw me
making my way back to the forest plantation near the River Dulnain in time for
the count to start at 9.15pm. As I
crossed over the
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| Primrose display |
Sluggan Bridge I could see in the distance an amazing sight of
a yellow hillside created by a huge population of primroses, a place I had
promised myself to visit when I saw it the previous year. However, I didn’t make it then but, having
seen it again I planned a return visit, in the daytime. Nothing had changed along my route from
bridge to count location but as I emerged from the dense stand of Norway
spruces and birches onto the forestry track I noticed something moving a little
way ahead of me – a mountain hare – in the forest! As it stopped on the track to look back at me
a second one appeared and both sat for a minute or so, watching me, just enough
time to get their photograph. The count
period of 75 minutes produced just 3 roding woodcock contacts so to keep me
alert I made
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| Sluggan Bridge in the heat and the sun |
notes of the last bird singing as darkness started to fall. Once again it was a robin, out-singing the
song thrush by about 15 minutes, and last heard at 9.57pm. The last fly-past by a woodcock was at
10.35pm. The second of three counts took
place about a week later and this one – 9.30 to 10.50pm – didn’t produce any
woodcock at all. The last singing bird
though was a much closer call with the last song thrush at 10pm and the last
robin five minutes later. Overhead, as
the clouds parted, the half-sized moon shone clearly in the sky with the planet
Jupiter almost by its side. The third
visit would have to await our return from holiday and the wedding.
A couple of days after the first woodcock count I was back
at the primrose hillside to admire the sheer number of plants, a rarish sight
in this area, and to keep an eye open for a rare weevil that might occur. At my first find, a group of heath dog
violets (Viola canina) I realised that I had left my GPS behind so was unable
to make a note of the exact location, but finding more of the violet, I didn’t
need the 10-figure grid reference. The
blaeberry/mountain bumble bee (Bombus monticola) was
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| Brown silver-line moth (Petrophora chlorosata) |
feeding on the primroses
and a green-veined white butterfly was enjoying the sun and 230C of
heat. A moth at rest had me a bit
puzzled but a photo let me see that it was a brown silver-line (Petrophora
chlorosata) once home. Similarly, a
shieldbug resting on a juniper branch was also happy to have its photo taken
and by visiting the gallery on the British Bugs website I identified the parent
bug (Elasmucha grisea) one of the scarcer bugs in this area. An old sap-run on an ancient birch had both
of the scarce pinhead lichens Sclerophora pallida and peronella and in the
wetter flushed ground tussock sedge (Carex paniculata) and fen bedstraw (Galium
uliginosum) were both found. Too many good records so this involved a return visit the next day to attach grid
references to all the finds but
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| Parent bug (Elasmucha grisea) |
with even more heat with the thermometer
reaching 260C! At about this
time a message had arrived from Murdo via the Highland Biological Recording Group
to keep an eye open for the rare cranefly Prionocera pubescens, the one found a
couple of summers ago whilst walking the Loch Garten butterfly transect. In the back of my mind was an amazing bit of
bog woodland brought to light by the January chalet planning application close
to the Flowerfield orchid site so thought this might be a
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| Prionocera pubescens cranefly |
good place to
start. A similar looking beastie Tipula
subnodicornis was the first cranefly to be caught in my net but the one I was
looking for had ‘saw-like’ antennae, something the Tipula didn’t have. Persistence paid off and about half an hour
later and after the capture and release of probably a dozen more Tipula’s the
one in my tube had the antennae I was hoping for. ID was later confirmed by Murdo. Hopefully, more visits to this wooded bog
will produce other good records particularly in the butterfly group.
