So Jimmy’s passing saw the end of an era and, with the small farm probably passing to an adjacent holding, the house and farm buildings had to be emptied. The 1st November was the date of the Easter Tulloch farm displenish sale or roup. Tractor, ploughs, feed troughs and most of the contents of the house and farm buildings were sold by auction at the farm. Not many of these sales take place locally now so folk came from far and wide to see what was being sold. The sale started at 11am and was done and dusted by 2pm, it then took a couple of days to see all the farm implements removed from site and on that one day the farm had seen the busiest day in its lifetime. Looking
at the piles of stones round the edges of some fields, the farm probably came into being around 1860, Seafield Estates providing the timber for the buildings, the tenant being responsible for getting the buildings completed and for converting rough ground into more productive field of grass, oats or potatoes – hence the stones which had been cleared, over many decades, from the newly ploughed fields. The buildings have the most commanding views across Tulloch Moor, Loch Garten and Loch Mallachie out to Boat of Garten and the Monadhliath hills so it will be interesting to see what happens if the estate decide to sell them. Jimmy was a true farmer, it was his life and I’m not sure I will see the like of him again.
Our grandson Finlay joined us for a day and we headed for Findhorn Bay. Whilst there we had lunch at the Findhorn Foundation, a slightly wacky place but one part of which has probably some of the ‘greenest’ buildings in the country. The first houses sporting grass roofs appeared in the 1980s, followed by solar panels, photo-voltaic cells and windmills. You are free to visit and I would recommend a walk round the houses to anyone visiting the area. “Is that a crossbill on that peanut feeder?” Janet said, my first thought had been greenfinch as I chased Finlay along the road, but sure enough, a juvenile crossbill was on the feeder and taking on all comers that were trying to share the nuts. A quick dash back to the car for the camera and I managed to take the photo left. A crossbill on a bird feeder could be quite unusual.
Plenty of writing to keep me occupied since the last diary, a biodiversity article for RSPB’s Impact newsletter, a personal article covering 30 years at Abernethy but highlighting the 20 years since the Forest Lodge Estate was bought to be mailed to the major donors to the £1.8 million appeal, a piece for the local “Nethy” newspaper about the B
TO Bird Atlas 2008 and sorting a talk to be given by colleague Richard at the Scottish Staff Conference. Whilst Richard was away for a couple of weeks I also looked after the bird and squirrel feeders at the Osprey Centre which allowed the first encounter with the red squirrels. Website (see http://www.rspb.org.uk/webcams/feeders/abernethyvideo.asp for the live feed from the feeders). The main feeder is a ‘help yourself’ feeder, where the squirrels just lift a lid to get at the peanuts but they also take nuts from the wire bird feeders. I stayed for a 
while to see if I could get anything unusual and it was only after about half an hour I could see a pattern developing obviously linked to individual squirrels. The same squirrel (I assume) would come into the feeder, following exactly the same route, same trees, same branches, fill its mouth with peanuts and then depart in roughly the same direction from which it had arrived. Most of the peanuts taken away were being buried or hidden in the nearby woodland. A strange pastime when the feeders are nearly almost always full! The squirrel left, was about 50 metres from the feeder but its mouth was still full of peanuts. Coal tits were also seen doing the same thing – hence the reason why the birds and squirrels regularly visiting the feeders don’t have pot bellies! As a rough estimate I would suggest there must be 30+ coal tits feeding and goodness knows how many squirrels.
On 4 November, sadly Tibby cat died after a short illness, this was the ginger cat chalet visitors would see dodging about the garden.
