September was a month which saw lots of time being spent on
bog cranberry plants and scratching the head as to which waxcap was I seeing.
The cranberry (Vaccinium spp) checking began after I remembered botanist Andy
saying my photos of a plant on Rannoch Moor in 2016 looked like it had hairs on
the flower stem and this confirmed that I had found the rarer cranberry (Vaccinium
oxycoccos) rather than the commoner species in our area, small cranberry (Vaccinium
microcarpum). As usual, cranberry
checking started by accident as the list of ‘stuff’ in my diary for the 1st
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| The brilliant bog |
September reminded me. I set out that
day to look for a rare form of honey fungus that had been found a month earlier
at RSPB Insh Marshes (Armillaria ectypa) in a brilliant bog area close to the
Kincardine Church by the B970. Once on
the bog the first diary entry was for a collection of dead deergrass stems to
see if there were any fungi present (Mollisia fuscoparaphysata) to help with
Brian’s study down at Kew but as I bent down I could see something unusual
popping out from the
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| Bog jellydisc (Sarcoleotia turficola) |
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| Cross-leaved heath & Eriococcus devoniensis |
peaty pool. Initially
there was just one, a small round growth topped by a brownish cap and straight
away I was thinking this was actually the wee fungus that grows in association
with sphagnum moss and is known as the bog jellydisc (Sarcoleotia turficola). As I searched around I found quite a few more
fruiting bodies but then I noticed something else a bit unusual, stems of
cross-leaved heath flowers (Erica tetralix) that were forming ‘circles’ rather
than growing straight up. There was also
a small white ‘growth’ on the stem, close to the spiralling stem! Some sort of gall? Photos taken along with a couple of specimens
which turned out to be Eriococcus devoniensis (heather scale bug) a member of
the Hemiptera group of insects and it is the actions of these insects (sucking
sap from the plant) that cause the plant stems to curl. The NBN Atlas map shows just one record in
the UK for this wee bug but Margaret Redfern confirmed my ID and also said that
it was common in the UK but
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| Cranberry leaves (Vaccinium spp) top and flowers bottom |
seldom recorded.
This proved correct and I found it on all the other boggy areas I
visited during the month. I then
stumbled on my first patch of cranberry and the wee light in my head asked
“which species”? Normally I just record
all cranberry locally as small cranberry, but on this occasion, I decided to
check if there were any hairs on the flower stem, and there were just a few so
I thought if I take the flower head home, along with a bit of creeping stem and
leaves, I should be able to check leaf size to confirm the species. Wrong! I can see entries in my diary going right
through to the 20th September as I visited other bogs to check flowering
stems and leaves to determine which species we were dealing with. The simple guidance suggests if the leaves
are widest near or below the middle and the flower stem (pedicel) is slightly
hairy (pubescent) you have cranberry. If
the leaves are widest at the base and the flower stems are hairless (glabrous),
then you have small cranberry. However,
the books also say that the flower stems of small cranberry are glabrous – or
almost so – bringing in a little doubt into easy ID. So, over the next few days leaves of
cranberry plants were
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| Hairy Cranberry flower stem top & difference in leaf sizes the biggest and smallest are shown |
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| Cranberry leaves & Exobasidium rostrupii fungus |
brought back, along with a flower stem if present, and a
selection of leaves were measured and photographed to see what developed. With Andy’s help several were named,
providing new local sites for the rarer Vaccinium oxycoccus, but also highlighting
the fact that more work is needed to determine exactly which species is which
and that, like me, folk further south shouldn’t just list cranberry, and folk
further north list small cranberry, without at least making a few more checks. The cranberry plants on the first day did
though, produce something for which I’ve been looking for for a while, half red
leaves, confirming the presence of the Exobasidium rostrupii fungus, a species
with
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| Bladderwort 'hairs' Utricularia stygia top & U. minor botton |
less than 50 UK locations currently.
