More tooth fungi but what happened to the veg?

A letter did arrive back from the Moray Council 's roads maintenance manager, and Janet asked why, after a couple of days I hadn't opened it. "Because I know what will be in it" was my reply and sure enough, I was right. 'I note all you say about grass cutting operations and am not unsympathetic to your view' - phew, progress I thought. 'However, safety issues, visibility, vehicles AND pedestrians, same cutting spec for 20 years despite your perception otherwise'. The same reply I have had from Highland Region and the roads man on Skye. I could go on. Thankfully Highland Region DON'T cut many verges now, so let's hope Moray Council will follow suit. And the orchids and the Site of Special Scientific Interest? 'We are aware of the SSSI and have been in correspondence with Scottish Natural Heritage in the past.....SNH have never raised any concerns regarding our grass cutting operations'. So there! The reply wasn't copied to SNH so I will let them have a copy and see what their reaction is, and of course, there will have to be a reply to William Ross the roads maintenance manager. I'll bet they have never really considered doing things any differently so perhaps a wee bit of correspondence will set a ball rolling somewhere and save time, expenditure and energy. I never did get a reply from the SNP MSP Richard Lochhead, but then he has had a foot and mouth crisis to deal with.

The last week for me has been dominated by cycling, walking and looking down as the search for the various tooth fungi goes on. So, sorry, not the time out-and-about to bring great variety to the diary this week. It has been good though and at some stage will lead to me needing a powerful microscope to be able to check spores and the like - " lack of clamp connections" is something I regularly read about in the fungi descriptions, microscopic things in the fungus make up and something similar to those funny things you see sometimes in your own eyes, floaters, I think the doctors call them. Lack of a microscope means the top of the central heating boiler has to be used to dry off the "problem" fungi, so that an expert can check them over in the future. Currently, I have probably found as many individuals as anyone here in the past, showing just how good a year this is for this particular group of fungi. I'm not too sure that continual tasting of the Hynellum peckii fungus pictured left (Devil's Tooth!) is good for you and I am currently suffering from bouts of a sore throat and a runny nose, perhaps something to do with the peppery taste! So why are you tasting them I hear you ask, it's the only way, without resorting to the microscope all the time, to tell the commoner peckii fungus from its close relative Hydnellum ferrigeum - Mealy Tooth, a fungus that has only been found in Abernethy on four previous occasions. Great joy therefore on Sunday when, after nibbling at a tiny piece of fungus cap, there was no hot taste and yes, old Mealy Tooth had been found. Devil's Tooth probably referes to the blood oozing state of the fungus after rain when red droplets of water gather on the cap that really do look like blood. A page from my notebook gives some idea of the quantity of fungi being found, all of which have yet to be entered into a spreadsheet so that neat and colourful maps can be produced showing what has been found where. There is so much happening out in the woods that the boss has let me take a couple of days off this week to carry on searching. In an effort to get more staff looking for these wonderful fungi I managed to get most of the section managers out on site for a lunch-time wander to acquaint them with what to look for and show them the more typical growing sites. So the picture left is a very rare sight on the reserve and great to be responsible in dragging everyone away from their desks for a breath of fresh air and who knows, get them looking for Devil's Tooth, Pine Tooth, Black Tooth and the non-electronic version of Blue Tooth! It's working with the first record arriving on my desk of a group of Pine Tooth (Sarcodon squamosus) fungi growing close to Forest Lodge. Well done Desmond.

