Killer rains

Another week during which local wildlife must have found staying alive hard work. Ian and Edith must have had one of the worst weeks for rain since we started letting our chalet, although this didn't dampen their spirits and they were out and about enjoying the area every day. The rain, when combined with very low temperatures, will cause many young birds to be lost. On a couple of days there was fresh snow on the mountain tops and even at lower levels a hail shower on Wednesday left the sides of the roads white (left)! At Forest Lodge one family of swallows died during the week but amazingly a second family survived and adults and three juveniles were zooming round the buildings during some of the sunny spells late in the week. So far no one has seen a brood of capercaillie chicks but we will have to await the results of the official brood counts during the second half of July to see if any chicks have survived. Pedalling home from work on Monday I came across a family of crossbills feeding on the remains of last seasons cone seeds, right by the road. The birds were very obliging and stayed roughly in the same area until I returned with our chalet guests an hour later, two adults with 2-3 youngsters. The young birds were still begging for food from the adults but were also opening up cones for themselves, a good find in this season of crossbill scarcity.

With the weather staying cool the swifts, swallows and sand martins have continued to feed over Loch Garten. Could I get a picture of one of the swifts as they zoomed over the water and trees along the loch shore? I cranked up the ISO rating on the camera to 400 which allowed a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second, and even this wasn't really fast enough to stop the birds in flight. Anybody watching me must have wondered what on earth I was up to, tripod mounted camera swinging wildly back and forth, clicking rapidly whilst following the birds flying closer to the shore. To a degree it worked, and a picture of sorts was obtained. It's only when you see these birds in flight you realise just what superb flying machines they are. A major hatch of flies towards the end of the week saw frenzied feeding by mallards and goldeneyes with the surface of the loch almost white with emerging flies.

The aftermath of last week's thunderstorm has started to become apparent. Going into work on Monday I came across a big tree, right by the track, with a huge scar running from high up in its crown right down to the ground. Lumps of bark were everywhere, and where the lightening had entered the ground there was a fair sized hole. This is the second lightening strike tree found close to Forest Lodge showing the storm, at its worst, was right over the lodge itself. It's a pity it wasn't at night as it would have made an even more incredible spectacle! Will the tree survive? I am not too sure. The hole in the bark shouldn't pose too many problems, but what will become of the outer sap wood of the tree I am not sure. Three trees hit by a less severe storm a few years ago are all dead but an old "Granny pine" in the woods near Tulloch survived a strike in the 1970's. Ouch!

A walk around the hill supporting the impressive Duke of Gordon's monument (right, just popping out from the trees), close to Aviemore was very rewarding. Seven herons were feeding in the loch, an osprey thought about diving for a fish before heading off to the fish farm at Aviemore, a water rail was heard squealing and a total of 41 species of birds were seen or - the norm for me - heard. I know little about the monument itself apart from the fact that it was supposed to have been "hewn" from a ninety foot block of granite. One to research for a future diary page. Progress along the track was slow as there were so many other things to see. First were the patches of chickweed wintergreen (left) Trientalis europaea, growing under the Scots pines, with a clump of common wintergreen (Pyrola minor) nearby. Yellow flowers of common cow-wheat Melampyrum pratense were everywhere, and in the damper ground the heads of melancholy thistles stood tall and impressive. Something oddly coloured caught my eye on the top of one of these flower-heads and, for the first time in years I had come across a bee beetle Trichius fasciatus. The beetle (right) is a an extremely hairy beetle with wasp, or bee -like black and orange-yellow markings on its elytra (wing cases - yes, as with most beetles it can fly); thorax and abdomen buffish brown. Adults are seen from June­ to September and visit flowers including thistles and thyme. The beetle is mostly associated with upland areas, and isn't that common. It occurs locally in N Wales, N England and Scotland.

