Firwood Cottage, Nethybridge

Sunday, 3 July 2016

Still stumped – but numbers increase

Goodness, where did May, and for that matter, June go? The 1^st 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

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

A section through an aspen bracket fungus (right) and
showing penetration into branch

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 5^th, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 (25^th) 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

One of the smallest stumps yet with the lichen?

Same stump, 2 clumps of Cladonia botrytes

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

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 26^th 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

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

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

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

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

http://www.bscg.org.uk/

Tetrad definition

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tetrad

BSBI/CNPA plant survey 2015

http://bsbipublicity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/plant-surveying-in-cairngorms-thanks-to.html

BTO Woodcock Survey

https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/woodcock-survey

British Bugs

http://www.britishbugs.org.uk/links.html

Salthills Quarry Local Nature Reserve

http://www.lancswt.org.uk/reserves/salthill-quarry-local-nature-reserve

Firwood blog October 2015

http://firwoodcottage.blogspot.co.uk/2015_10_01_archive.html

NBN Gateway

https://data.nbn.org.uk/

Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)

http://www.fieldmycology.net/

BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles

http://bsbidb.org.uk/

Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG)

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Latest.html

and how to join HBRG

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/MainPages/joinHBRG.htm

Always beautiful

The bedroom window view Masham!

Black-headed gulls hawking insects - Masham

Bird survey done for another day. Night,night.

Photos © Stewart Taylor

Monday, 23 May 2016

Stumped, a thousand times

The horror mentioned in the closing paragraph in last month’s blog has to be one of the worst things I’ve seen locally in what was classed as a “tidying up” operation. The follow up to the email received on 31 March saw me in the aspen and hazel wood by Spey Bridge at 7.30am the next day, and what I saw almost brought me to tears. There were several bonfires still alight and smoking, trees had been felled and either removed or burnt and all the hazels, ancient or otherwise, had been ‘coppiced’, a practice that isn’t something that created our coppiced-like hazels in this part of the

Spey Bridge aspen wood bonfires

world, they grow like that naturally. None of the ancient standing aspens had been felled but all the fallen trees of a similar age had gone, taking with them habitat required by the rare aspen hoverfly (Hammerschmidtia ferruginea) including the tree known to hold a large population of larvae. This fallen tree and its hoverflies featured in the Firwood blog in July 2015 when many flies were photographed and many minutes of video created showing the females ovipositing (egg-laying) creating the next populations of this rare fly. What was left? A small section of the tree that had straddled the huge drain running along the edge of the woodland. Two other similar sized fallen

Aspen hoverfly (Hammerschmidtia ferruginea) egg laying on aspen
now removed

aspens had also been completely removed, one of which could have also been home to the hoverfly. Standing in the wood that morning I was aware of the feeling of openness, almost parkland like, where, in whichever direction you looked you could see right through the wood to the fields, River Spey and industrial estate beyond with not a scrap of fallen tree, hazel or young sapling to block your view. It was totally unbelievable. Everywhere there were bonfires, many still smouldering, and on many trees that had been left, side-branches and even bracket fungi had been sliced off. As I

Aspen hoverfly tree before 'tidy up'

Angled depression where aspen hoverfly tree once was and 'the drain'

wandered, taking photos, I became aware of four men having appeared and starting to heap more branches and un-burnt wood from the edges of the bonfires onto the fires and inevitably one of them wandered over to see what I was up to. Hello pleasantries out of the way I asked what they were up to and was told the lady owner of Revack Estate had asked them to tidy up the wood. “Do you realise that you have destroyed hundreds of years-worth of natural forest development” to which I was told they were just the contractors. Hundreds of years of development destroyed in a few days of absolute madness.

And it wasn’t just trees.

The five-foot deep drain running through the site had also been dug out supposedly to stop flooding in the wood! Looking at all the tree stumps I would estimate that more than the ‘legal’ 5 cubic metres (5 metric tonnes) of timber had been felled without a felling licence application to Forestry Commission Scotland, but visits by FCS staff have decided that this was marginal and rather than a prosecution, a letter explaining the wrong-doings has been sent to the estate owner. Scottish Natural Heritage and the Cairngorms National Park Authority were on site the same day as I visited after receiving my email detailing what had been going on and meetings have since taken place with the Revack Estate manager. The lady owner refused to meet any of the FCS, Park and SNH staff and it’s pretty obvious that the manager hadn’t a clue about anything to do with the natural environment or

Orthotrichum obtusifolium moss Spey Bridge aspens

the damage he was supervising. I first visited this wood in 2010 to see the rare Blunt-leaved Bristle-moss (Orthotrichum obtusifolium) and a second visit followed to see the habitat required by the aspen hoverfly led by the lead surveyor, introducing interested parties to the deadwood habitat required by the fly After my introduction to aspen lichens at Insh Marshes RSPB Reserve by Brian and Sandy Coppins in 2012, I returned to the wood to look for some of the rare lichens found during an earlier survey by experts, just to ‘get my eye in’, to know what they looked like and the typical sites were they grew. Since that first visit I must have spent days in this wood checking all the aspens and hazels for lichens and adding a few more locations for the rarities whilst also keeping an eye open for the rare moss and some of the seldom recorded fungi associated with dead aspen and hazel branches.

Lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria)

During my first visits looking for the lichens I had my camera and tripod with me so that as each one was found I could take a photo of the tree and myself with my finger pointing to where the lichen was growing. These photos have been quite important in trying to show the damage done and over a few days, once the contractors had gone, I revisited most of the trees and repeated my photos to try and show before and after images of the site. Sadly, it is very difficult to show the real extent of the damage even by going to these lengths but at least FCS, SNH and the CNPA have a copy in their files for use if needed in the future. The lungwort lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria), a rare lichen locally, that grew on just one of the old hazels might never return because of the distance to the next known

Spey Bridge fellings - hazel stumps in the background

Spey Bridge aspens - remains of one of the fallen, ancient trees

population. It might, but we are probably thinking hundreds not tens of years for that to happen. Amazingly, in tree felling legalities, the owner could return to this site, fell another 5 tonnes of timber and no one could do anything about it. The trees are not protected, the hoverfly isn’t protected and less so the fallen, dead ancient aspens and this is where I find a real dilemma. Oh, did anyone tell the owner about the woods importance? It’s certainly not for me to go round knocking on owners’ doors saying “by the way…..”. Even if SNH or the Park did this there is nothing to stop the owners going out and slowly and legally undertake management that would remove or reduce the woods importance in natural history terms. This has happened to an important flower and insect meadow where a planning application was refused because of their importance. The next spring the field was fertilised to try and reduce its importance, the plants growing there owed their existence to the field never having been managed intensively in the past. SNH now have all my rare lichen records from the many aspen and hazel woods in the Strathspey area along with those collected by the Coppins and other experts. This could be the start of something developing to give these important woods some degree of protection from exploitation, bloody-minded management not forgetting those tidying up operations that one owner has spent a lot of unnecessary money on.

On the last day I was as the Spey Bridge site taking photos I spent the afternoon driving up to near Nairn to see if any of the garden nurseries stocked ‘native’ rowan saplings. Returning empty handed and for a change of scene after the depression of the previous few days, I just stopped the car in a nice looking spot and wandered down through the trees towards the River Findhorn. Here I found massive, ancient alders, lots of bird cherries and the occasional ancient oak along with lots of damp, flushed ground where I spotted good populations of alternate-leaved golden-saxifrage (Chrysosplenium alternifolium). Would the rare fungus found on the leaves of the plant last year be

Refractohilum galligenum parasite on Nephroma laevigatum

present? After a little searching the tell-tale signs were seen on the upper leaves and the obvious white fungus (Entyloma chrysosplenii) found on the under-leaf, once again probably an under-recorded species. Some of the enormous alders were searched unsuccessfully for anything that I recognised as unusual before arriving at one of the ancient oaks. On the tree bark I could see a large population of the Nephroma laevigatum lichen, but something on the ‘leaves’ of the lichen (thallus) looked a little odd indicating the possible presence of a lichenicolous fungus, a parasite on living lichens. A small sample was taken for checking once home and consulting The Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland handbook I was led to the name Refractohilum galligenum a species with few British records (just x20 0n NBN Gateway). A check under the microscope found something called ‘truncated conidia’ but being totally unfamiliar with these microscopic parts a specimen was sent to Brian Coppins who confirmed my ID was correct. The next day saw the completion of the Spey

White fungus Entyloma chrysosplenii top and brown
Puccinia chrysosplenii underleaf bottom and upper leaf right

Bridge ‘after’ photos with all the before and after photos brought together as a Publisher document. There then followed an outing to the River Spey near Rothes for the final outing to look for the fungus on Yellow Star of Bethlehem leaves as reported in the last blog. This outing starts by parking near an amazing railway bridge and as I wandered through the arch where I’d parked I noticed lots of maidenhair spleenwort ferns growing in the pointing between the bricks. For some reason I decided to check some of these ferns a little more closely and was surprised to see another, smaller fern growing with the spleenwort, which I didn’t recognise. Photos taken, and thinking I was dealing with a garden-type escape, I wandered off to check the Yellow Star of Bethlehem plants. Along the way I came across lots of alternate-leaved golden-saxifrage populations along with more of the white leaf fungus. At a couple of sites the white Entyloma chrysosplenii fungus was found growing close to a second leaf fungus, also found last year, Puccinia chrysosplenii, but this fungus was a distinct brown colour and possibly the first time both had been found growing close together within the same