The diary list ended with an entry for bladderwort which, after checking
the bladder hairs, turned out to be the northern bladderwort (Utricularia
stygia). At another bog site a
collection of bladderwort plants confirmed that there were two species present,
the northern plus lesser bladderwort (U. minor) but again only after checking
the bladder hairs. The latter species is
one that may be found flowering occasionally locally but more regularly further
west and north from my find location.
Here endeth the 1st of September!
The next day we had a nice family outing to support daughter
Laura who was taking on her first 5K run in Huntly. We were picked up by Ruth and the boys and on
a gloriously sunny day we headed over to Aberdeenshire to visit a town where,
as a youngster, I went with mum and dad to my uncle Robs wedding many decades
ago. We all met up about half an hour
before the start and saw many of
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| Laura at the start and completing the run. Well done. |
the competitors going through their warm up
exercises. The middle of the town was
taken over with craft stalls, food outlets and a farmers market and after we
waved Laura off we took the opportunity to grab a quick bite to eat especially
for the boys who’d had quite an early breakfast. There was just too much to choose from but
eventually sausage butties, chips and other goodies were bought and everything
was finished just in time to get to the finish line to cheer Laura home after
half an hour of running. Well done. Just time for a walk round the craft stalls
and the local charity shops before heading back over the tops to Dufftown and
on to Strathspey.
A phone call from farmer Hugh on the 4th caused a
bit of excitement, he had seen a couple of red kites whilst bailing hay the day
before and, as he spoke, he confirmed they had just re-appeared overhead. Cameras quickly assembled and off I went to
Boat of Garten to see if I could catch up with what is, quite a rare visitor
locally. As I pulled off the road into
one of the hay fields I saw the first kite straight away followed by a second a
few minutes later. Taking photographs of
the birds against
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| Local red kites including a tagged one |
the sky was difficult to see if the birds were carrying any
tags and when I saw them land on some of the round bales in the next field, I
drove along the road to get a better view.
Of the two birds in view I could see one was tagged so I tried to get as
good a photo as possible to hopefully read the details later. Being parked on the road verge wasn’t the
safest place to be so I drove on to one of the farm tracks and looking back at
the birds and the hay bales I could see that there were three kites but just
the one with wing tags. A bit of a
battle with rooks ensued and two kites disappeared up into the woods before it
was time for me to head off to pick up the boys from school. On the way back from school we drove past the
field with the bales but didn’t see any sign of the kites and Hugh confirmed
that they had moved off later that day.
The birds appeared at the time the hay was cut, and Hugh told me that
lots of insects and small mammals are killed or injured during the cutting and
baling process and that is probably what had attracted them in initially. The tagged bird was from the Beauly Firth and
was tagged in 2015. Was this a family
group? Might they have bred nearby? It will be interesting to see if there are
any more reports of sightings and even more interesting if any are seen at the
start of the next breeding season.
If the cranberry plant checking accounted for quite a bit of
time re site visits and leaf checking this month, a visit to the ex Boy’s
Brigade field at Carrbridge started off another. For many years this field was used as an
annual camp location but, whether the agreement to use the site ended or the
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| Protesters in March 2015 top and the stubble turnips after the important Boy's Brigade field was ploughed up |
Brigade found another site with modern facilities I don’t know, but in recent
years I had got to know the site because of the species losses that would occur
if the plan for new housing was successful.
Over the years a list of locally rare grassland fungi and plants
(orchids mainly) had shown this field was something special probably due to it
never having been ploughed or heavily fertilised. When the last planning application was made
in March 2015 by Inverness-based developer Tulloch Homes for 72 houses for the
site, with an additional 24 close by, over one hundred protesting locals were
on site when the developer and Cairngorms National Park planners and Board
members made their site visit to decide whether to allow or turn down the
application. On this occasion it was turned
down.