Also, all over the place, plant stems were covering in little lumps of bubbles or froth. These have been developing, getting gradually bigger, over the last few weeks, the froth being home to the larva of a wee insect. The bubbles are commonly known as frog or cuckoo spit, the latter name being derived from the fact that the first signs of the "spit" appear at about the same time as the first cuckoo is heard. Frog spit refers to the name of the adult insect - frog hopper, those funny sort of triangular insects jumping from plant stems during July. The "spit" (left) is created by the larva or nymph as it is normally called. The nymph feeds head downwards with its mouth parts embedded in the tissue of the plant. The froth is created by the insect excreting a fluid made up of undigested plant sap. Air bubbles are introduced through a special valve on the abdomen which acts like a bellows, and contact with the air causes the liquid to ferment, forming the froth or spit. The nasty tasting spit also deters predators. Enclosed within this froth, the nymph moults several times before emerging as an adult in early summer. The frog hopper shown right is Cicadella viridis. Amazing.

Poor old Janet is pulling her hair out over her garden! We had yet another frost on Friday night, going down to minus two degrees C! Fortunately not too many plants were affected. The frost caused a mist to form along all water bodies locally so it was worth getting out of bed early to see how the mist was developing at Loch Garten. Arriving on the shore at 5.30 am, I couldn't see a thing but, perched nearby, perhaps wondering why someone was disturbing her family at this early hour, was a common sandpiper. Despite the number of visitors that walk along the shore of the loch, some with dogs, a good number of pairs of sandpipers breed and, in most years, seem to get away with rearing young. Over the next two hours the mist came and went eventually clearing altogether by 7.30am, so plenty of time to click away and see whether what I was seeing around me would come out as a reasonable picture. All this going on and I had the whole place to myself! Chaffinches, coal and crested tits were along the shore feeding on the hatching insects rising from the loch.

Happy reading

Stewart & Janet

Foxglove in Firwood garden

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A great honour bestowed on Seton Gordon & ST!

This was another week with some noteable highlights but also tinged with great sadness, so let's take the week as it developed for the diary this week.

Firstly, many apologies to Henry the male osprey at the Loch Garten site (right). Having had time, after the panics of the fishing line episode last Friday (15th), we had a careful look at the DVD recording of the incident, and, more importantly, a look at the earlier recordings of the day before and the last fish arriving at the nest prior to the fishing line incident. From the earlier recordings it became apparent that all was not well with the newly hatched chick hours before Henry arrived with his fishing line. Late on Thursday evening the chick didn't seem well, and when a fish arrived at the nest early on the Friday morning, the chick didn't feed and was seen to be in roughly the same position as when the "treading" incident occurred. Watching the latter incident in slow motion it is evident that the chick was dead before Henry's entanglement and that he doesn't actually fully stamp on the chick when being dragged back by the fishing line. Sorry Henry.

Saturday 16 June 2007.
A normal chalet change over, saying cheerio to Ann and Geoffrey, and getting everything ready for Jenny and Sid. Once duties were complete I went down to the Centre to see how things were, and everything seemed fine with incubation of the remaining two eggs progressing normally. The cooler weather ensured the hirundine spectacular (swifts, sand martins, swallows and the odd house martins) over Loch Garten carried on into the weekend. A few RAW digital photos were processed in the evening - great system but you don't half have to spend some time at the computer to ensure you get the best results!

Sunday 17 June 2007.
The mobile phone beeped early with a message to say that the second egg had hatched at 11.30 on Saturday evening and that everything seemed okay and the chick had been fed early that morning. We spent the morning travelling to look at a house Laura (our daughter) was hoping to purchase, getting back home in the early afternoon. The day was looking a bit drier so the camera-gear was loaded into the car and on my way to look at some of the wetter bits of the woodland close to Loch Garten I called in to the Centre to be told that everything was as normal and the newly hatched chick had had two feeds by mid-afternoon - phew! I had hoped to photograph the swifts and sand martins over the loch but with a decent rise in the air temperature most of the birds had pushed off as there would have been plenty of food probably nearer to their nesting sites. With the mixed weather I hoped to find a few perched-up dragonflies so I wandered off to some of the wetter bits of the woodland but failed miserably to find any - where do these insects go to roost / perch -up? Not the first time I have failed in this quest.