Some of the days during the last week have had a real feel of autumn about them and with a dramatic drop in temperature one night the mist rolled in and gave one of those typical damp, misty starts to the following day. Cycling in to work I looked like I had developed a slightly hairy coat as the tiny water droplets gathered on my fleece jacket. On this type of morning though, you do realise just how many spiders there are out there, everywhere you look the trees, heather, grass and juniper bushes are covered in mist covered webs, of all shapes and sizes. A typical web-covered pine sapling is shown right but you do need to get out early because as the sun comes up the webs dry out and "disappear". Mist of a different kind however caused real problems for the BBC and the 'live climb' last weekend. After weeks of preparation and the huge debate about whether such an event should take place in the middle of the Cairngorm Mountains and within the Abernethy Nature Reserve, everything was in place for the climbers to attempt some really difficult routes up some of the most difficult rock-faces in Scotland. Despite being roped up, one climber risked death if he came off (see Dave MacLeod's website at http://www.davemacleod.com/home.htm and BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/07_july/26/climb.shtml) but for this amount of risk, conditions would have to be dry and perfect and, for the whole weekend, they weren't. For the whole of Saturday and Sunday you could hardly see the mountains (pictured left) and on top of this there was steady, heavy rain, not ideal when you have to hang on literally, by your finger tips. So, on Sunday afternoon the plugs were pulled and all the equipment retrieved. Dave MacLeod however, his wife and a small BBC TV crew stayed on site in the hope that something could be filmed, to be shown at a later date, before finally, all the fixed ropes etc. were removed.

There was also great news for the village of Boat of Garten on Saturday, with the opening of the new village hall, five years of hard work by the village hall development committee. At 2.30pm, the new village hall was officially opened, accompanied by the local pipe band and watched by a couple of hundred local residents. So, after twenty years of being involved in giving summer talks in the old hall, yours truly will have to get used to new premises when the new season of village talks kicks of in April 2008. In the early years there was just me, talking every Monday night from April to August about the reserve or the Loch Garten ospreys. In recent years the "burden" has been shared and over the twenty or so weeks, six or seven speakers are involved talking about the natural history of the surrounding area. It has been great to be involved and I wish the new hall management committee all the best for the future. http://www.boatofgarten.com/events.php.

It started with a spade and the traditional emptying of the garden compost bins way back in March. It involved sowing seeds of various vegetable varieties. It also involved pulling out weeds. In 2007 it didn't involve any watering by hosepipe! It involved lots of weeks of waiting. There was a picture in the diary two weeks ago of the first rewards of all our efforts.

It involved eating the produce from our efforts. Yummmmmmmmmy!

It's that time of year where all around fruits, berries, cereals are all there, ripe and ready for picking. The blackbirds have beaten us yet again to the cherries in the garden, lets hope they have a decent aim with their droppings and the seeds they are carrying! There is even a song thrush in the pinewoods close to Forest Lodge mopping up the blaeberries and the cowberries. The local hazel trees have crops of nuts, a bit hard on the teeth to get at them, but the young nut inside is well worth the effort. Despite the weather the corn and barley in the fields seems to be ripening nicely and in the garden we see the remains of the birch seeds as the siskins start to tuck into the crop. All around there is food a-plenty for man and beast and though the fungi I nibble at don't taste too good, there are plenty of Chanterelles and young puffballs to feed on, but take care, be sure you know what you are picking. Make the most of the present because autumn isn't too far away and as our ospreys and swallows start to head south, the scandanavian thrushes will soon start to appear to feed on the ripening rowan berries. At work, my diary for 2008 has arrived on my desk and Christine is asking for orders for Christmas cards. Help! Isn't nature amazing though, such abundance before having a rest and starting all over again in a few months time. Just look at the amazing showiness of the yellow heads of Centaurea macrocephela in the Firwood garden. There were a dozen or so heads a couple of weeks ago when I intended taking a photograph, and was lucky to catch this one before it went over like the others around it.

Insect of the week has to be this wood wasp or horntail Urocerus gigas, almost two inches long and looking like it wants to "sting" everyone in sight. But don't be afraid, the sting is really the insects ovipositor or egg-laying device which it uses like a drill to force its eggs under the bark or into the wood of dying trees. It isn't a wasp either but belongs to the sawfly family, a very impressive insect to see in the forest. Thanks to Richard for capturing the beast for me to photograph.

As the season starts to wind down so will the diary. It should be possible to do a couple a month but let's see what develops, if there is a story to tell, the diary will be done.