Snowdrop leaves and fungus to be identified

population of the saxifrage. The hour spent checking the Yellow Star of Bethlehem plants didn’t find any leaf fungus but, a large hyacinth type plant at the base of one tree turned out to be Pyrenean squill (Scilla lilio-hyacinthus), probably planted along with the many clumps of several types of daffodils. The same wood also has several big clumps of snowdrops, many well established, and on the leaves of some plants was a brown rust fungus which had turned up nearby in 2015 and had posed a few problems re identity, for the staff at Kew. So, more photos and samples taken which once dried were posted off to Kew. There is a chance that this fungus is linked to something that also appears on willow leaves, so another visit will be needed later in the year to look for anything on the nearby

Rustyback fern (Asplenium ceterach)

Railway bridge fernery

willows. Once home the books were consulted to see if the small fern was a native or escapee and I was pleasantly surprised to see the name rustyback (Asplenium ceterach) jump out at me from the book. It is a native species and, as it turned out, a new species for Vice County 95, Moray. Quite an honour to find something new for this well recorded VC. Because of the rarity of the fungus growing on the leaves of the alternate-leaved golden-sax I sent a couple of days visiting sites where I had seen the plant previously and at one site near Tomatin both leaf fungi were found growing again, close together, indicating that they might be more commoner than previously thought.

Thankfully, the 13^th April proved to be a good day. This was my first visit to see the Consultant involved in my prostate operation to see how I was progressing and to give me the results of a blood-test the week before. He was pleased to hear that the use of incontinence pads during the day had decreased to just about nil, though the odd ‘spillage’ did sometimes occur. I told him of my Viagra problem and he asked how many pills I was taking and when I said one a day he informed me that the instructions on the packs were wrong, and this should have been one every other day! He suggested trying the new dosage and see if there was a reaction! However, I was more desperate to hear about the blood test and eventually he informed me that he was very pleased and that my original PSA (prostate-specific antigen) count of a dangerous 7 was now 0.02 but he was hoping this would decrease even further. The prostate, when checked, showed that the cancer was fully contained, and that the three monthly blood-tests would monitor any changes. Phew! The day after we had an inch of snow lying, light falls of which continued for a couple of days.

Around mid-month an email arrived asking me about the occurrence in the past of the rare stump lichen (Cladonia botrytes) along a new power-line cleared of pines in 1988. This power-line was a pole supply linking Forest Lodge to Rynettin in the recently acquired Forest Lodge Estate by RSPB, the power-line being part of the sale agreement. In 1998 the corridor cleared of fairly old Scots pines to install the poles and cables was surveyed, specifically to look for this tiny, rare lichen, on the stumps of the felled pines. As its name implies, this is the habitat were the lichen is most regularly found, but it had also been found once on dead heather stems and at one site on the circular end of a

cut pine branch. The query asked if the lichen was still present. I knew a follow up survey had been undertaken and had to make a few enquiries to confirm my thoughts that the stumps where the lichen had been found were now totally overgrown with more dominant lichens, moss or plants – the natural processes taking place over a couple of decades. The dates given above are quite important for this lichen, the ten year gap between tree felling and lichen growth is the time it takes for the stump to start to decay to be suitable, but, with that sort of timescale, many stumps will overgrow with other

The Cladonia botrytes stump, lichen top right

Cladonia botrytes

commoner Cladonia lichens, mosses and with heather and other plants. However, a few stumps will remain relatively clear of other competitors and it is on these stumps that the stump lichen might get a chance to grow. Another factor that might also influence where the lichen grows is where the felling creates a small clearing or coupe within an area of unmanaged surrounding woodland. Whether this affects sunlight, moisture, aspect of stumps is not known probably because there are so few sites to work with, often just a single stump with the lichen. The biggest number of sites was near the Kindrogan Field Studies Centre in Perthshire where, in 1998, 19 pine stumps were found in a felled