However, I did find something just as amazing - a huge raft spider Dolomedes fimbratus. These amazing spiders live in a few of our better quality bogs in the UK and have the ability to run across the waters surface (left) to catch their prey as well as being accomplished divers to catch prey below the water surface when the need arises. The spider photographed was carrying a large egg "sac" under her body, between her eight legs (right). The spider, despite its British name, does not build rafts. In Europe is is more appropriately known as the "fishing spider" as it hunts mainly, by sitting by pools of water, its first (front) pair of legs resting on the water's surface to detect the presence of insects, tadpoles or even small fish, which it hauls out of the water! If threatened, it can drag itself down stems of water plants and is able to remain below the surface for about an hour. Amazing! As with some other spiders, courtship can be a hazardous pastime for the males - they sometimes end up being eaten by the female! The female carries the egg sac until the spiderlings start to hatch at which time she deposits the eggs on a piece of vegetation and then spins a protective "nursery web" around them, she then stands guard over the web until the spiderlings emerge. I will hope to show you pictures of this event later in the summer. Sorry if you don't like spiders, but this is one brilliant beast!

Monday 18 June 2007
Cycled to work at Forest Lodge (right) only to be met by Dave, one of the osprey team, who told me that the osprey chick was dead! In fact it would would appear, after checking the DVD recordings, that it was actually dead at 10.30pm on Sunday evening. We went down to the Centre to support and commiserate with the rest of the osprey team and wondered what would happen next!

In the evening another landmark was reached with my Operation Osprey talk in the Boat of Garten village hall. A new village hall is being built and this talk, after twenty-six continuous years of village hall talks, will be my last in the old hall. The current talk covers the history of the ospreys from when they disappeared from Britain in the late eighteen hundreds to the present day. The update of the current osprey season at the end of the talk was probably the saddest I have yet had to give and I had to be honest and suggest I didn't think the third egg would survive - everything crossed that I was going to be proved wrong.

Tuesday 19 June 2007
As I only work three days a week for RSPB this was a "day off", however, if the sun shone I was due to continue with the wee bee search. The bee doesn't usually become active until the sun is well out and the temperature has risen so, having dropped Janet off at work in Grantown, I went to visit the River Spey and do a bit of botanising. I have long-looked for the greater butterfly orchid Plantanthera chlorantha and today I was about to see it. In fact there were thirteen of them, dodging the trampling of dog-walkers, visitors and fishermen alike. Beautiful! Distinguished from the lesser butterfly orchid by the greater height, length of the flower spur and by the divergent pollen-masses within the flower. With the sun now shining, chimney sweeper moths were everywhere, a few small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies were on the wing and I saw my first small copper butterfly of the year. On the river a fisherman was casting his fly into the rougher water - ever hopeful. I thought the facial features looked familiar and sure enough it was local resident and ex labour spin-doctor Charlie Whelan! Charlie didn't catch anything whilst I was there but his friend did, and, thinking he had hooked a salmon, he shouted for Charlie to help him land the fish. Charlie dashed to help but both fishermen seemed really sad when the salmon turned out to be "just" a fresh run sea trout. It went for the pot anyway!

And then it was off on my bee hunt. Forty miles of driving, about 6 woods visited, and three new locations found. As I have mentioned in earlier dairy pages the bee is very partial to bird's-foot trefoil and my search involves finding good patches, preferably along forest tracks and possibly where Scots pine trees are being managed or are old enough to provide lots of dead trees with the right sized long-horned beetle larvae emergence holes in their trunks, and then standing and watching to see if the bee visits the flowers to collect pollen. Don't be fooled by the size of the bee's picture left, it is small - about 10mm long and looks a bit like a small wasp rather than a bee. Anyway, it was great to find a few more locations I just wish the weather would help the search by being a bit sunnier for more than a few minutes at a time. http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=493 & http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html .

