Happy Christmas - sorry Easter!

It's been a good couple of weeks with progress on the BTO Bird Atlas front and with a couple of searches for "lost" plants. Roving recording for birds has seen visits to Loch Garten, Grantown on Spey, Loch an Eilean and a walk home from Boat of Garten. The general picture is that the breeding season is getting underway, although a bit delayed over the last few days due to adverse weather! Curlews, lapwings and oystercatchers are now back in numbers and it was nice to see a flock of 120 golden plover in the fields below Tomachrochar last weekend. These are newly arriving birds, feeding on the low-lying fields before heading off to the hills to breed. Black-headed gulls are also everywhere and the numbers of song thrushes continues to grow with one in the garden just a couple of days ago, a first for 2008. I also had my first meadow pipit locally on 16 March and Brian, our chalet guest had a red-throated diver on Loch Morlich yesterday whilst looking for the recently sighted ring-necked duck.

A few weeks ago Andy, a work colleague, just happened to mention that he had a few old records of plants growing fairly locally, that hadn't been seen for quite a few years - a challenge I couldn't refuse. Andy is the plant recorder for the old county of Banff for the BSBI (Botanical Society of the British Isles) as well as a BSBI Council Member, and part of his role is to maintain an up to date plant list for that county as well as check through thousands of old plant records to ensure all are listed on the county database. Any doubtful records are listed as such until someone has checked them out, not easy when some records go back to the late 1800s. BSBI maintains a very good website and it is well worth a visit if you want to know anything about our current knowledge of plant distribution within Britain (http://www.bsbi.org.uk/index.html). The challenge? To check out a few sites for Dutch rush (Equisetum hyemale) and a single site for interrupted clubmoss (Lycopodium annotinum). The former has a scatter of sites throughout Britain but you will need to visit Scotland if you want to see the latter - check out the BSBI tetrad maps. Dutch rush (left) is a plant I have searched for locally but have failed to find though I did re-locate a site near Inverness which hadn't been recorded since the mid-1970s. The site near Inverness is a little odd in that the plants are growing on a wall rather than in a damp wood and there are just a few stems compared to the thousands that been recorded at other sites. Oddly named the plant is not confined to Holland nor is it a rush, but its other names explain it better - rough horsetail and scouring rush and its Latin name is even more helpful Equus = horse and setum = bristle and hyemale = winter. The non-flowering stems do look like rushes and as the Latin name indicates, they remain evergreen, so the plant that is easy to look for in the winter. The family Equisetum is the single surviving genus of a class of primitive vascular plants that date back to the mid-Devonian period (350 + million years ago), giant versions of which produce the coal deposits of today! The Dutch link comes from the fact that the plant stems have a high silica content and the Dutch folk used to gather the stems, tie them into bundles, and use them as pan scourers. The plant is listed alongside the ferns in plant books, though they aren't ferns and like the ferns, reproduces itself by means of spores. I digress. Armed with a series of known last locations I set off towards Forres and then on to Keith. At the first site, right by the River Findhorn, I was greeted by thousands of plants, at last I had seen it, in quantity, in its typical haunt. The second site was also on the River Findhorn but lower down the river and at this site there were even more plants but with evidence of tree planting near by. A few trees are fine but too many and the plant will struggle to survive. The third site near Keith hadn't been checked since the 1970s, well not by anyone who forwarded their records, so I didn't know what to expect. The site was by a small burn by a farm track and glory be it was still there, again, with thousands of plants on display (above right). I pushed my luck a bit by going to a fourth site where the last record dated from 1890 and apart from a pleasant wander round a damp wood I didn't see the horsetail. To see a little more about the Equisetum's go to http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Equisetum.pdf.

The interrupted clubmoss check on the other hand was a much more straight forward outing, a site from the 1990s complete with GPS location. Locally, this plant is found most easily on the open slopes of Cairngorm but, following finding a site in the woods close to Loch Mallachie, a few more low-level, woodland sites have been found. Within Abernethy several members of the Clubmoss family occur: Fir, Stagshorn, Alpine, Issler's (Diphasiastrum complanatum) and Lesser (Selaginella selaginoides). As its name implies the stems of the interrupted clubmoss are "interrupted" with usually a slight 'waist' halfway up the stem, hopefully visible in the picture right. The trip was successful and the patch, about one metre by two metres, continues to thrive. During the summer a 'cone' appears on the tip of each stem carrying the reproductive spore-capsules.

