A new guest makes an appearance

Today it is raining, it’s one of my days off, so I am not tempted off out looking for things. Time to catch up with events and get down to writing the diary.

The main event during August and September was the reserve-wide survey of tooth fungi, similar to one carried out in 2007. Last years survey found just over five-hundred locations for these rare UK fungi but involved walking most of the tracks within the reserve part of Abernethy Forest. I found the first tooth fungus early in August and panicked a little about this being an ‘early’ season; when should I start the survey? The start date really, was outside my control because, to make the survey compatible with 2007, most of last years tracks and quarries would have to be visited on about the same day, comparing like with like. So the survey started on 15 August and ran through to 20 September, the work this year being supported by funding from the Cairngorm National Park, paying for five days of help from Liz Holden (left), and RSPB who (unofficially) allowed a few days off work to carry out part of the survey. Liz has made a name for herself in the Mycological world in being an expert in fungi identification, carrying out site surveys and running courses to introduce others to the world of fungi identification. Liz is also the person responsible for allocating English names to all the macro-fungi (the bigger ones) to help folk like me who just can’t seem to get their heads round remembering Latin names .(http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails-The+Fungi+Name+Trail+-9781851538911.html). Any photos of fungi in this diary will therefore carry both names as a thank you.

The first species recorded on the survey was the ubiquitous Hydnellum peckii (devils tooth), well it is ubiquitous here but nationally it is a very scarce fungus. This is the fungus which is famous for its droplets of ‘blood’ on the cap usually after light rain (right). The Speyside Way track close to the house, is one of the best places to see it, there were actually so many growing that I had to mark each group, as found, with cocktail sticks so that they weren’t double recorded. This is the third year running that this survey has been carried out and it was interesting to see so many fruiting bodies of Bankera fuligineoalba (drab tooth) this year, it was the second commonest species recorded this year up from third last year. League position doesn’t however tell you everything. In 2007 it was recorded at 62 locations, this year that increased to 130. The commonest species was the devil’s tooth with 153 locations. The most beautiful species remains Hydnellum caeruleum (blue tooth - left), vivid blue when fresh and even when a little older, the blue rim to the cap can be quite stunning. I was really pleased to see that a species found as new to Britain by the late Peter Orton and myself in 1991, increase from just 1 location found in 2007 to 25 this year. This fungus is Sarcodon glaucopus, (green foot tooth - right) and it was nice to record it from many locations where it had never been seen before. Overall, 87 miles of walking was undertaken, 601 tooth fungi locations and 11 named species were found. The mystery tooth fungus at Loch Mallachie appeared again, but we are still waiting for confirmation of a name from the DNA experts at Cardiff University. Watch this space!

A few photographs were entered into this years BBC Wildlife Photographer of the year competition and BBC’s Countryfile programme. Didn’t hear anything from the Countryfile folk but one photo did get to the semi-final stage of the other. Room for improvement there then! Well done to Firwood chalet visitor Christopher who did much better than me and won the adult section of the Minsmere photo competition with a stunning picture of a bittern. I’ll see if I can get some help and guidance when he comes back to the chalet in April.