Wednesday 20 June 2007
Back to work today but a chance to see a bit of botanical research being carried out in Abernethy Forest and a few other forests locally. The research is aimed at finding out more about the factors affecting pollination and seed formation in one of the iconic plants within the pinewoods - twinflower Linnaeus borealis, Carl Linnaeus's plant of the boreal/northern pinewoods. It is the only plant that carries his name despite the fact that he was responsible for establishing the binomial species nomenclature, systematically giving latin names to all species of plants and animals. See http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/linnaeus-link/ for more information on the great man.

Twinflower is a small, creeping, perennial shrub of the honeysuckle family. It is evergreen and is characterised by above-ground runners known as stolons from which numerous short aerial stems or shoots grow. The shoots are 4 - 6 cm. in height, up to 3 mm. in diameter and turn woody with age. They bear small round leaves which are opposite, meaning that they grow in pairs on opposite sides of the stems, and which persist for 12 - 16 months. The shoots are of two different kinds - the non-reproductive ones only have leaves on them, while the flowering shoots also have inflorescences which are up to 15 cm. tall.

The stolons also produce branches, and when a branch becomes separated from the main stolon, it grows on to form a new plant. This vegetative propagation is the twinflower's main method of reproduction, and as a result the species usually occurs as clonal patches, consisting of groups of plants which are genetically identical. (Alan Watson Featherstone - Trees for Life) . http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.twinflower.html

The research work follows on from work in 2006 when Andy looked at the main insect pollinators visiting the twinflower flowers. This year however, the work involves excluding the natural pollinators from several individual plants at several of the twinflower patches within Abernethy and then pollinating them by hand, with flowers from other patches, to see whether this increases the fertilisation rate and hence the rate of seed production. Because many of the twinflower patches are many kilometres apart there is a worry that cross-fertilisation rarely happens and this may be why seed production is so poor. Watch this space.

Text message on mobile 5.30 pm to say that EJ has removed the last egg from the osprey nest!

Thursday 21 June 2007
At work again today. Warm sunny morning. Bang! Spectacular thunderstorm for about an hour in the afternoon with torrential rain. Rivers in spate by the end of the day.

Friday 22 June 2007
No work today and little sun in the morning. A bit more sun in the afternoon allows one bee site to be visited - by bike as Janet has the car. No joy but did find a rhinoceros beetle -Sinodendron cylindricum (about 15mm long) whilst at the trefoil site. Yes, it does have a horn-like projection on its head. (Type the name into Google for a picture). Cycled back via Speyside Way to check for dingy skipper butterfly, no joy but did see small heath, common blue, northern brown argus (right), small pearl-bordered fritillary, green-veined white, peacock and red admiral all in about half an hour.

And the Stewart link to Seton Gordon? On Friday evening Stewart & Janet were invited to Scottish Natural Heritage's offices in Inverness for the official opening of an exhibition celebrating 300 years of the study of nature and wildlife in the Highlands as part of the Highland Year of Culture. Thirty Highland naturalists were involved in the exhibition, fifteen past and fifteen present. Seton Gordon, Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, Gavin Maxwell, John Harvie- Brown were some of those having contributed to our knowledge in the past and Sir John Lister-Kaye, Roy Dennis, Margaret Barron, Laurie Campbell, Graham & daughter Ellen Rotheray amongst those in the future along with little me! What an honour.

Happy reading and sorry about the sad osprey news.