During March we are starting to get onto familiar ground. Whilst out marking a couple of logs where the green shield-moss (Buxbaumia viridis) has been found previously and in the potential line of a new electric deer fence, I visited a couple of pools which I found last year, home to loads of frogs. I wasn't disappointed and the croaking warned me that the frogs were in residence well before I reached the pools. The pools are in an area of woodland where a large stand of exotic conifers was felled a couple of years ago, the pools being created by the wheels of heavy timber extraction machinery. Having removed the conifers the site is now being prepared for small scale tree planting operations, aspen trees initially, the electrified fence keeping the resident deer out of the site. Deer don't like crossing electrified fences, so, rather than a six-foot deer fence, with all the problems this creates for capercaillie and black grouse (flying into fence), a three wire electric fence is being installed to no more than stock fence height, to do the job. Watch this space. My aim of visiting the pools was to try and photograph the mating frogs but, to get close enough, I first had to disturb them meaning that all of them disappeared under the water. So I got myself, camera and tripod into place and waited. It then started to rain quite heavily so out came my umbrella to keep me and my camera dry. At this stage I was hoping that no one was watching me, man in wellies with camera under umbrella sitting on edge of puddle in freezing rain - not moving! After about twenty minutes the first frogs head appeared and the rain stopped but I dared not move to take the umbrella down. A few more minutes and a few more heads appeared. Ten more minutes and the sun was trying to shine and a few more heads appeared and the frogs started to croak again. The pool was alive with frogs some as singles, some as pairs. I counted sixty, so there had to be several more than that. The end of the pool where I was seated was where all the frog spawn was and it was around the spawn that the bulk of the frogs congregated, probably adding to mass of spawn. It was brilliant, after an hour I had my pictures but my feet were frozen and I had to move. Sorry frogs!

I've been in the forest bogs again, that little appreciated wet habitat within the bigger forest and full of diddy trees, small, but also very old. I visited this particular bog as I walked back from Boat of Garten, I seemed to remember having seen fir clubmoss there in the past, a plant that isn't that common on the reserve. This bog was much better than I remembered it, stunted trees but lots of small pools with open water. It was along the edge of this bog that myself and John Miles, Osprey Warden in 1980, installed the first log and peat dams to block up the drains carrying masses of water out of the bog. The dams are still there! I couldn't find the clubmoss but I did see lots of new flowering shoots of cotton grass (left & right) but with their less obvious white/yellow flowering heads rather than the white cotton seed heads that will appear in May. It is the sphagnum moss that is the real boiler-room of these bogs, the moss acting like a sponge holding and raising water-levels above the surface of the peat, and the growing and decaying of moss along with plants adding to the development of new peat.

Bog pine and pool system, a return visit will be needed later in the year to see which dragonflies are on site and to see if there are any of the special bog flowers growing. Perhaps sphagna also.

The ants are getting active again and, before the weather made its dramatic change, many of the big wood ant nests were covered with a mass of ants as the first spring sun warmed their nests and the ants mingled together on the nest cap.

The snow during the last few days will have had them scurrying back into the warmer depths. I hope we see them again soon.

Yes, as with much of the rest of the UK we have had snow, snow and more snow. An inch or two a day since 20 March, overcast skies, and windy at times which saw a few drifts developing on the roads. Six or seven yellowhammers, thirty to forty chaffinches, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds, woodpigeons, rooks, jackdaws have piled into the garden during the last few days and the wonderful show of snowdrops and crocuses have disappeared below a white blanket. I dug the vegetable patch in the hope of planting the onion setts early - no chance. Minus 6 degrees C forecast tonight, and the Holden clan due tomorrow for a week, I hope things warm up a bit so that Great Gran Holden can get round to see everyone. A few visits have been made to the outer reaches of the forest since the snow arrived in the hope that the sun might bless me with its rays and help to brighten the scene. It didn't quite happen so the colour photo has reverted to a sort of monochrome but under these conditions you realise how scattered the Scots pines are once you get out towards Ryvoan bothy and Ryvoan Pass. The snow out here is knee high so a few days yet before we see the meadow pipits arrive on site. Despite the snow black grouse have been lekking and dippers could already be on eggs. Brrr...



That's it, enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet

Crocuses before the snow arrived

Happy Easter

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Lots to tell you about at the start of a new season

Hello to the regulars and welcome to any new readers - sorry for the delay in getting this blog written.