This lack of success hasn’t put me off taking the camera out though and it (they actually!) has been busy over the last months. One of the early outings saw it accompanying me to Perthshire to help bee expert Murdo Macdonald create, hopefully, some bee nesting sites. Nest boxes for bees? Well not quite, these are mini rock caves which we hope the bees will find to their liking and use them as breeding sites. The bee in question is one of our rarest, Osmia imermis, a close relative of the bee I surveyed locally in 2007 Osmia uncinata. Both bees are small solitary bees, O. uncinata breeding in beetle holes in dead Scots pine trees and O. inermis breeding in cells it creates from ‘chewed up’ plant material stuck to the underside of flat rocks/stones on slightly lime-rich hillsides. See website for details - http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html (Murdo runs the Highland Biological Recording Group website). The wee bee is currently known from just five extant sites in the UK, two on Deeside and the others in Perthshire. At the site we were working on the bee hasn’t been seen for about four years and the worry is that the availability of suitable nest sites has declined possibly, in line with the lack of digging for track repair materials from small ‘borrow’ pits on parts of the hillside. The aim of our visit therefore, was to fill small rubber bags with flat rocks and carry these out onto the hillside where we created mini-caves, a flat rock propped up on a couple of side bearing rocks (left) keeping the main flat rock clear of the vegetation. This was the second breeding site creation attempt at this location, a similar exercise a couple of years ago seemed to fail because the flat rocks were placed straight onto the vegetation. These rocks quickly sunk into the heather and grasses leaving very little room underneath for the bees to build their nests. So, fingers crossed this second attempt will be more successful. The beauty of this method, if it works, is that you can quickly visit the artificial nests sites, turn over the top rock, and see if there are any bee cells (as right) without having to spend lots of time looking for the bee. However, the bee feeds on bird’s foot trefoil like its close relative, and I have had great success standing by clumps of trefoil waiting for that bee to visit. So, if you see a lone man, standing motionless on a Perthshire hillside in June next year, I might just be trying to photograph another rare bee feeding on its favourite flower. Interestingly, the farmer who until recently had the tenancy to graze this particular site, placed rocks somewhere on the hillside and managed to actually film the bee visiting its wee rock ‘cave’. Fingers crossed we can do it again.

Work colleague Andy has a crafty way of getting things looked for or found. A short email will often appear on the works PC saying “one to look out for” and sometimes it works and I try and rise to the challenge. Many additional records have been obtained for the reserve by this method, twinflower, heath cudweed, heath dog violet to name a few. One such email arrived in early September asking folk to look out for a plant which was a recent addition to the UK list – Lycopodium lagopus – Arctic Stag’s-horn Clubmoss. It’s lowland relative, common old stag’s-horn clubmoss (left), is regularly found creeping out onto many of the forest tracks with its distinctive leafy green creeping runners with the double headed ‘strobili (spore bearing cones) rising two to three inches from the runners. The reason for the request was that a small patch of the plant had just been found close to the Cairngorm ski-grounds and there would be a good chance that it could also occur on the Abernethy reserve. The worm was dangling and I was just about to have a go at taking it! The most sensible way I could tackle this new ‘project’ was to go and see the plant on Cairngorm and then I would know what I was looking for on the reserve along with the sort of habitat to aim for. Andy’s email had a photo attached showing the clubmoss with lots of fruiting cones, and, with a fairly accurate known location I thought it would just be a case of getting to the site to see this plant in all its glory. However, all the known British sites (3 or 4) are above 800m asl, so a bit of extra leg work would be needed to get to the right sort of area even before a search could begin – hence the reference in the last diary. With a few regular back and knee problems I wasn’t too sure this was going to be one of the easier projects, but, with the last of the late summer weather being fairly kind I set off in mid-September for Cairngorm. If you do manage to do a bit of botanising on the higher Scottish hills or slopes of Cairngorm you will be in clubmoss heaven. Above 600m you will start to find lots of interrupted clubmoss (L. annotinum) and fir clubmoss (L. selago), a bit higher still and you will find plenty of alpine clubmoss (L. alpinum). There is a good chance you will also see a close relative lesser clubmoss (Selaginella selaginoides) growing in damp areas in both green and pink forms (right)! The following website is brilliant for this clubmoss and all things ferns http://www.rogergolding.co.uk/ferns/ferngenus/lycopodium/lagopus.html .

A steady plod up the hill and the site was reached, the rucksack dumped and a search of the site started. One of the features of arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss is that it has quite long hairs extending from the ends of the leaves on both the runners and the flowering shoots, so identification should be fairly straightforward once found. However, all across the site and across large patches of the surrounding ground there was masses of interrupted clubmoss and, at this height, growing in a fairly stunted form. To confuse the picture even more, I was finding obvious hairs on the tips of the leaves – was this actually arctic stag’s horn? But the email photo showed lots of fruiting cones and these differed from interrupted clubmoss, growing on short stalks. After a couple of hours of searching – failure. I began to doubt that I was at the right location so the search went a bit wider afield. Nothing. However, I did have some good photos of the ‘hairy’ interrupted plants, which might be something new, and I had a feel for the sort of site where L. lagopus had been found. A plant sample from the finder at this site had also been confirmed as correct by Dr. Fred Rumsey at the Dept of Botany at the Natural History Museum in London.