Photographing the lichen

clearing with the lichen. By 2006 only 4 stumps continued to support the lichen. In checking details of the current state of the lichen in Abernethy with Rebecca in Edinburgh, she happened to mention that the big felling of old pines that took place in Curr Wood near Dulnain Bridge about 10 years ago would have left cut stumps that sould be getting to the stage where the lichen might grow. As I was going to be visiting this wood to check some of the twinflower patches for the leaf fungi (last site locally for Metacoleroa dickiei) before the big finds in Abernethy from 2013) I thought I would keep an eye on any stumps I came across as a single site had been found in this wood in 2005. I have to thank our chalet guests Lynne and David for what happened next. Desperate to see a crested tit I had spent a little time in the woods just outside the Firwood boundary where cresties had been heard regularly until just before their visit, to see if I could locate any. After standing around without hearing a cheep I was making my way back to the Speyside Way track when I stopped to check a lodgepole pine stump. Photos I’d taken of possible stump lichens in Curr Wood all turned out to be of other species, but this had given me a bit of an insight into what I was actually looking for and

Cladonia botrytes before

Cladonia botrytes and after, changeable weather!

when I looked down on this particular stump, I knew I had found it. Photos of course had to be sent off to the experts to check, but colour, size, stump not too overgrown, I knew this was going to be the most recent find of Cladonia botrytes in the UK. Emails by return confirmed my identification. Wow! Later the same day I returned to the stump to get good quality photos and to check all the other stumps in this felling coupe where all the lodgepole pines had been cleared as part of the EU Wet Woods Restoration Project 1998-2001. Next day the search continued in the next coupe across the Speyside Way and this proved to be very productive with another 3 stumps and 1 decaying lodgepole log all supporting the lichen. Not only were the finds good in numbers but the number of ‘potedia’ (the ‘stem’ of the lichen supporting the pink fruiting apothecia or pycnidia) at most locations were all very high, particularly when compared with the earlier Abernethy finds. So, you can guess what happens next! From the 20^th April until months end 9 outing were undertaken in Abernethy and Curr Wood producing 2 more stumps with the lichen. Sadly, I didn’t take my hand tally counter with me to begin with to click-count the number of stumps checked, but during the last two outings in Curr Wood, where I was also checking twinflower patches, almost 500 stumps were looked at. Considering that there had been seven previous outings bending over ‘stumping’ well over a thousand additional stumps would have also been checked.

Despite the outings to Curr Wood not producing any Cladonia botrytes records there were two other good finds. This wood was used for the pinewood hoverfly experiment (Blera fallax) where pyramid shaped holes were cut by chainsaw into the tops of the recently felled tree stumps. These holes were then filled with wood chips or sawdust and allowed to fill naturally with rainwater. Over the years of the experiment many of these holes were used as breeding sites by the hoverfly and I think the last

Blera fallax larva

Calicera rufa larva

holes were cut in about 2006 or 2008. As I went along looking for twinflower patches and suitable lichen stumps I came across some of the stumps used for the experiment and on one stump, where a wedge of wood cut out of the stump and used as a cover for the hole had been moved to the side of the hole, I could see the hole still held a large amount of water. I thought I should move the ‘cover’ back towards the hole, but as I lifted it up I realised that there was a larva resting on the surface of the stump and to me, it looked like a Blera larva. Over the years I’ve had quite a few contacts with these larvae so I was fairly confident that I had found a larva leaving the watery hole where it had been growing for the last year to pupate before emerging as an adult fly to start the process all over again. Expert Iain confirmed the ID the next day. At another cut stump, again still retaining water, I could see a larva on the wood chips but this one didn’t have the long, distinctive breathing ‘tube’ at the end

Twinflower leaf and two fungi

of its body and my guess this time was that I was dealing with another pine rot-hole resident fly Calicera rufa, something I had seen previously in the watery hole at the junction of the trunks of twin-stemmed Scots pines. Again the expert agreed. The twinflower patches may also have produced the goods. The original find in this wood was for the leaf fungus Metacoleroa dickiei in 2001, way ahead of my find in Abernethy in 2013. However, this was the only species recorded and I knew from my surveys that a second fungus might also be present, Ceramothyrium linnaeae, the one that turned out to be new to the UK when identified by Martyn at Kew. This is the smaller black dot fungus living on the twinflower leaves along with its bigger relative M. dickiei. Checking leaves under the microscope I’m sure I’ve found it but I just await confirmation from Paul at Kew.

This woodland is next to the famous Strathspey Heather Centre on the Skye of Curr road and a place where quite a few items for the garden are bought each year along with some of our bird food. On the 30^th I was driving over to Aviemore to pick up the grandchildren at 8.30am and I noticed huge plumes of smoke rising from the direction of the A95 Aviemore to Grantown road and, with there

being a covering of snow on the ground, I assumed there had been a crash on the road with a resulting fire. I stopped to take a few photos before heading on to Aviemore. Heading back to Aviemore at about 10am if anything the smoke was worse and was drifting as far as Aviemore on the northerly wind. It wasn’t a crash but the Heather Centre buildings going up in flames with a fire so intense fire crews from as far away as Inverness were called in to help. A section of the plant sale area was saved but many of the buildings were destroyed including the shop and café. Currently a limited amount of plant sales continue but it will be some while before the whole tourist outlet is up and running again.