It's been a busy couple of months and a pretty chilly period also. Regular frosts and long-lying snow meant that getting to work during January was hard work - Janet driving me to the end of the Forest Lodge track, a trek into work from there and then the reverse in the evening - both ways in the dark. Okay, we could drive all the way to Forest Lodge, but then I wouldn't get a wee bit of exercise each day and the chance to look for new tracks in the snow. In fact, it wasn't until the 23 January that I managed to cycle all the way to work, dodging the icy bits and holding my breath as I cycled across some of the frozen bits of track. It only lasted for a day and the snow came back and I was back to car and walking. Twice I had fresh badger tracks in the snow and once a pine marten, but the most regular were roe deer and the very distinctive tracks of red squirrel (left & right). I searched hard for a set of capercaillie tracks but failed miserably. The ski operators on Cairngorm have had a good season so far with plenty of snow and lots of visitors. At the end of January a couple of days of heavy rain and a rise in the temperature saw a huge snow melt take place and late on the Saturday afternoon I could see the River Spey was coming over its bank, pouring into the fields along the B970 between Nethybridge and Boat of Garten. A check first thing on the Sunday saw signs up in Nethybridge saying the road to Broomhill Bridge was closed as was the B970 towards Boat of Garten, so a detour via Grantown on Spey was needed to get across the river! An amazing sight and a much bigger flood that the one we had around the same time in 2007. Just as amazing was the sight of a man and wife launching a Canadian canoe into the torrent and heading off down river towards Grantown.!


Whilst I have been neglecting my Diary I have been busy writing a couple of articles for local newsletters. The first was a short piece for the North East Biological Recording Centre (NESBReC) trying to tempt folk to go looking for the green shield-moss. The area covered by this Centre stretches from Aberdeenshire into Moray taking in the area near Dufftown where I found the moss growing on a dead rowan tree in December. Hopefully one or two folk might be tempted to go and have a look. You can find the newsletter at http://www.nesbrec.org.uk/articles/Newsletter%206.pdf and it is a very good read. The second article took a lot more thinking about and quite a bit of data sorting and covered the tooth fungi survey carried out during August and September 2007. This article along with a re-vamp of the green shield-moss article was written for the Highland Biological Recording Group newsletter - Highland Naturalist. Sadly, this newsletter isn't published electronically and is still in the process of being produced, but you can see what the group gets up to at http://www.hbrg.org.uk/ . You can even support the group AND receive the newsletter if you join!

During January / February the second round of the BTO Winter Bird Atlas tetrads were walked - I have taken on five tetrads locally. One covers the village and produced quite a good number of birds whilst another covers the bog and old woodland close to the osprey site and produce just eight birds, the highlight being a jack snipe. A frog, on a cold frosty day was also unusual. A warm day on 22 January tempted the first great spotted woodpecker to start pronouncing its territory by drumming on a lump of deadwood on a live Scots pine right by Forest Lodge. A second was heard close to the house on 26 January. About the same time the first song thrush arrived back in the village along with a couple of pied wagtails - spring is on its way! Don and Tracy spent a week in the chalet in January and once they had headed off south it was time for a few repairs to the chalet porch. The logs that were originally installed had started to rot quite badly at ground level, so the frame-work was propped up, the old pillars cut out, and new oak pillars installed, finished off with a nice bit of Lindab galvanised guttering. Another wee job involved stocking up the freezer with the best organic meat going. A couple of weeks ago Bob rang me from Abernethy to say that he had a red deer hind in the larder for me. Most of the animals that are culled make their way to the local game dealer but a few staff along with a few locals put in their orders and the sale goes directly to them, bypassing the game dealer and the butcher. Venison that has gone down that route is just too expensive to buy. So, we pay the same as the game dealer but also receive the deer in the same state as they do, complete with skin! So the first job to do was to get the skin off (left) so that the carcass could air dry and hang for about a ten days before boning out the meat and getting it home to the freezer.

Other interesting things that have been happening over the last couple of months has seen a team of dedicated researchers wandering all of the conifer forests in the north of Scotland to try and record crossbills. Which crossbill - well that is the purpose of the survey. Within each of the forests the researchers, using GPS technology, go to the centre of all the OS map one kilometre squares comprising the wood and once there, play a tape of a crossbill 'chipping', the aim being to draw out any resident birds and hopefully, get them to start chipping too. Each researcher is armed with a good quality sound recordist's parabolic reflector and if they do get a crossbill to respond then the call is recorded onto tape so that back in the office the taped call can be put through a sonogram "machine" and the resultant printout be compared with sonograms from known species of crossbills. Amazing. The crossbill species involved are common, Scottish and parrot and the main objective of the work is to try and find out which species is where. Watch this space. Johanna, left, is seen playing a tape and listening out via the parabolic reflector.