At long last I managed to visit it. I have looked at it for many years, I’ve photographed it from afar (left) and an osprey once tried to build a nest on top of it – the Duke of Gordon monument on a hill just south of Aviemore. This imposing monument points skywards from amongst a hill covered in mature birch and Scots pine trees, a few huge and very old aspen trees, and dense patches of juniper. On one side of the hill is a section of Wade Road and on the other the estate houses and the River Spey. Access to the estate isn’t encouraged but you are free to walk round the hill on the estate road and Wade Road. There is a hidden track which takes you to the monument but I had, at the last minute, decided on a direct
ascent – straight up the steep face. There was a bit of method in this madness, the view out across the wee lochan known as The Bogach (right) can only be obtained from this route, and I was keen to see what it looked like from above. This is one of the few water bodies locally where you can regularly see mute swans though on this particular day, they were absent possibly due to the lochan being 50% frozen. There were, though twenty-four grey herons, an indication that there must be a heronry somewhere nearby or the fishing is exceptional. Tufted duck, mallard and goldeneye were the only other waterfowl present. The direct ascent has one big problem – juniper bushes! They are i
n places quite amazing, big mature bushes and very difficult to walk through so several detours had to be made. Eventually though the summit was reached and there in all its glory was the Duke of Gordon monument. They didn’t do things in small measures in the 1830s and I would suggest that this monument could be compared to the Angel of the North today. It certainly shows that the Duke must have been held in high esteem. In case the wording on the plaque left, can’t be read from the photo it says:“Erected in memory of His Grace George Fifth and Last Duke of Gordon G.C.B. General in the British Army. Colonel of the Third Regiment of Foot Guards. Governor of the Castle of Edinburgh. Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire etc, etc, etc. Who died on the 28th May 1836. In the sixty-sixth year of his age.
He was a generous Landlord. A patriotic Highlander and a brave Soldier – at once the delight of the Noble and the friend of the poor.”
The Duke died in 1840 and the monument was paid for by ‘public subscription’. Amazing.
For more information see http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/people/famousfirst1473.html . Not only do we have the Duke of Gordon monument near Aviemore, but another significant statue/monument to the man can also be seen on (another) hill at the west end of Elgin high street, close to Elgin cathedral. " On top of Lady Hill, which rises to the southwest of Elgin and was once the site of Elgin Castle, is a 24m high (80 feet) monument erected in 1839 in honour of the 5th Duke of Gordon, the first Commander of the Gordon Highlanders regiment. The duke's statue was placed on the pillar in 1855. From the top of the hill are views across Elgin to the Cairngorms and at the base of the hill lies Anderson's Institution".
Following the track back down the hill you come upon another amazing memorial pre-dating even the Duke’s one. On the south-east side of the track you suddenly come upon an enormous cairn about fifty metres from the track. The interesting bit is round the other side. Here, in a big recess is a bronze plaque erected by the Marquis of Huntly to commemorate two named men and others who fell in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is a pity that a few mindless visitors choose to try and 
deface the plaques on these two monuments, a recent bit of graffiti on the Waterloo plaque would appear to be from a member of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers! Both monuments are shown clearly on OS Map sheet 36.How are the green shield-mosses I hear you ask? Not very well is the answer. Well, in having
followed a few of the sites from the day the first worm-like youngsters appeared through to present the loss of capsules has been enormous. Perhaps this is normal, few logs have been monitored on a regular basis so perhaps the strategy is produce a lot and hope a few get through. Logs that had very young capsules in September had lost them all within a week, another log had more than 80 very young capsules, a few weeks later 30 and recently about half of that. The two 
pictures show a small patch of one log and how capsules have fared. A visit to the brown shield-moss site near Crathie Church on Deeside went without a hitch, it was mid-week, there were no Royals in residence and I managed to find two sites (only one there last season) with a total of six capsules. Despite what the distribution maps show, the latter has to now be the rarer of the two mosses in Britain – locally we only know of two sites compared to seventy six green shield-moss sites last season. Watch this space.On the wedding front everyone has recovered and a great time was had by all. Ruth and Sean have a couple of websites where you can see photos of the big day. See http://www.aviemorephotographic.com/online.asp?area=Weddings&Subject=RuthSean and http://www.ruthandseanwedding.co.uk/
That’s it for 2008.
Have a happy Christmas and all best wishes for 2009.
Stewart & Janet
This last photo for the diary is in memory of a dear friend who visited Loch Garten on many, many occasions with her husband John. Marion and John Kirby were present at the Osprey Centre every spring in nearly all the years I have been at the reserve, checking and installing the sound equipment that brings live sounds to the Centre from the osprey nest and from lekking capercaillie in April and May. John and Marion could also be encountered on the tracks close to Loch Garten, Marion listening for crossbills, crested tits and other woodland birds and John recording their songs via parabolic reflector onto his tape recorder. Their sounds were regularly heard on wildlife programmes on both TV and radio. Sadly, Marion died on 13 November and will be greatly missed at Firwood.
All photos © Stewart Taylor
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