Stewart & Janet

Red squirrel on new feeder at Firwood

all pictures © Stewart Taylor

A lot can happen in a day

Sorry about the delay in posting a new diary page, but with some sunny days and surveys to complete and with family visiting, there wasn't a suitable opportunity to spend the necessary time at the keyboard. As I sit here looking out on a cold, dull and drizzly evening, with heating on in the house, I can think of enough goings on in the last two weeks to fill a book! Let me start with the most recent event - the real-life soap opera called Operation Osprey. If I was to write and publish what has happened at the Loch Garten osprey site between 1 April and today, folk wouldn't believe it to be true. Even more so, if I was to write what has happened in the last day. If you remember, the season started with our regular female EJ returning to the nest only to be wooed by her old flame Orange VS before her mate, our regular male Henry, had put in an appearance. The tryst produced eggs just at the moment Henry arrived and he duly dispatched four eggs from the nest by kicking them out! We then had a nervous wait to see if EJ could produce more eggs and, against the odds, she produced eggs five, six and seven! Since then a "normal" season developed with shared incubation and with Henry providing all the food. The osprey team were expecting the first egg to hatch some time over this weekend, Sunday or Monday being the time when the normal thirty-seven to thirty-eight days of incubation (between first egg and first hatch) would have been completed. However, on Thursday (14th) the first of the three eggs hatched (day thirty-four) and fish arrived at the nest and the routine of female feeding chick began. Yesterday, Friday, Henry arrived back at the nest at 10.15 am and the volunteers on duty at the forward hide saw that he had a long length of fishing line attached to him, possible to a wing. Realising something was amiss they pressed the record button on the DVD machine and started to record the next thirty minutes of disastrous activity. At about the same time Grampian TV and then BBC Scotland (left) arrived at the Osprey Centre to interview staff about the great news that the first egg had hatched! Meanwhile, in the background, staff were watching Henry trying to leave the nest to which he was firmly attached by the fishing line. The female was also coming into contact with the fishing line as Henry moved around the nest and briefly she left, exposing two eggs and the newly hatched chick to Henry and his increasingly frantic efforts to rid himself of the fishing line and fly from the nest. In one effort to leave he moved across the nest to take off but the fishing line dragged him back, and inadvertently, and totally outside his control, he stood on the young chick. At this stage Henry's wing was turned at ninety degrees across his back and he looked like he would damage himself. The female came back to the nest and settled down on eggs and chick and at 10.40 am Henry freed himself from the line (snapped or pulled out we are not too sure) and activity at the nest settled down. There were real worries that Henry might have been physically damaged by the events but there was relief all round when at 1.35 pm he returned with a fish. In between those times staff had been watching via the nest camera whenever EJ was away, and they were becoming increasing concerned that the chick seemed to be lifeless. This was confirmed during the rest of the afternoon when two more fish arrived and, despite the female feeding, and calling to the chick as she did, there was no response. After such a roller-coaster season, Osprey Centre staff were absolutely devastated. The Grampian and BBC TV news teams were informed of the breaking news, and both amended their evening new reports to reflect the tragedy. There are two more eggs remaining in the nest, so fingers crossed that the rest of the season progresses "normally". Watch this space or keep up with events live from the nest via the RSPB webcams http://www.rspb.org.uk/webcams/birdsofprey/lochgartenospreynest.asp or if you would like to leave a message of support for the Centre staff you can do so at http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/l/lochgarten/blog.asp which is the web address for the Osprey Wardens diary. Phew! A merlin being chased by the female osprey yesterday from close by the nest was nice to see.