A novel bit of management that has been taking place within Abernethy is aimed at addressing the lack of deadwood within the planted areas of forest. In the 1980s, when we embarked on a programme of heavy thinning of some of the plantation woodland within the reserve, we would regularly ring-bark a tree to kill it off or just put the chainsaw through the trunk of the tree at a safe working height from the ground, leaving a nice lump of wood for the key deadwood flora and fauna to invade. We know from some of the few natural forests that exist in the northern hemisphere, that left to nature, huge amounts of deadwood start to accumulate, amounting to several tonnes of deadwood in every hectare of forest. Abernethy, with its past history of management, has relatively little deadwood and one way to address this imbalance is to physically go into the forest and kill of several trees in each hectare of woodland. Let a decade go by, and then return and do the same again. In some planted woodland areas a tractor and timber winch has been used to pull over a few trees every sixty metres throughout the wood. This method produces lying deadwood and, as the branches die and decay, some cover for capercaillie. The light thinning that is taking place will also encourage more blaeberry on the forest floor, again to benefit capercaillie and many of the other woodland birds via berries and insects. In other parts of the forest a few trees are being killed off by lopping off the top of the tree with a polesaw creating a tall piece of deadwood, or by ring-barking or by 'high' stumping. This happens about every hundred metres through the selected woodland. But perhaps the most dramatic technique has involved the use of a timber harvester (above), a machine which is normally used for felling and snedding trees and cutting the logs to various lengths as required by the sawmill. By asking the operator to reach up towards the top of the tree, the machine is able to produce a tall stem of deadwood once the top section has been felled (left). Using this technique, several thousand trees were treated in thirty hectares of woodland over just five days, something that would be impossible to do by hand. All we can do now is sit back and see what invades this deadwood heaven. Drastic? Considering that in this particular piece of wood we have about 1500 trees per hectare, killing off a few every fifty metres comprises a very small percentage of the whole, particularly when considering the benefits to anything and everything that lives on deadwood.

In the meantime there has been a change of camera, the old faithful Nikon D200 (right) has gone and a D300 has taken its place. There are many new features on the new camera so it's now up to me to see if I can get the camera to live up to its reputation. Apart from 12 and a bit million pixels it has a self-cleaning sensor which, considering the number of lens changes I can get through in a day, will be sorely tested. The old camera spent a month of the new year at Nikon having its sensor cleaned, and that was only by mid-February, two trips at £25 a time! This is the last purchase, if things go wrong this time perhaps I will go back to film!

Finlay, our grandson is now walking, even without the aid of a chair. Well done the wee fella. It could be fun keeping up with him at Ruth & Sean's wedding in October.

Laura also popped over for lunch in between the snow showers and came forth bearing a box of Cadbury's Cream Eggs for her dads birthday in early February. Amazingly they lasted a week and the last one accompanied me on one of my outings looking for the green shield-moss. By mid-afternoon I was getting quite knackered having spent the last couple of hours working my way up a stream filled gully. In the midst of this wonderful scene can you believe it, I came across a 45 gallon oil drum, stuck in the stream bed, and to prove it I took a picture. Me, my last cream egg and a 45 gallon oil drum! It is quite appalling the mess man can make of his planet. Following the same theme, remember the dead buzzard from the last diary? I was really out of order giving the local gamekeeper the benefit of the doubt and I knew deep down that the bird had probably been poisoned. I have the report from the Chemistry Section of the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency by me as I type and I quote "Buzzard - female, died in very good condition weighing 1385g and showing no evidence of trauma. There were good fat deposits over the breast and body cavity. The stomach contained some fresh food. The gullet was full of (animal) muscle tissue with deposits of white powder evident. The post mortem examination findings indicate that pesticide poisoning was likely to be the cause of death in this incident. The analytical investigation has confirmed that suspicion by revealing gross residues of chloralose in liver tissue and gullet. The source of the chemical is unknown at present but abuse is suspected". A search if the area where the bird was found couldn't locate the poisoned bait so all the police could do was warn the estate staff that the bird had been found, and, naughty boys, not to do it again in the future! So, the killing goes on and my buzzard just becomes another statistic.

To close, just a quick up date on the ongoing green shield-moss search. Since the last diary a few more people have been out looking and finding logs and capsules - brilliant. A day on Deeside with Sandy, Claire, Richard & Caroline at a known site we found one capsule on the original willow log and then a few more on four other logs, comprising willow, birch and Scots pine. Sandy carried on the good work and found several new logs and capsules in a wood near Beauly which used to be the only known site in Britain for the moss and where it hadn't been seen for several years. On one of my Bird Atlas outings in early February I came upon a likely log in a very odd place right by a vehicle track and saw lots of stalks where the capsules had been predated along with seven remaining capsules (above left). In total there were 62 stalks along with the remaining capsules, the largest single population that has ever been found and what a sight it must have been before the capsules were eaten off. So we are now past the forty log mark and the capsule count has topped 160. At the end of last week I was honoured to have a visit from Gordon Rothero, one of Britain's top bryologists, who spend a day looking at the moss growing on some of my alder log sites, a habitat where he hadn't seen the moss growing before.

That's it, enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet

The Cairngorms from Rynettin - Abernethy Forest

All photos © Stewart Taylor