Once again, looking for one species produces another. An email from fungus expert Liz alerted me to
the possibility of a rare aphid, Cinara smolandiae being associated with the common
juniper rust fungus (Gymnosporangium clavariiforme). The aphid had been found recently at Dundreggan
in Glen Moriston near Loch Ness on juniper stems where the fungus had fruited
earlier in the year and there was a chance it could be in local woodland like
Abernethy. In early May the fungus was
still visible on juniper bushes so I thought it worth a quick peek. One way of finding aphids is to look for wood
ants wandering up and down juniper stems to feed on sugary honeydew left behind
by aphids
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| Aphids (to be identified) on juniper |
and, sure enough, by following the ants I found some aphids, some
quite close to the fruiting fungus.
However, there is also a commoner aphid on juniper stems (Cinara juniper)
so the ones I found have gone off to the expert to be identified, though
nothing has been heard back as yet. As I
wandered homewards along the Speyside Way I continued to check the juniper
bushes but also wandered into an area where lodgepole pines had been felled
about 15 years ago, lots of stumps so I just had to have a look if there might
be a tiny Cladonia botrytes lichen present.
Because of their age, the majority of these stumps were in an advanced
state of decay with many starting to disintegrate, so I didn’t hold
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| Stump lichen (Cladonia botrytes) |
out much
hope. How wrong I was. A tiny remaining bit of a heavily decayed
stump, produced the first stump lichen, and further along the old plough-line
another one turned up. Help, this could
be quite an important site, so I called a halt and planned to return another
day equipped with my hand tally counter, measuring tape, red and white marker
tape and better quality camera to see what might be present. So, the next day I returned and walking the
old plough-lines visited 370 stumps and managed to find 9 stump lichens. A couple of days later I was back again and
the 221 stumps checked revealed another 5 lichen sites and the next day 309
stumps added 1 more. A start was then
made replacing the roadside fence at the house, raising its height to try and
stop roe deer jumping over to eat Janet’s flowers and my veg., so the day
before we headed south on our holiday (25th) I made one last visit
and the 172 stumps added another 6 sites which, if my maths are correct gives a
total of 23 stump lichens in this one area of clearfell. The biggest population at one site previously
was at the Kindrogan Field Studies Centre near Pitlochry where 19 stumps held
populations of the
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| One of the smallest stumps yet with the lichen? |
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| Same stump, 2 clumps of Cladonia botrytes |
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| Close up of lower lichen |
lichen. Add to this
the 7 sites found in April Abernethy is, once again, proving to be quite an
important site for rare species. At each
site a GPS grid reference was noted as well as the stump and GPS photographed
in location. A pencil was used to show
roughly were the lichen was on the stump and photographed firstly from a
distance and then close up before a good quality photo was taken of the lichen
in situ. Finally, the diameter of the
stump was measured along with the height of the lichen on the stump from the
ground. Previous studies on Deeside and
within Strathspey showed that stumps where the lichen had been found previously
were between 15 and 90 cm in diameter (mean = 58 cm) and that the height from
the ground was between 10 and 80 cm (mean 36 cm). I have yet to analyse all my data but with
the search still ongoing this will be something for the future. Also, all the previous finds were on Scots
pine stumps whereas mine so far have been all from lodgepole pine
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| Just 300 more stumps to check! |
with one from
a Norway spruce. Other features that are
also developing show that the stump lichen isn’t always growing on the flat
surface of the stump, some have been on the side, a couple towards the base of
the stump as though the section of the stump supporting the lichen has detached
and taken the lichen with it. A couple
of sites have also been sections of branch or log and at several sites the
lichen has been growing deep in other lichens, in competition with other
Cladonia lichens and on stumps where vegetation is also present. An interesting research paper is starting to
develop, re-writing quite a bit about the sites the lichen was previously known
to occupy. Interestingly, there is quite a large area of stump habitat, created at the time of the EU Wet Woods
Project still to check!
On the 26th we headed south initially to stay
with Janet’s mum for a few days before heading ‘over the border’ to Masham in
Yorkshire for the bulk of our holiday.
