It has been a busy few weeks as the breeding season gets into full swing and a few of the ‘winter’ specialities stayed around just into 
May. The highlight for many locally have been the late staying waxwings with a gang of up to 20 feeding in juniper bushes and in Tulloch on flowers of Norway maple. I have managed to bump into groups of these birds in various areas of the forest from right out on the moorland edge in April through to the last ones popping up by Firwood on 1st May as if waving goodbye for another season. The hope of hearing a bird singing locally hasn’t materialised – we will just have to wait for another season to see if a pair of these remarkable birds stay on to breed.
The 1st April saw the start of the second breeding season for the BTO Atlas and, following an appeal from Hugh, the local Atlas organiser for help in ensuring the minimum level of survey in 10 kilometre square NJ01, I offered to take on 5 standard recording “tetrads” (2x2 km squares on the OS maps as detailed below.) locally. The difficulty in this part of the world with atlas surveying is timing the first of the two required visits late enough in the first April-May recording period, to ensure that most of the summer migrants have arrived, and allowing a bit of time before the second round of visits start in June. Late into the first week of May I decided to go for it, but failed to find any spotted flycatchers, and with chilly nights even swallows and house martins were low in numbers. I will just have to hope these are all picked up in adequate
numbers on the second visit in a couple of weeks time. There is nothing better than visiting places you rarely go to, testing yourself out in trying to record all the birds that you know should be there. So far, nothing too unusual has turned up, but following the heavy snow and low temperatures of February, many of the regular residents seem to be in much lower numbers, with wrens becoming a rarity in some areas. It’s difficult to concentrate though when views like this pop up in one of your tetrads.
Tetrads are 2km × 2km squares and labelled A to Z within each 10-km square. Recording visits do not aim to produce a complete species list for the tetrad, but a sample of what one can find during a pair of visits in winter and/or summer. We aim to cumulatively cover at least 8 tetrads in every 10-km square in Britain and Ireland during winter and summer. You can take on one or as many tetrads as you wish. This is a great opportunity to visit those hidden corners of the landscape and find new birds. (From BTO Atlas website http://www.bto.org/birdatlas/index.htm ).
The first visit of another survey was also completed with my visit to
the Breeding Bird Square north of Grantown on Spey. It was misty as I left the house at 5.30am but knowing part of my site is a hill rising to nearly 500 metres I didn’t think there would be a problem. Wrong! Thankfully, a lot of the survey is done on bird sounds as well as sightings, so all worked out okay, and just after the sheep was surprised and photographed, a light breeze got up and the mist started to lift. Using my GPS gadget ensured I stayed on roughly the right line.
I was also involved in something new but a little frightening – taking wedding photographs! The photographer booked to take the pictures at Ruth’s sister in law’s wedding gave back word at short notice, and I was asked if I could help. Batteries charged, lenses cleaned, practice with the highly technical flash unit, and I was off to Inverness – arriving fully two hours before the event!
Being early though did allow time for thinking out photo locations (left) and opportunities, which saved panicking later in the day. My Dad took lots of wedding photos and many a night I would go to bed in a room with a strange glow and to the tap, tap of the plastic tongs pushing the photo paper round in the tray of developer liquid. From camera lens, to roll of film, to roll of film being developed in little round tank and the film image then being transferred to paper under the glow of the orange light, the resultant photo then being hung up to drip dry. What a brave man, no second chance, and no instant image on the back of the camera to check that everything looks just about right. I’ll tell you about the set of cow’s horns appearing out of the brides head in some future diary, and how my dad managed to “manipulate” them away.