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| Hygrocybe punicea waxcap now lost from BB field |
However, on the BB field things
were slowly changing and encroachment by increasing numbers of cattle was
having more and more of an impact despite the Park Board knowing of its natural
history importance. The final nails were
firmly nailed into the coffin this summer when the developer told the tenant
farmer to plough it up! So, instead of
waxcaps, rare coral fungi and orchids the site is now a wall to wall field of stubble
turnips and the important site has now been lost forever all on the whim of a
local developer. You don’t need planning
permission to destroy an ecologically important site in the Cairngorms National
Park and, despite all the information provided about the species present at the
time of the planning application, no safeguards were put in place by the Park to
ensure its survival. I doubt they even
know it’s gone! The last week of
September saw me start checking a few other locally important unimproved
grassland sites, just to try and build up a picture of what was supported by
those that remained. The first site was
the field just at the end of our road, known
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| Shaggy inkcaps, fresh (top) and deliquescing inky spores (bottom) |
locally as the ‘pony field’ and a
location turned down for housing just a few years ago. However, waxcaps are not the easiest group of
fungi to identify so a visit of a few hours often meant many hours of checking
via the microscope, especially when dealing with a group I’ve had little
experience in. On the way to the pony
field I stopped at Ross’s house to photograph an amazing display of shaggy
inkcaps/lawyer’s wigs (Coprinus comatus) with everything from newly emerging
through to the last drips of ‘ink’ (spores) as the edges of the curled-up cap. In all, there were about 50 fruiting bodies a
few more than the 4 that popped up in 2016.
After about four hours in the field I had 20 entries in my diary
comprising ten species of spindles or waxcaps with once again the crimson
waxcap (Hygrocybe punicea) being the biggest and most showy. Three new species were recorded
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| Smoky spindles (top) and white spindles (bottom) |
for the site;
smoky spindles (Clavaria fumosa), white spindles (Clavaria vermicularis) and
parrot waxcap (Hygrocybe psittacine) adding to the 12 species recorded by fungus
expert Liz Holden in 2010. However, a
return visit the next day to finish off the field saw yet more species added
with handsome club (Clavulinopsis laeticolor) and vermilion waxcap (Hygrocybe miniate)
probably putting this field into the very important category nationally.
A quick visit to the Flowerfield orchid site also turned up
a few species along with an unusual beetle Galeruca tanaceti (a female) which
feeds on yarrow and other composites and with few Scottish records. The site though
that has seen the most time and effort has been the edge of the proposed 1500
houses at An Camus Mor where a small strip of grassland has produced lots of
goodies. An email alerted me to the fact
that there were a lot of earth tongues growing, another group of fungi
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| Galeruca tanaceti female |
indicating an unimproved grassland site, along with several waxcaps. A site visit the next day showed that there
were 10’s of earth tongues along with 5 different species of spindle and 5
waxcaps, and this is where the fun started.
There is a very good book to help with identifying waxcaps ‘The Genus
Hygrocybe by David Boertmann’ but when it comes to earth tongues there isn’t
yet a ‘one stop shop’ detailing all the species, but this only became clear
once I’d taken a specimen home, checked the spores, and then delved into
various website to try and match the specimen to a species. One
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| Earth tongues (Geoglossum spp) the bottom one with Hypomyces papulaspora fungus (white) present |
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| Initial view down the microscope top (x40) and spore details bottom (x1000 oil) from a cross-section of earth tongue stem |
species that wasn’t too difficult to name
was the white fungus growing on many of the earth tongues (Hypomyces
papulaspora) but the amazing sight that greeted me down the microscope re the
earth tongue was, once again, going to take me down a long road to try and
ensure the right name was given to the species found. Brian at Kew offered some guidance and
suggesting details were recorded covering the general appearance of the fungus,
the size of the spores and the number of ‘divisions’ (septa) within the spores
along with the shape of the ‘paraphyses’ hair-like structures growing between
the sacs holding the spores. The carrot
that was also dangled was that there are probably species out there that could
be new to the British list. It took a
little while to get properly organised and, as more and more earth tongue were
found, everything was listed on a post-it and between 10 and 20 spores measured
and the septa counted. Each specimen
took about an hour to
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| The broad damsel bug (Nabis flavomarginatus) |
check and, as September ended, more sites were still
being found. It was obvious that another wee project was developing. Watch this space. At one site a wee bug landed on my GPS and
stayed just long enough to have its photo taken and between the British Bugs
website and invert expert Stephen, the name Nabis flavomarginatus the broad
damsel bug was arrived at.