Enjoy this weeks read, and the last of the summer holidays.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

harebells or Scottish bluebells

All photos © Stewart Taylor

The Taylor's at Tea in the Park!

Wellies on, waterproofs on and off we went, our second visit to Tea in the Park. If you are ever in this area in August a visit to Tea in the Park at the Glenlivet village hall is highly recommended and for a few pounds you can have soup, sandwiches, home baking tea and coffee, and you end up so stuffed that you have to go for a walk. If you like a dram, the walk detailed will take you right past the Glenlivet distillery where you can pop in for a free tasting. The folk from the village hold this event each year to raise funds for the village hall etc. and with mums, dads and children all involved it is well worth supporting.
The whole area is great for getting out and exploring and it is worth having a good look at the OS map before setting out to plan your route. On Sunday we had lunch and then did the circular route shown on the map left, setting off from Glenlivet village (car park by cemetery) and heading south to Blairfindy Lodge before heading back down the hill to the village. It's road walking but great on a day when there had been lots of rain so sticking to the road meant it was nice and dry underfoot. The distillery is open most days so you could pop in as you follow this route. You will see from the map that part of where we walked follows the Speyside Way "spur" to Tomintoul, so you could extend the walk if needed. The views as you walk gently up the hill are very good looking over farmland and heather moor towards Ben Rinnes a few miles to the north. A walk up the Ben would make a nice alternative and something I must do for a future diary. The houses and castle in the picture belong to Castletown, a wee road running east opposite the distillery. Look also at the blue sky and clouds which lasted all of two hours!

One of the requirements for a distillery is a local supply of clean water and, in some parts of Scotland the distinctive flavouring of the amber nectar comes from peaty water and peat smoke, particularly the Islay malts (peat cutters on Islay right). As we drove over the hills to Glenlivet we saw quite a rare sight locally, someone still cutting peats! Once of a time many local folk spent much of their summer months cutting, stacking and lifting peats before taking them home from the peat moss to burn. For many families this would have been their main source of fuel, the local landowners at the time, making it illegal to remove wood from the surrounding forests. Throughout Abernethy, all the peat areas have signs of earlier cutting and there are few bogs that have not had some cutting over them. The picture left shows a typical peat cutting face in the bog, probably from around the time of the first World War. Peat is formed by the growing and decaying of the plants and sphagnum moss on the surface of the bog and the bog literally grows upwards, year by year, retaining in its make up a wee history book of what has gone on on the bog and in the surrounding area over several thousand years. Some of the Abernethy peat bogs are more than six metres deep providing a direct link right back to the time of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. In Tomintoul Edward Stuart makes a living by cutting peat on a commercial scale selling the dried peat for household fuel or for use in the garden. To do this Edward has a large area of peat several acres in size and the peat is cut using a tractor mounted machine which takes the peat from below the bog surface and spews it out in long square sausages across the bog. Hand peat cutters use a specially shaped spade (left) with an L shaped blade to cut their peats. The dried peats (right) show chunks of vegetation trapped within the peat, plant remains that have lain undisturbed in the anaerobic peat for a few thousand years. Trapped pollen grains within the peat also allow a picture to be developed as to what sort of woodland or vegetation grew on or around the bog and how it changed over millennia. A clear picture develops of tree removal (fewer tree pollen as you rise through the peat levels) and heather arrival and dominance once the trees have gone. Amazing. This website explains the pollen process quite well. http://www.peatlandsni.gov.uk/archaeology/pollen.htm .