Our local volunteer who has walked the Loch Garten butterfly transect for the last few years warned me that he would not be able to carry on with the survey due to pressure of other work. With no obvious replacement from within the reserve team I was drafted back to continue a project I started up way back in the late 1970s, collecting annual butterfly abundance information, for ITE (as it was) at Monks Wood. The Loch Garten transec
t comprises a mix of farmland, roadside verge and moorland, and takes about an hour to walk. It’s a fair old commitment (hence the lack of takers!) in that the transect has to be walked weekly, from the first week of April through to the last week of September! And only when the sun shines! Normally I would paste a web link here for you but the http://www.ukbms.org/sites website is down currently, but do try it later and you can see the results from Loch Garten and all the other sites over the years. So far, small tortoiseshell, green-veined white, orange tip and green hairstreak (right) have been recorded, it will be interesting to see if dingy skipper can be re-located after an absence of many years. Watch this space.
My brother John made a flying visit (2 nights and 1 full day) but during his short stay he managed to leave what could be quite an impressive mark.
John is famous in the family for finding things in/on mole hills! His best find to date has been a Queen Anne sixpence from 1790. So, on his one day outing he did an Abernethy round trip, visiting one or two old croft sites en route. Having lunch at one site (right) he was tempted to check out the local mole hills and found, what appears to be, a piece of flint (left), along with a bit of clay pipe and several bits of pottery. It just happens that I have been working on the archaeology of the Abernethy reserve and the words “flint find” had stuck in my head, so I checked these out. Close to John’s find were the Clachaig flint find and close to Forest Lodge, the Lynmagilbert flint find 
(http://her.highland.gov.uk/ ENTER site and type MHG4611 in Record ID you can view the Clachaig record and MNG4619 the Lynmagilber record). Both of these records date from 1868. Last week I tried my luck and visited the Lynmagilbert site, found a few molehills and, entering my destructive mode, kicked them over. A bit of blue pottery, and nothing else. Much of this area is alluvial, sandy, river deposit, and the area I visited didn’t look like it would be producing anything too interesting. I will be visiting the Highland Archaeologist next week, and John’s find will be going with me, so I will need to report back via the next diary.
From what you have read so far everything would appear to be fine with the old hip – well, more or less. A big test would be the second round of black grouse lek counts on 8 May, an early morning half hour hike to my lek counting spot. These co-ordinated counts of all the reserve leks are undertaken twice each spring (mid-April and early May) to give a reasonable picture of what is happening to the black grouse population on the reserve. As count day approached we looked like we were short of counters so Michael our chalet guest was roped in to assist. A quick outing the night before showed him where he was going and where to lo
ok and at 4am the next morning we left Firwood firstly to drop Michael off where he was due to count and than for me to drive on to where I could walk to my counting location. I got there, the hip was fine but there seemed to be a major problem – no black grouse! Overnight there had been a fall of snow (right) and I did wonder whether the birds had spotted me against the pale background as I made my way in to the counting spot. Half an hour later and still no birds, so not a problem linked to me, and I began to wonder if someone was camping or photographing the site but hidden in the junipers. A heavy snow shower passed through the site and at 6.15am I found out why there were no birds on the lek site. As I scanned the site looking for signs of any birds in the bushes or heather, a large brown bird homed in to view, sporting large white flashes on wings and tail. Sea eagle? No, just an immature golden eagle which had been perched up near by and the obvious reason why the birds had stayed well away from the lek. Momentarily it perched in one of the trees close to the lek and then floated lazily off over the forest. Briefly a single male black grouse ventured on to the lekking arena but wasn’t happy and soon disappeared. At 7am it was time for me to disappear, bacon butties beckoned as the count figures were compiled back at Forest Lodge at 7.30, and for the first time in 20 years of counting I had drawn a complete blank. The lek was re-visited the next day and, without the presence of Aquila chrysaetos, a full compliment of birds were present. A morning to remember, and the hip survived.
Despite the snow and a few showers of rain, we are lacking real rain and the forest is very dry.