Mid-month I managed to make my trip over to Deeside to check
on only the second known UK site for Bankera violascens. The Morayshire site had done us proud (August
Blog) so I had high hopes of a decent count at the original site. As with the August site, the tooth fungus is growing
in association with Sitka spruce, a non-native, and the main reason why the
fungus, despite it rarity, doesn’t receive any conservation status designations. At the site I found the grey tooth (Phellodon
melaleucus) and Sistotrema confluens but not a single Bankera! Perhaps it had been a dry summer on Deeside
so I
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| Mealy tooth (Hydnellum ferrugineum) |
thought I should check another regular tooth fungus site near the River
Dee. The first surprise that greeted me
was a group of seven scaly tooth fungi (Sarcodon squamosus) all the size of
dinner plates, the biggest measuring 300mm across its cap. Past records show that I’ve had three
fruiting bodies here previously but with no mention of great size. Lots of mealy tooth (Hydnellum ferrugineum)
were present with a couple of last year’s fruiting bodies covered with another
fungus, Collybia cirrata. With plenty of
tooth fungi here it was unlikely that this had been a dry summer so a little
strange why there were no Bankera at the first site. As I reached the end of the population of
mealy tooth I spotted something that got me a little excited, definitely
nothing to do with showiness or colour, but a drab brownish Boletus like
fungus, about 10cm diameter, but growing so close to the
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| Boletopsis perplexa, as found (top), underside (middle) showing pores and spores (bottom) x1000 oil |
ground it wasn’t
possible to see below the cap. If my
hunch was correct, this wasn’t a species to collect so I carefully cut a
section of cap away leaving most of the cap and stem in place and as I turned
the cap over I could see a pored fertile surface, similar to a Boletus but with
the pores of a different shape. I was
90% certain that I was looking at Boletopsis perplexa a species I had seen
close to here in the past but with very few records from the UK. It is a fungus associated with pines and is
part of the Bankera (tooth) fungus family rather than Boletus. Once home there were just
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| The 'giant' Sarcodons |
about enough pores
to hopefully produce spores and when I checked the next day I knew 100% that
this was the Boletopsis. This is just the
thirteenth UK record. The first was in
1876 but was mis-identified and with six recent records all coming from the
same location about 10 miles from my find, this was a species with few UK
locations. My part specimen and glass
slide covered in spores is now deposited at Kew. An odd plant turned out to be northern
bedstraw, and, with a northerly wind blowing, the first pinkfeet of the year
passed overhead.
Whilst visiting a bog to check cranberry leaves I found a
small population of destroying angel fungus and took a sample home (very
carefully) to check. Somewhere along the
way I must have licked my spore laden fingers and had a slightly upset tummy
for a day. If trying to self-harm once
wasn’t bad enough a day out in Nairn also posed a problem. It was a lovely sunny day, lunch was taken at
a nice local food stop and we then walked down towards the harbour. Following the River Nairn, we
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| River Nairn swans |
stopped to
watch a pair of mute swans trying to ‘hide’ and whilst taking their photo I
thought I had found a group of small nettles (Urtica urens). Whilst investigating I also noticed an
unusual yellow flower which Janet suggested was the same as we had seen on our
visit to Edinburgh way back in May. Not
convinced I took a sample to check once home.
As we walked along with samples of nettle and yellow plant in hand I
noticed my fingers had been stained orange and I assumed I had come into
contact with a leaf fungus somewhere.
Once home I got the plant book out and was working my way through the
pages first to confirm I had just the common nettle (Urtica dioica), but was
having trouble naming the yellow plant.