The next outing was to a similar type site on the Abernethy Reserve, close to Bynack More. At 800m I walked into very similar habitat to Cairngorm and all around I was finding the slightly hairy form of interrupted clubmoss. Just in case I was wrong and this might be the plant I was looking for a sample was taken from each of the three main sites and again the plants were photographed. A walker, seeing this strange man grovelling around on his hands and knees passed me by on ‘the other side’. A second walker however was more enquiring and came over for a chat. He went on his way knowing more about the ptarmigan we could hear calling that he did about a new site for arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss! I was on site from 10am to 3pm, covered quite a large area but knew in my heart of hearts that I hadn’t yet found what I was looking for. The view over Abernethy Forest at the end of the day though was brilliant (right). When I got home I had an email waiting for me from Ian, the man that had found the Cairngorm site – “sorry, the photo you saw originally was of another arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss site near Glenfeshie, the Cairngorm site had very few cones and in fact I’d had quite a problem re-finding the site when Fred Rumsey had asked for a second plant sample. You were though in the right area!” The knees weren’t happy, but they were going to have to make a return trip to Cairngorm, this time with success (left), and I’m pleased to report that a few more runners and cones were found (right). Over the three week period I had visited Carn Bheadhair, Meall a Bhuachaille, Cairngorm twice and Bynack More twice, six time above 800m – something that might not be repeated again in the near future – the snows have arrived. A paper on the arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss exists and is entitled “An overlooked boreal clubmoss Lycopodium lagopus (Laest. Ex Hartm.) Zinserl. Ex Kusen. (Lycopodiaceae) in Britain. Author Fred Rumsey. Published Watsonia 26: 477-480 (2007)”. The plant samples from the three sites near Bynack More are now with Fred Rumsey (UK clubmoss expert) because he says leaf-hairs aren’t known from interrupted clubmoss! Amazing. A short report on the search for this clubmoss can be found at http://www.bsbiscotland.org.uk/Documents%20on-line/Lycopodium%20lagopus.pdf.

And finally, bee man Murdo is also an expert on ants and he had asked me to try and check as many wood ant nests as possible during the summer to see if a small ant that lives as a guest within the wood ant nest, could be found. The guest is the shining guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus a very small ant that lives and breeds symbiotically within the bigger wood ants nest. The guest ant had been found in a wood ant nest on Abernethy in 2007 (see map left) and he was hopeful that this nest would continue to be used in 2008 and that other wood ant nests could also play host to the guest. So, wandering the tracks looking for fungi I found lots of wood ant nests, and similarly when involved in BTO Bird Atlas work, more were found. By the time ant activity on the wood ant nests had started to decline with the onset of autumn I had looked at probably more than one hundred and hadn’t found any guest ants, however, I did find green shield-moss capsules on two of them, the first time that this moss had been found on occupied wood ant nests, another UK first! When I started looking for the guest ant I was badly hampered by not knowing what I was actually looking for. It is small, about 3mm long I was told, but what I didn’t know was how similar to a wood ant it was. The only pictures I could find on the internet were poor – so little help there, so I went to the nest where it had been seen in 2007. After a few minutes staring at the hundreds of wood ands milling about the nest I saw a small ant, moving much slower, low down on the side of the nest. This was it. The next challenge was to photograph it and it was only after the picture was taken and looked at on my computer screen that I realised the ant is so shiny, that despite its small size I could actually see my reflection on the ants abdomen! (photo above right). Not bad when you remember that the ant is 3mm long by 1mm wide! Having got a decent photo I was really happy and the ant experts thought it was great but colleagues at work continued to ask “but how big is it actually”. So the next challenge was to try and take a photo of the guest with its bigger host, and, after a bit of fun trying to get the two of them to stay still whilst standing side by side, the photo was obtained (above left). I hope you enjoy the two pictures and know what to look for when you see the ants on the move again next summer.

That’s it for another month or so.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

In between times Ruth & Sean got married - beautiful

All photos © Stewart Taylor