This week has been a bit dominated by looking down at FUNGI! It would appear that this years crop of (some) fungi is developing quite early and though not an expert I have been looking at one particular group of fungi known as the "tooth" fungi. The technical term is stipitate hydnoids the term covering a group of fungi that don't have gills (like the mushrooms you may regularly eat) but have spines below the cap, producing spores just as in the normal gill fungi. There are 15-18 species in the UK, two-thirds of which have been found within Abernethy Forest making the site one of the more important sites within the UK for this particular group. The two fungi right are the blue corky spine fungus Hydnellum caeruleum a real beauty when fresh. Over the years I was involved in the discovery of Sarcodon glaucopus being found in the UK for the first time. More recently, a dark-blue spine fungus found during a lunchtime walk, has sparked off a check via DNA techniques. Also, dried material from America has been sourced to try and identify another "oddity" possibly Phellodon atratus (left). So it is with the latter species in mind that I have been wandering the forest over the last few days. If you would like to see something of the work on DNA check out: http://authors.elsevier.com/offprints/MYCRES269/cc196648dce29bf1590827ccb00054e1 though this site is only available for a few weeks, and for spine fungi in general: http://www.ukbap.org.uk/ukplans.aspx?ID=338 .

Another outing this week saw me visiting Loch an Eilean but via the "back door". The walk itself again, makes quite a nice circular walk taking in a bit of farmland, amazing views over Cairn Gorm and Braeriach, through a part of Rothiemurchus forest and Loch an Eilean. The start is from Blackpark along the Whitewell road which is off the Aviemore to Cairngorm road, there is usually just enough room to park your car on the bend. From here, just walk up the road to Whitewell enjoying the views out over Rothiemurchuis Forest.

Tullochgrue is the next landmark though the farm and buildings have seen better days. Some restoration work has been started at the farmhouse, but progress is slow. In winter a field of birdcrop attracts lots of chaffinches, greenfinches, the odd brambling and a couple of yellowhammers along with a few noisy pheasants! The map tells of 'hut circles' to your right. Eventually you reach Whitewell which used to be home to Desmond Nethersole-Thompson (another Highland Naturalist)and now owned by his daughter. If only walls could talk!

Just off the road to your left is a memorial to two young men who perished in the Cairngorms way back in 1928. I am not sure if the booklet is available but "Mountain Shadows The Tragedy of Baird and Barrie" covers what happened during that fateful new year expedition all those years ago. The inscription reads 'Erected in proud and affectionate memory of HUGH ALEXANDER BARRIE M.A. interred here and THOMAS BAIRD M.A. interred at Baldernock who lost their lives on January 2nd 1928 whilst climbing these hills. "Find me a wind swept boulder for a bier". The last few words were written by Barrie during his last summer term at Glasgow University as part of a poem titled When I Am Dead, the full text of which is worth including here.

When I am dead

And this strange spark of life that in me lies

Is fled to join the great white core of life

That surely flames beyond eternities

And all I ever thought of as myself

Is mouldering to dust and cold dead ash
This pride of nerve and muscle - merest dross

This joy of brain and eye and touch but trash

Bury me not, I pray thee

In the dark earth where comes not any ray

Of light or warmth or aught that made life dear,

But take my whitened bones far, far away
Out of the hum and turmoil of the town.

Find me a wind swept boulder for a bier

And on it lay me down,

Where far beneath drops sheer the rocky ridge

Down to the gloomy valley, and the streams

Fall foaming white against black beetling rocks,

Where the sun's kindly radiance seldom gleams;

Where some tall peak, defiant, steadfast, mocks

The passing Gods: and all the ways of men forgotten.

So may I know

Even in that death that comes to everything

The swiftly silent swish of hurrying snow;

The lash of rain; the savage bellowing

Of stags; the bitter-keen knife edge embrace

Of the rushing wind: and still the tremulous dawn

Will touch the eyeless sockets of my face;

And I shall see the sunset and anon

Shall know the velvet kindness of the night

And see the stars.

Hmm, it was as though he knew what was coming? The memorial is in a wonderful spot, so if ever you get there admire the view, and think of the lives lost in the mountains then as well as now. Check your map and then make your way to Loch an Eilean where you can include a circuit of the loch if you are feeling fit and then back, via the Croft to Blackpark.

That's it for another week.

Enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet

Don & Tracy our first Chalet visitors to come by motor bike

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A prominent week but without a shower!