Flicking through ID books I have a habit of occasionally licking my
fingers to help with page turning and as my bottom lip started to tingle I
didn’t realise how grateful I should have been to Janet who had also been
checking out the yellow
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| Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) |
flower. “I told
you it was the same as the Edinburgh plant” she informed me and as we read
through the description of greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) it informed us
that “the stem is sparsely hairy, producing bright orange latex when cut”. The cause of my orange fingers! The plant description also told us
“Introduced, and cultivated for medicinal purposes, but the whole plant is very
poisonous.” Time to give my hands a good
wash and to swill out my mouth with clean water which thankfully stopped the
tingling lip! There were no further
symptoms, thankfully.
At the start of the current breeding season a new project
was initiated aimed at improving the conservation fortunes of six of the rarer
invertebrates living within the Cairngorms National Park. Gabrielle Flinn was employed as the Projects
Officer and was based at the RSPBs Abernethy Reserve. We eventually met up after the orchid count
at Flowerfield Meadow and I was asked if I could help with a training day
linked to one of the six, the shining guest ant. The 23rd September
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| Shining guest ant on leaf with wood ant top right |
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| Success! |
was the date chosen so all
I had to do was find a shining guest ant for the attendees to see! So, through late August I paid regular visits
to wood ant nests where I had seen the ant previously and was hugely relieved
when, early in the month I managed to find a nest with guest ant in
residence. Three days before the event I
saw two guest ants on the nest so it was fingers crossed that they would be
visible on the day. The 23rd
dawned very cold with almost a frost, a little worrying when the guest ant only
seems to be active when the wood ants are out and about, but by 11am the sun
was up. The training day started with a
visit to two big ant nests in Garten Wood so Gabrielle could explain the
workings of the ants and the nest, but we failed to find any guests. Introductions over we headed round to Tulloch
to the occupied nest and, as I crouched down by the nest I managed to see a
guest ant. Slowly, the trainees came to
the nest and amazingly, despite the tiny size of the guest ant when compared to
the wood ants, everyone managed to see one.
In fact, as we watched we saw up to three guests wandering around the
top of the nest. The nest we were
watching was just one of about 6 small nests at that site and as everyone
spread out to watch their own nest, there were shouts of “I’ve got one” from
four of the six nests which was something similar to what I had found a couple
of years ago. An excellent outcome and I
await with interest news of new finds.
The link below gives more details about the project and the species
involved.
What an amazing late summer for red admirals. During August I had quite a few diary entries
for red admiral. Similarly, for early
September. An email though on the 20th
alerted me to someone locally having 6 in his garden followed a few days later
with a count of 20 then a count of 45 with the butterflies feeding mainly on
Michaelmas daisies. Our own garden was
also doing well; 6 regularly
feeding on the flowering kale plants in the veg
patch and there were up to 10 on a buddleia bush just down the road. Why?
It would appear that over the last few years the numbers of red admirals
now residing in England has been increasing and some of these must be
‘migrating’ north into Scotland. A very
timely programme also popped up on BBC Radio 4 where a repeat of a Living World
programme, first broadcast in 2008 explained quite a bit about what is
happening, even then. During the summer,
Butterfly Conservation staff have been finding red admiral caterpillars
locally, showing the butterfly must be arriving early in the summer before
getting down to breeding. One to watch
into the future.
Raigmore Hospital visit on 13th and Dr. Soh is
very happy with the blood tests results following the radiotherapy treatment,
PSA down by two-thirds.
That’s it for another month, hope you enjoyed the read.
Stewart and Janet
Carrbridge Housing protest
Carrbridge Planning Application Map, field top, right and
grid ref NH91392269
Earth tongue guide (for beginners!)
British Bugs
Boletopsis perplexa information
Rare Invertebrates in the Cairngorms project
Living World BBC Radio 4 – butterflies/red admirals
Parkswatch
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate recording database
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
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| Janet's amazing onion crop |
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| Late afternoon rain |
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| 'The Scream' fungus version! |
Photos © Stewart Taylor. Red admirals on