Back a couple of weeks and the second and final visit was made to the BTO breeding bird square close to Grantown on Spey. As I was crossing from the outward leg to the return leg some bright red flowers growing in amongst the blaeberry and cloudberry stopped me in my tracks (see right). It was a very healthy patch of small cranberry (Vaccinium mycroparpum) in full flower - yes, the very same plant that produces berries for your cranberry drink, the only difference is that the drink plants are grown commercially so that there is a very plentiful supply of berries. You would have a hard time collecting enough berries in the wild as the plant is quite rare in Britain (see http://www.ecoflora.co.uk/search_species2.php?plant_no=1320180020. for more details). I had left the camera behind on purpose otherwise I would never get the bird recording finished so I planned a return visit later in the week, so good was the patch of flowers. On the return visit I passed Torran Ban hillfort, an ancient monument site dating back to between 1000BC to 500AD, signposted from the nearby road where the farmer has provided a small car park. The fields all around were full of hundreds of rabbits but more unusual for this area, there was a group of six ravens, possibly the only summering ones in this part of Strathspey. In the fields by the road (Achnahannet) were many families of oystercatchers, lapwings and curlews, sadly though the only pair of redshanks seemed to have failed. The day produced 42 species of birds. The moors all around the area where the small cranberry was growing are managed for red grouse and looking down onto one hillside it is easy to see where the idea of the colours and patterns for tartan come from. Ideally, a heather dominated hillside should be managed over approximately a twenty year cycle to produce the best heather conditions for red grouse, so that there is some deep, old heather for nesting in and regenerating heather of varying ages to provide new growing shoots for food for both adults and young grouse. Despite the extensive heather management I saw very few red grouse when carrying out the breeding bird survey.

One of the main prey items for all grouse chicks at this time of year are the small caterpillars belonging to the group of moths known a Geometers (Geometridae) and a species regularly encountered in Abernethy Forest is the July Highflier (Hydriomena furcata). The caterpillars are amazing wee things, expanding and contracting their bodies as they crawl up and down the vegetation. I don't know which species this is but the picture gives you an idea of what I am trying to describe. I often find this type of caterpillar attached to my clothing when I have been wandering through deep vegetation. Sweep-netting in typical vegetation where capercaillie chicks might be growing up, has shown this group of caterpillars to be very important as prey items for caper chicks, just as important as the blaeberry plants providing their food. Blaeberry was shown to be supporting twelve times more caterpillars and insect prey items than adjacent heather dominated vegetation!

The past two weeks has seen very variable weather, a hot and humid first week and cool and showery the second week. Not the best weather for progressing the wee bee survey, but at least a few days were spent looking, locating five new sites to date. We had fifteen degrees centigrade at dawn one week and ground frost with some plant deaths the second week. A few rumbles one night had me out of bed and driving the local roads to see if I could get a good vantage point for a passing thunder-storm. The general area of the storm was some twenty miles away but the flashes of lightening were still quite spectacular. The passing police car, at 1.30am in the morning must have been wondering what I was up to! The cold weather of late has seen hundreds of swifts, swallows, sand martins and house martins feeding over Loch Garten, the hatch of flies must still be occurring, despite the drop in air temperatures. The warmer weather along with the rain has helped push the garden flowers along and Janet's efforts in maximising the flowering potential of the garden is paying off big time. The veg. patch is also doing very well but this area isn't half as spectacular as the flower borders. 10/10 and many admiring comments from passing folk.

Purchase of the year so far, and something that might add a few birds to the diary pages - a new telephoto lens! It's a bit of a beast but at 400mm it should help bring birds up close. It's only just arrived so mainly birds in the garden so far, but a walk back from Grantown to Nethybridge last week shows what potential there is out there with a bit of patience. The walk produced my highest single walk bird count so far with 62 species seen or heard. On the River Spey a few broods of goldeneyes were encountered and a return visit to one site produced quite a charming picture comprising mum goldeneye and her chicks! In the garden the camera was pointed at the regular bird visitors but the most colourful has to be the visiting yellowhammers, still two or three regularly at the seed feed. Sadly, over the last few days curlews and redshanks have been heard passing overhead, departing back to the coast their breeding season over for another year. Where have the last few months gone too?

That's it for another week.

Enjoy the diary, have a good week, and I'll try and be on time next week!

Happy reading.

