I think I’m retired!
However, aspens and names of a group of local farms appear with such
regularity in my diary during March that you would think I was involved in a
paid contract. I’m not. My outings have added hugely to our knowledge
of some of our less recorded lichens found on aspens and hazels and a picture
is starting to develop about which of these woods might progress to seeing
active management in order to secure their future. Along the way, I managed to get a copy of a
student’s PhD thesis completed in 1997 covering, in great detail, the genetic
and clonal distribution of aspens in a wood that I have recently spent so much
time in. He visited this wood and others
in
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| The amazing aspen wood |
Scotland and one statement really brings home to me what I have thought for
quite a long time “That [this wood], in Strathspey, is Scotland’s largest aspen
dominated woodland” not only that but a lot of the wood is a mix of aspen and
ancient hazel, a real rare mix locally. So,
the time and effort is well spent if, at the end of the day we manage to get
some new trees established, the first in seventy-odd years, to ensure the
future of the wood and the important species they support. It is also encouraging to have owners who are
keen to see new trees in their woods, setting examples that others might follow. Watch this space.
In one of these woods I made an effort to visit all the
aspens to check their lichen populations, well the species I know, and, walking
from tree to tree most hazels were also checked. The rarer species regularly encountered were
Schismatomma graphidioides, Fuscopannaria mediterranea and Degelia plumbea but
the single tree that took the prize was a small but mature hazel with F. mediterranea,
D. plumbea, Parmeliella triptophylla and Sticta limbata a lichen with few
records for the site and in the
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| The very important wee hazel with amazing lichens |
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| The lichen Sticta limbata |
local area.
Another aspen had a big population of Leptogium saturninum a new lichen
for the wood. Sitting having my jam
butty lunch I spotted something small and orange had fallen into my lunch
polybag and on closer inspection I found it was the orange ladybird (Halyzia
16-guttata or sedecimguttata) a species with only one nearby record. On another tree, I was just about aware of a
moth resting on the trunk of the tree, blending in very well with its
surroundings, and checking my
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| Orange ladybird |
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| The engrailed moth |
photos once home I found it was the engrailed (Ectropis
crepuscularia). Another one was found
later in the day. Many of the crustose
lichens like Fuscopannaria mediterranea, have to be checked quite closely via
my hand lens and in amongst the leafy bits of the lichen I could see several
small red ‘blobs’ all with spiky hairs.
Were these fungi? And if so,
could they be parasitic on the lichen? A
small group of the ‘blobs’ were removed and carefully tubed up to check once
home. All around there were the first
leaves of primroses along with those of pignut, possibly the roots of which
were responsible for quite a bit of badger digging. Under the microscope the squashed red blobs
had, what looked to me like spores, but checking with invertebrate expert
Stephen, the suggestion was that they
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| The mystery 'red blobs' |
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| A spider mite on the same type of lichen - a possibility? |
might be spider mite eggs. The red blobs that remained after my checking
were kept damp and in a glass petri dish but after several days of checking no eight
-legged mites had appeared and checking with Craig at Buglife also failed to
find a name. On one of my visits I had
heard chainsaws and machinery working. A
neighbouring property was being fenced off to exclude deer to allow new woodland
to be created by planting and also with some potential benefit to the
broadleaved trees around the edges of the sheep grazed fields. On another visit the fencing contractors had
reached the boundary between the one with the aspens I was checking and the one
being fenced off so I went to say hello just in case they got a little worried
by a strange man staring at trees! To
install this new fence, which was to full deer exclusion height, quite a few
trees had to be removed or cut back and it was on another visit several days
later that I thought the rising sun was melting frost from a few birch trees
because of the regular drips I was seeing.
It wasn’t drips of water but almost a slow flow of birch sap running
from stumps of the branches cut from the mature trees by the now completed
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| Birch sap drips |
fence. All around the same thing was
happening, the branches having been cut back at just the same time as the sap
was rising in the trees to herald another growing season. In the distant past Janet and myself also
made use of this ‘sap’ by drilling small holes onto mature birches, banging in
a rubber bung with plastic tube running through its centre and running the
other end of the tube to a demijohn bottle down on the ground. Over a couple of days enough sap had been
deposited in the bottle to allow us to take it home and go through the process
of making birch sap wine. Sadly, I can’t
remember how good or bad the outcome was (not due to inebriation! - but Janet
remembers it as being very pleasant) and for many years you could see the same
technique being employed by the now defunct Moniack Castle Wineries from near
Beauly, as they ‘tapped’ many birches locally to make Silver Birch Wine on a
slightly more industrial scale.