A few errors from last week to correct following a walk to the River Spey and back on Thursday. I had suggested that all the waders had now departed the Strath and headed back to the coast - not so. Following the Explore Abernethy riverside walk, two curlews were found feeding in a field, so they are still around. The highlight of that part of the walk though was the sheer abundance of thistles, mainly creeping type thistles Cirsium arvense but also a good showing of spear thistles Cirsium vulgare (left), massed areas of purple waving in the breeze, along with the butterflies they were attracting. To the fore were small tortoiseshells, followed by green-veined whites and, a single small white, and around the edges of the thistles lots of scotch argus butterflies. The butterflies were on the wing because - the sun was shining! Cutting back from the river to the Speyside Way a partly flooded field showed that not all the other waders had departed either, twenty lapwings, a dozen oystercatchers and, more oddly, about thirty adult (right) and juvenile common gulls (they don't breed very close to here), a single black-headed gull, and, as I was sorting out what was what, eight lesser black-backed gulls dropped in followed by the same number of herring gulls. There could be a possibility that the common gulls and the lesser black-backs were birds departing from their moorland breeding ground over on the Grampian hills. An adjacent field produced eight more curlews. With more rain forecast perhaps this flooded area will hold on to these birds for a week or so yet.

Whilst sitting on a wee hillside counting the lapwings etc, I was aware of something moving about along the deeper vegetation by the edge of the field. A stoat! What happened over the next ten minutes was absolutely brilliant and so funny that anyone nearby would have wondered what I was laughing at. The stoat made its way out from the edge of the field towards the nearest lapwing, the lapwing was soon aware of this approach because the stoat kept leaping up in the air, doing the occasional somersault. It would then dash back to the field edge only to return to the field, leaping about as before. Instead of the lapwing running away, more birds came towards where the stoat was performing but eventually one lapwing took to the air and dive-bombed the stoat until it retreated again to the field edge. On the stoats next excursion into the field, a magpie did the same. Was the stoat hunting, because you do read that this is a method of distracting the intended prey item? Occasionally the stoat did leap into the air to try and grab the bird's legs but whether this was with intent or not I don't know. After about ten minutes everything returned to normal, my bum was wet, and about thirty cows and one bull were fast approaching - time to go.

TV programme of the week, and it was shown twice, was about the UK's greatest engineer, Thomas Telford - I hope you saw it. What a man and what energy he must have had. But what about Brunnel I hear you shout, he was good, I agree, but not as good as Telford. Before the programme I was not aware that Telford had carried out so much work in Scotland, harbours and churches on top of the more famous projects so it is with no apology that an earlier picture is appearing again this week, a bridge that was given a special mention on the programme because it is one of the few iron bridges that Telford built in Scotland, and it's just up the road, crossing the River Spey at Craigellachie. It really is worth a visit, and in summer, there's usually a fisherman thrown in for free! It is no longer a road bridge so you are able to walk across the bridge to admire the work though this is better appreciated from below. See Diary 27 May 2007 for earlier appearance.

The week saw four nights of moth trapping looking for the dark bordered beauty moth in a local aspen wood. Not a huge success, with an inch of rain falling during the first night and temperatures as low as two degrees centigrade for the other nights, not very conducive for moth flight! However, put a light in a wood at night and you are sure to catch something so the next few pictures give a little insight into the world of moth trapping. The picture left shows the portable moth trap (metal box with light on top) being set up. The trap is powered by a small portable battery.

The moth trap in place before the heavens opened! The actinic light has the ability to draw in moths from up to one-hundred metres.

Inside the trap there are lots of section of egg boxes to allow moths entering the trap a place to settle. A few moths can be seen on the egg boxes at the bottom of the trap (the rest have been removed and the moths returned to the wood) and quite a few moths have also settled on the inside of the metal trap itself. On view are mainly true lovers knots and lesser swallow prominent.