From Janet and Stewart

small pearl-bordered fritillary Glenfeshie

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A visit from "Wee Nip" in a dragonfly week

Sunday was a great day for a clan gathering, daughters, grandchild, uncle, cousin and niece and to celebrate the day we had a run out towards Ryvoan Bothy, in excellent weather, to view the Cairngorms and to blow the cobwebs away. A couple of passing cyclists wondered whether they had bumped into something special - and of course they had, an outing of the Ross & Taylor Clan. "Wee Nip" is on the right (Uncle Bill) the nickname coming from the warm hospitality given out by Bill and his late wife Ina to folk dropping in to see them and always having time to share a "wee nip" - a tot of whisky - before heading off. Imagine, Bill, a Scotsman having a birthday on Hogmanay!

On Tuesday we started to build an ark, and just as we had rounded everything up two by two, the rain eased (40+ millimetres in 36 hours), the sun came out and we ended up with a very warm, humid spell of weather. As well as the flowers and vegetables in the garden putting on an extra spurt with the wet and warmth, other things in the forest started to stir, encouraged by temperatures in the high teens.

In the damper areas dragonflies really started to emerge in quantity. To the fore were large red damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) (left), with, in some areas hundreds on the wing. The first green lestes (Lestes sponsa) in iridescent green were seen, and four-spot libellulas (Libellula quadrimaculata) (right) were busy beating up and down suitable breeding pools, mating briefly before the female broke away to dab the surface of the water with the tip of her abdomen as she laid her eggs. As she was egg laying, an ever attentive male was hovering close by to ensure no other male would be able to mate with her. The first northern coenagrion (Coenagrion hastulatum) was also seen along with the much commoner common blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum). And where is all this bounty of activity to be seen? At a specially prepared viewing site close to the road to the Loch Garten Osprey Centre. Because the site had become very well known as a location for seeing the northern coenagrion, visitors were tramping around the breeding pool trying to see it as well as the other species, destroying the grassy habitat that many of the dragonflies rely on for roosting sites at night. During the winter Abernethy Reserve staff were busy installing a viewing deck so that visitors can get out over the edge of the pool, right into the dragonflies habitat, but without damaging the pool-side vegetation. In addition, the wooden structure provides ideal "habitat" for the dragonflies to rest on (below). The two large red dragonflies resting on the wooden handrail are in tandem or the mating position, the male at the front, using the "claspers" at the end of the abdomen to hold the female around the neck, the pair staying together until egg laying is complete. Complicated? You bet. The reproductive organs of the male dragonflies are unique in the insect world. As with other insects the males sperm is situated close to the tip of the abdomen, but the accessory copulatory apparatus is located on one of the abdomen segments close to the thorax. So, before the pair get into the position as shown right, the male has to transfer sperm to the copulatory apparatus prior to the pair joining up. The female has then to arch her body down and round until the tip of her abdomen comes into contact with the sperm. I said it was complicated, check out http://www.open.ac.uk/Nature_Trail/DFsex.htm for a picture which is probably easier than my wordy description. Unlike the four-spot libellula, the large red female dragonfly lands on a piece of emergent vegetation reversing down the plant stem into the water before she lays her eggs, still with male attached. Amazing.

The aspen trees have also been stirred into life. Traditionally, aspen trees are aways the last tree locally, to come into leaf, a week or so later than the alders. Aerial surveys have been carried out at this time of year to map the location of stands of aspen because, without leaves (right), the stands of trees are easy to spot. Compared to other broadleaved trees, aspen is sparsely distributed throughout our local woodlands, and because of this a big effort is going into regenerating stands and planting saplings to expand its range. Aspen (Populus tremula) is one of the most widely distributed trees in the world, occurring from the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia to North Africa, and from Britain across most of Europe and north Asia to China and Japan.