Mid-month I received an email from staff at Mar Lodge
NTS, to say that some logs we checked for the green shield moss (Buxbaumia
viridis) a few years ago were being very productive this year, despite some of
them having been moved around a bit by the floods of late 2015/early 2016. When the figures 100+ and 90+ were mentioned
I thought this was worth a trip over the tops to see them. So, it was over the now snow-less Lecht and
over the tops to Crathie on Deeside before following the River Dee all the way
to the Linn of Dee before parking up to find the first tree. The tree with the
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| The green shield-moss tree and some of the 135 capsules |
moss capsules was the only
one of three enormous conifers that had fallen during a gale many years
ago. The tree was almost a metre in
diameter towards the base and had about eighteen metres of a much longer trunk
that looked suitable for the moss. Only
an Abernethy Norway spruce tree host came anywhere near the size of this tree,
but in that case, everything was about a third of the size of what was in front
of me on this visit. Thankfully, about
half of the tree was in touch with the ground otherwise it probably wouldn’t
have provided the right amount of damp wood for the moss to grow. So, slowly, I started to work my way along
the tree using white plastic plant labels to mark out the next one metre of the
trunk to search. As I progressed the
tally marks in my notebook started to add up and once I had worked my way along
one side of the tree and back down the other side my count
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| New and old capsules top and the tiny log with capsules below |
was 135
capsules. In addition, there were about
20 stalks (seta) where the capsules have been lost (eaten?) along with a few
old capsules from last year. Wow! The Mar Lodge staffs count and my own were
quite close providing the biggest green shield moss population yet counted on a
single substrate. The bulk of the
capsules were found on about seven metres of the trunk. On my way back down the road I stopped again
to visit the other high capsule count site and the comparison with the first
site couldn’t have been more different.
At this site there were good numbers of small sections of conifer logs
and at the end of checking all five the tally marks this time totalled 96
capsules. The most amazing log was just
6-7” long and about 4-5” in diameter and was home to 7 capsules, by comparison
one of the smallest pieces of substrate I have ever seen to be home to the
moss. Thank you Shaila and Jonathan Mar
Lodge Estate ecologists.
Congratulations to the staff at RSPB Abernethy Forest
NNR, the winners of Nature Reserve of the Year in the BBC Countryfile Magazine
Awards 2017. The reserve was nominated
for the award by
Brett Westwood, naturalist and BBC Radio 4 presenter, and
Jeremy and staff were presented with the award on 17 March on a slightly damp
day down by Loch Garten.
The search for the northern February red stonefly
continued, the searches being a good excuse to visit areas not usually on the
visits list. Early in March I headed off
to the River Tromie running along the edge of the RSPB Insh Marshes Reserve and
despite lots of other stoneflies being found on the first
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| Female northern February red stonefly (Brachyptera putata) |
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| One of the others males (left) and female Capnia bifrons |
kilometre of fence
posts heading down river from the B970, the February red wasn’t one of
them. However, after about 1.5km of
fence posts, and just where the river became ‘flat’ water without rocks, there
was a male and after another hundred metres a female was found. I wasn’t too surprised when another male turned
up where the River Tromie joined up with the Spey because the Spey is a
well-known river for this fly. Visits to
the River Avon at Tomintoul and the Findhorn at Tomatin failed to find any but
having finished checking the latter I drove into Tomatin and on to check the
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| Whisky fungus at Tomatin Distillery |
distillery on the edge of the village to see if there were any black
buildings. As I drove up the road
towards the buildings the blackness was visible everywhere, another site to
report with the whisky fungus, particularly on the bonded warehouses where the
barrels of whisky were maturing.
Our outings of late have seen Janet and myself heading
towards the Moray Coast near Nairn for a bit of sea breeze but also to see
nature progressing towards spring probably 2-3 weeks ahead of progress around
Nethy Bridge. Janet has become expert at
spotting whisky distilleries with their tell-tale signs of whisky fungus as we
drive along but is also a big help to me getting my brain into gear with plant
names as the new growing season progresses.