These two whitish moths are: lesser swallow prominent left and its very close relative swallow prominent right. In addition an iron prominent was trapped. I didn't say moth trapping and identification was easy, but it is interesting and with time you do get to know the moths quite well. Something though, like the garden tiger (right) is an easy moth to identify and is regularly trapped.
http://ukmoths.org.uk/ is a website which is brilliant in helping you identify moths, though you do need to know roughly what you are looking at to aid searching, and if you fancy moth trapping yourself then Anglian Lepodopterist Supplies can help http://www.angleps.btinternet.co.uk/. There are other suppliers, just type moth traps into any search engine. And no, I didn't find a dark bordered beauty, but I will return, probably next year, when I will hope for better weather.

On my way back and forth to the trap site I came across a group of fungi growing at the base of a tree. They looked very similar to the type of fungus that has a cap that rolls back as the fungus matures producing an ink-like substance as it does so, so one cap was carefully picked and taken home for further investigation. This group of fungi are known as ink-caps and the spores that the fungus is producing do literally turn to an ink-like liquid on the edge of the cap (deliquesce). The fungus was checked with the picture in Roger Philip's book and it looks like it is the common ink cap Coprinus atramentarius, a common fungus found growing on buried wood. Having checked the "whole" fungus against the picture it was time to check the spores, the general term for the reproductive unit for the fungus, a single cell akin to a speck of dust in most fungi. I don't have a microscope powerful enough for looking at these microscopic cells but you can get an idea if the colour of the spores are correct by lying the cap, gills down, on a piece of paper and producing a spore print (right). This print is produced by the spores being deposited on the paper as they fall from the gills on the underside of the cap, probably in their millions, allowing the colour of the spores to be checked and, with a suitable microscope the spore size and knobbly shape can also be checked. An amazing world that few people have a chance to see. I had intended photographing the caps when they were curled back and showing the "ink" but sadly a flock of sheep destroyed them the following day! On one of the bogs I also came across a species with a link back to the man who did so much recording work in Abernethy as well as naming many species. This fungus grows in the old Scots pine forests and, when wet with rain, has a glutinous surface to its cap. This is Cortinarius pinicola Orton, named first by the late Peter Orton, long-term friend and recording colleague (see Diary 23 July 2007).


Some readers will be relieved to know that my visits to the bogs this week won't result in more "big" spider pictures, I did see some and I also noticed that many of the nursery webs are now empty so a few more of these remarkable spiders will be now roaming the bogs. The bogs are so wet that some of the stunted bog pines that grow there are looking a little stressed by having too much water and many of the sundews (right) are underwater and few seem to be flowering properly. However, those giant "sponges" of the bogs the sphagnums (red version left), will be going mad soaking up the water as they "grow" upwards, slowing the water run-off, and, very slowly, allowing the surface of the bog to grow upwards, adding in the longer-term, to the peat within the bog.





This week saw the local area hosting the World Orienteering Championships and our chalet guests this week, Liam, Claire, Frank and Nora, made the long trip from Cork in Ireland to take part. Also, the Grantown Show took place on Thursday though without, sadly, the usual livestock entries due to foot and mouth in the south, and Saturday saw the village running another successful Abernethy Highland Games. For the first time for nine years yours truly wasn't taking part having stood down from the committee after the 2006 event.

Towards the end of this month the website for Scottish Natural Heritage's Highland Naturalists' should be live, details of which are shown right http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/ sadly my picture doesn't really show you all the people involved but the website will have biographies and pictures once complete. Enjoy.

Oddity of the week has to be a family of crossbills up in the forest meaning the young birds have, latterly, been fed with seeds from the new, hard, green cones, a difficult job for the adults and amazing that at least four juvenile birds are still alive and starting to feed for themselves. The Loch Garten ospreys are still being seen, though not always at the nest, a bird was again displaying over the house so not a bad bird to add to the garden list.

And the shower? Not rain for once but an effort to see the Perseids last night failed miserably. The clouds coming and going didn't help but even so, few things were shooting across the sky even when I could see parts of it. Oh well, there is always next year, bed at 2.30 am is no good when you have work the following day!

That is it for another week, enjoy the read.

All the best

Stewart & Janet

Fresh veg from the garden the first for 2007

All photos © Stewart Taylor