Whilst with her mum we managed a brief outing to the Salthills Quarry
Local Nature Reserve near Clitheroe managed by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. Here we found that the round-leaved
wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia) was still present (found September 2015) and
a new species for both of us was spindle tree (Euonymus europaea), a single
tree along the way-marked walk. Whilst
driving south on the M6 to Lancashire, just after Carlisle, there were lots of
signs saying ‘slow moving caravans on A66’, little did we know
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| Spindle tree (Euonymus europaea) |
we would see the
reason for this the evening we arrived in Masham. En route to Masham we stopped off in
Grassington to stretch our legs and once again visited Grass Wood on the
outskirts of the village. The leisurely
walk turned up a couple of speckled wood butterflies but star of the walk was a
group of four herb Paris plants, right by the track, just missed by one of the
winter bonfires where brash from exotic conifer removal had been burnt. On the road walking back towards the car we
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| Herb Paris (Paris quadrifolia) |
found a nice population of lily of the valley, a perfect introduction to the
riches of this part of the world. In Masham
the owners of the property were on site to welcome us and once settled in we
had a quick bite to eat before heading out to see the travelling folk with
their horses and caravans parked up just across the road. The rapid clip,clop, clip clop of metal
horse-shoes on tarmac had us staring in wonder as a young lad with friend seated
next to him came galloping along the road, horse, a simple buggy attached and
the two lads smiling their heads off.
The effort taken to slow the horse
down was interesting to see but along
the road, around the field where a dozen or so families were parked up for the
night, the young lad seemed to be quite an expert in controlling his horse and
buggy. There were several of the highly
decorated ‘Romany’ type horse-drawn caravans, open two-seater carts, lots of
horses many with foals at foot and vans, wagons and towing caravans all on
their way to the annual Appleby horse fair, the event the signs on the M6 were
warning us about. Over the next couple
of days the field emptied as the travellers headed north-west to Appleby. Monday saw us leave the car at the house and
walk up the road, along the River Ure to the Marfield Wetlands Nature
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| Masses of flowers on the hawthorn bushes |
Reserve. The amount of blossom on the hawthorn bushes
was incredible with most trees looking like they couldn’t possibly support any
more flowers. Cowslips galore and the
cranesbill plants started to test our ID abilities with some requiring time
with the flower books once back at the house.
Meadow cranesbill were everywhere but small-flowered and cut-leaved
cranesbill plant were much rarer and only found on the nature reserve. We also were re-acquainted with the
red-and-black froghopper (Ceropis vulnerata) one of the largest members of the
froghopper family. The outing the next
day was to prove quite beneficial for later in the holiday. We parked up near Jervaulx Abbey and walked
along a different section of the River Ure heading towards an area we visited
last year. However, the first mile or so
was very poor plant-wise and it was only when we reached a gate which was the
boundary between heavily managed farmland and SSSI farmland that everything
changed. Through
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| Froghopper (Ceropis vulnerata) |
the gate we were into
masses of cowslips and primroses, crosswort and red campion. Field garlic (Allium oleraceum) was just
coming into flower unlike the ramsons which were in flower everywhere and some
well past their best. Something on the
stem of cocksfoot grass looked familiar but was the wrong colour, one of the
choke (Epichloe) fungi, but which one?
It would be later in the holiday before this query was resolved. As we turned to walk back to the car a couple
with their dog stopped to ask what I was photographing (field garlic). For some reason we got onto talking about the
meadow cranesbill and the lady said we should visit a site near to Leyburn to
see the wood cranesbill which should be in flower. In checking out were this was and what other
flowers might be nearby a few interesting orchid locations emerged, something
that will be covered in the next blog.
Enjoy the read, sorry about the delay
Stewart and Janet
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Tetrad definition
BSBI/CNPA plant survey 2015
BTO Woodcock Survey
British Bugs
Salthills Quarry Local Nature Reserve
Firwood blog October 2015
NBN Gateway
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG)
and how to join HBRG
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| Always beautiful |
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| The bedroom window view Masham! |
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| Black-headed gulls hawking insects - Masham |
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| Bird survey done for another day. Night,night. |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