Wandering by the River Nairn we were puzzled by
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| Yellow anemone and wood anemone |
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| Danish scurvy grass |
seeing the normal white
flowers of wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) growing side by side with what
looked like the same plant but with yellow flowers. Once home the books told me that this was
indeed a different flower – yellow anemone (Anemone ranunculoides) and that it
is a naturalised, introduced species growing in several localities in woods
near to human habitation. On the way
back to the car we found a big population of one of the coastal plants now
moving inland thanks to the spreading of salt on our roads in winter – Danish
scurvy grass (Cochlearia danica). On another
outing, we wandered through the amazing woodland adjacent to Cawdor Castle,
well the areas not being swamped by rhododendron bushes. Parking by one of the ‘back entrances’ we
wandered along the track following the Allt Dearg river, spotting nice clumps
of hard shield fern (Polystichum aculeatum) along its banks which I stopped to
GPS. Eventually we reach the castle
itself and wandered through its grounds to follow the Riereach Burn back
towards the car, or so we thought!
Wandering through the rhododendrons I spotted something I have been
trying to find for a couple of
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| Hard shield fern |
years now, a black fungus growing on the
un-opened flower buds. The large black
pinheads were all over many of the flower buds so time for a few photos and a sample
to take home to check where it was confirmed as Seifertia azaleae or in some
books Pycnostyanus azaleae, also known as rhododendron Bud-blast, a good
descriptive name. It was shortly after
this that the ’lost in the woods’ fun started, particularly as I hadn’t put the
map in the bag thinking that with the heavy rain at the start we wouldn’t be
going too far! Following our noses
didn’t work and after following a couple
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| Seifertia azaleae fungus on flower buds top and spores x1000 (oil) below |
of dead-end tracks I resorted to my
GPS using the Go-To facility to take us back to the fern location. This didn’t work either which had me really
puzzled. Just then a dog ran past us and
as the shouts of the owner got ever nearer we were able to get directions from
him to the footbridge where the fern had been seen. Once there I did a re-take of the GPS
location only to find the original one was out by several hundred metres
something I can only put down to us being near the flying area of the RAF jets
from Lossiemouth and that for some reason the GPS readings had been made a
little bit inaccurate for a time. Who
knows, but our walk ended up about twice as long as it should have but all
ended okay in the end.
An outing to try and re-find an old twinflower location
had a very different outcome which, for now, means the location won’t be
given. Over the last few years,
particularly with my link to twinflower and the leaf fungi it supports, a few
locations popped up that remained on my ‘to visit’ list. The morning outing had taken me to the local
nurse to have my ongoing blood sample taken to monitor the after effects of the
prostate operation a year ago. A little
worryingly the readings which should have said PSA zero, whilst very low, were
going up, but after the visit I headed off to the area where the twinflower
patch had last been seen in 1954. As I
wandered back and forth across the wood I realised that I was actually looking
for a ‘needle in a haystack’, the wood was just too big to try and walk lines
just a few metres apart. However,
lady-luck was with me and, in a dampish bit of the
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| Sample of twinflower leaves taken to check for fungus |
wood which didn’t look too
promising, there it was, not too many runners but visible over a few square
metres. Not just Linnaea borealis (twinflower)
but one of the leaf fungi Metacoleroa dickiei, was also present. It would be a little unusual for there not to
be more twinflower patches so I carried on wandering back and forth across the
wood. As I was looking down I came
across the remains of a hare and as I looked up I saw another dead one. This hare was in a semi-circular cage on a
leaning tree trunk, fixed to the trunk but above a large gin-type trap, set,
and also attached to the same trunk.
Everything looked a little large to be legal so photos were taken and
before leaving, the trap was sprung knowing that there were red squirrels in
the wood. If it was legal, then I
couldn’t be accused of damaging property by removing it. The whole set up looked like it was a trap for
catching pine martens and when I made enquiries once home, this proved to be the
case. Photos and location were passed on
to the police wildlife liaison officers who, I gather, removed the trap. Interestingly, once home, I checked the few
details available for the earlier twinflower find and realised that the older
record was in a different OS grid square which had to be a minimum of 300
metres away! Oh well, a good excuse for
another visit.
That’s it for another month – a bit too much on the go
hence the delay
Enjoy the read
Stewart and
Janet
Tally Marks
Mar Lodge Estate NTS
Birch sap wine
Danish scurvy grass moving inland
Badenoch and
Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate
recording database
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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| Fuscopannaria mediterranea lichen |
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| A wee roe deer |
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| A starling indicating that the breeding season is almost up on us! |
Photos ©
Stewart Taylor and RSPB Award photo ©
Graham Hazlegreaves Photography