Mid-April was a bad time for the Strathspey waders on the farm close to Broomhill Bridge where photos over the years were taken of fields being drained and wet pasture being ploughed up. I was checking the snowdrop populations along the side of the River Nethy when I was aware that the adjacent fields were being ploughed, fields were I knew lapwings and oystercatchers were sitting on eggs. I walked back to the car and drove along the road towards the bridge just in time to see the tractor and plough getting ever closer to one of the oystercatcher nests, so I pulled over and sat to

Nesting oystercatcher about to be ploughed up

watch what would happen next. For two passes of the plough the oystercatcher stayed on its nest but for the next pass it took off and slowly returned to its nest once the tractor was well up the field. The tractor driver must have realised that I was photographing what was happening and stopped his tractor at the top end of the field and disappeared off to the farm buildings. I waited a little while but it was obvious that he wouldn’t be returning whilst I was parked close to the nest. This was one of two nests close to where I was parked. After five minutes I decided it was time to go and drove home. However, I was keen to know what had happened so about twenty minutes later I drove back to find that the place where the nest had been was now ploughed, probably a few minutes before I’d

Nest gone

2nd oystercatcher looking for nest and eggs

returned. However, as the tractor and plough drove past me once again it stopped and the driver climbed down from his cab and appeared to move something from just in front of the tractor, which, I assumed, was the nest or eggs of the second oystercatchers nest, placing whatever it was on the recently ploughed ground. As the tractor made its way back up the field a very distraught oystercatcher was wandering back and forth trying to find its nest and eggs. At this stage a landrover appeared from the farm area so I decided it was time to go. Returning to the field in the early evening I drove back to find that none of the oystercatchers was present and will leave it up to you as to whether the law had been broken. At least one lapwing nest in the same field also disappeared. With harrowing work to follow followed by seed planting and then field rolling there is little chance of any breeding success by either species on this particular field. Something similar also happened in the field on the other side of the road and we all scratch our heads wondering why the local wader population is in major decline. I’ve enquired whether I would have been prosecuted if I’d been seen stealing the eggs but this particular query has yet to be answered.

John Owen – an amazing man

We received some very sad news on the 26^th April, John Owen our friend and long-term beetle recorder at RSPB Abernethy Forest had died. Shortly after we arrived at Loch Garten I was out on the Tulloch Moor road early one evening and I met a man with a sweep-net, sweeping insects from the roadside verge. We got chatting and I asked if it would be possible to have a list of any of the species he identified for the reserve list and a few weeks later a list duly arrived. This was 1977 and John and wife Doreen returned to the expanding Abernethy Reserve almost every year for 15 years

John Owen in action

Timberman beetle (male) first found by John

Bee beetle

and after that identified many of the beetles that were collected via pitfall traps during reserve survey projects. During this period over 900 species of beetles were identified with 190 being in the ‘rare to scarce’ category. I collected beetles from squirrel dreys, buzzard nests, Norway spruce cones, osprey nests whilst up the trees at ringing time and even from the water-filled flowers of a group of pitcher plants that someone had planted near Loch Garten all for John to see and identify. John was equally as industrious with malaise traps which recorded species throughout the year and which produced 4 flies (identified by his friend) that were new to science. A dead sheep was placed near our house in Tulloch and surrounded by pitfall traps to see what turned up and when something unusual turned up in one of the research pitfall traps there was great excitement. A water beetle by the amazing name of Agabus (now Ilybius) wasastjernea had turned up and though it was not a new British species it was the first time it had been found as a living specimen the previous records being from fossil finds (wing elytra) dated from around 8000 years before the Abernethy find. Doreen played a major part in all John’s visits, a companion in the field and a great help to John with his various pieces of field equipment. Our thoughts and sympathies are with her at this sad time.

Enjoy the read

Stewart and Janet

Firwood blog July 2015

http://firwoodcottage.blogspot.co.uk/2015_07_01_archive.html

EU Wet Woods Project

http://www.wetwoods.org/

Lichen podetia

http://gis.nacse.org/lichenland/html/podetia.html

Blera fallax

http://www.mallochsociety.org.uk/blera-2006-status/

Firwood Blog July 2011 – Blera fallax

http://firwoodcottage.blogspot.co.uk/2011_07_01_archive.html