Locally and in Europe, recent research has highlighted the ecological importance of Populus tremula for a wide range of forest species, from mosses and lichens to fungi and insects. Notable species associated with aspen include the aspen bracket fungus (Phellinus tremulae) (left) which is pathogenic and therefore a significant cause of mortality for the tree; aspen brittle-moss (Orthotrichum gymnostomum) see Diary 16 March 2007; and the dark bordered-beauty moth (Epione vespertaria). There is also a unique community of saproxylic insects (ie insects which depend on dead wood) associated with dead aspen trees, many of which are rare in Europe, and in 1997 researchers studying this community in Scotland discovered a previously-unknown species of fly (Ectaetia christiei).

Aspen trees in Britain very rarely produce seed and its main method of reproduction is vegetative, with new suckers, or ramets, growing off the roots of mature trees (see extensive suckering in picture left) . The numbers of new shoots produced in this way can be very prolific, especially after a major disturbance such as fire, with the density of ramets reaching 70,000 per hectare. Aspen has an extensive root system, and ramets have been recorded growing up to 40 metres from a parent tree. Because of their access to nutrients through the parent tree's root system, aspen ramets can grow very quickly - up to a metre per year for the first few years. As the ramets grow, they remain joined through their roots, and all the interconnected trees are called a clone. They are all the same individual organism and are therefore all single-sexed, either male or female. The roots from which these suckers grow can be dug up and sent to specialist tree nurseries to grow "new trees". However, they will always carry the same clone characteristics, so by collecting root suckers from various stands, it should be possible in the future to ensure some saplings will be male or female or be perhaps, good at flowering, increasing the possibility of producing some seeds in some years. Seven-thousand saplings, grown by this method, will be ready for planting out within Abernethy Forest in 2008.

To promote awareness and interest in aspen locally the Highland Aspen Group (HAG) was formed several years ago, see BBC article below with dashes between /highlands_and _ islands/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6364559.stm
Also, a few years ago, Stewart located a very rare fungus growing on equally rare aspen flowers in Nethybridge, see a "Hidden Highland Gem" at site below, for details
http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/e_newsletters/teachdantirspring06/page04.pdf

The warmth after the cool and wet weather stirred the wood ants nests into "extra" life, with huge numbers of winged ants seen emerging from nests (right) during a walk back along the Speyside Way between Boat of Garten and Nethybridge (bus pass in use again!). To explain what is going on we have to visit that area of insect reproduction again! In the wood ant nests, in the spring , winged sexuals are raised - queens and males. On calm, balmy evenings in May these sexuals take to the air to mate. During this nuptial flight one mating provides enough sperm for the queen's lifetime. Hundreds of ants swarm at once but many perish, being eaten by birds and other predators. The fertilised queens of ants building domed nests; Formica aquilonia, F. lugubris and F. exsecta, usually return to their home nest or a neighbouring one and at this point shed their wings. A nest may contain many queens. A newly mated queen may stay in the nest where she was raised or establish a new colony nearby with some loyal workers. Often the daughter colony is very closely connected to the mother nest by trails both above ground and underground. Along the same track a number of dor or dung beetles (Geotrupes vernalis) were also seen. Dung beetles, as their name suggests, live on animal dung (mainly that of herbivores such as rabbits, sheep, cattle, etc.) - they feed on dung in both the adult and larval stage. Some dung beetles simply live and breed in the dung heaps left by animals, but others bury the dung in some way or other before eating it or laying their eggs. Most of the dung-burying species excavate tunnels under dung heaps and than haul down bundles of dung into these underground chambers where the adult beetles feed and lay their eggs. This scavenging activity provides a useful service by removing the dung from the soil surface and hastening its break down in the soil. In turn, the beetles also become prey items for pine martens, foxes, owls etc.

A seven spot lady bird was seen, digger wasps have been busy digging their neat circular holes in bare ground and foraging for food and the rowan trees have started to burst into flower. The forest bogs have turned into a sea of white as the cotton heads of the bog cotton disperse in the wind. The first wee bee survey took place, no bees found but the views (below) at Loch Morlich where well worth the searching effort.

Enjoy the read and have a great week.

Stewart & Janet

All photos © Stewart Taylor