Along the forest tracks yours truly has been in action trying to save frog spawn and tadpoles as the pools started to dry up. In many cases I was just too late but in others hopefully a few were saved. It has been dry but quite cold with night time temperatures regularly below freezing, -3 degrees C being one of the recent lows. On one chilly Sunday Laura was over visiting and we made our way to Jack Drakes nursery to see the plants as well as purchasing a few large slices of cake to take home for lunch. In between the showers the sun came out and it was quite warm, so much so that an occaisional butterfly appeared and there were lots of wee flies and a few bees round mountain willow catkins (Salix lapponic
a hybrid). I just happened to have a tube in my pocket and collected one of the small bees for Murdo to identify. At the same time a large, bee-like insect appeared (above left) on the scene, a robber fly was my first instinct, but the fly looked just a little smaller. There were two of them and mating took place. The action of the fly was to “attack” the other small bees and hoverflies on the willow. A second tube appeared, and the fly was sent to Murdo. The small bee was nothing unusual Andrena haemorrhoa, but the “robber” fly turned out to be a hoverfly and initially caused a bit of excitement because it might be Criorhina rannunculi, a fly that is very rare this far north (right). A couple of days later and the fly was confirmed as Criohina, and, because there are so few current records for this area, the specimen was sent to the National Museums of Scotland for their collection! So I now have a beetle in the British Museum and a fly in the Scottish!
That’s it for another diary, enjoy the read.
Best wishes
Stewart & Janet
May. The highlight for many locally have been the late staying waxwings with a gang of up to 20 feeding in juniper bushes and in Tulloch on flowers of Norway maple. I have managed to bump into groups of these birds in various areas of the forest from right out on the moorland edge in April through to the last ones popping up by Firwood on 1st May as if waving goodbye for another season. The hope of hearing a bird singing locally hasn’t materialised – we will just have to wait for another season to see if a pair of these remarkable birds stay on to breed.The 1st April saw the start of the second breeding season for the BTO Atlas and, following an appeal from Hugh, the local Atlas organiser for help in ensuring the minimum level of survey in 10 kilometre square NJ01, I offered to take on 5 standard recording “tetrads” (2x2 km squares on the OS maps as detailed below.) locally. The difficulty in this part of the world with atlas surveying is timing the first of the two required visits late enough in the first April-May recording period, to ensure that most of the summer migrants have arrived, and allowing a bit of time before the second round of visits start in June. Late into the first week of May I decided to go for it, but failed to find any spotted flycatchers, and with chilly nights even swallows and house martins were low in numbers. I will just have to hope these are all picked up in adequate
numbers on the second visit in a couple of weeks time. There is nothing better than visiting places you rarely go to, testing yourself out in trying to record all the birds that you know should be there. So far, nothing too unusual has turned up, but following the heavy snow and low temperatures of February, many of the regular residents seem to be in much lower numbers, with wrens becoming a rarity in some areas. It’s difficult to concentrate though when views like this pop up in one of your tetrads.Tetrads are 2km × 2km squares and labelled A to Z within each 10-km square. Recording visits do not aim to produce a complete species list for the tetrad, but a sample of what one can find during a pair of visits in winter and/or summer. We aim to cumulatively cover at least 8 tetrads in every 10-km square in Britain and Ireland during winter and summer. You can take on one or as many tetrads as you wish. This is a great opportunity to visit those hidden corners of the landscape and find new birds. (From BTO Atlas website http://www.bto.org/birdatlas/index.htm ).
The first visit of another survey was also completed with my visit to
the Breeding Bird Square north of Grantown on Spey. It was misty as I left the house at 5.30am but knowing part of my site is a hill rising to nearly 500 metres I didn’t think there would be a problem. Wrong! Thankfully, a lot of the survey is done on bird sounds as well as sightings, so all worked out okay, and just after the sheep was surprised and photographed, a light breeze got up and the mist started to lift. Using my GPS gadget ensured I stayed on roughly the right line.I was also involved in something new but a little frightening – taking wedding photographs! The photographer booked to take the pictures at Ruth’s sister in law’s wedding gave back word at short notice, and I was asked if I could help. Batteries charged, lenses cleaned, practice with the highly technical flash unit, and I was off to Inverness – arriving fully two hours before the event!
Being early though did allow time for thinking out photo locations (left) and opportunities, which saved panicking later in the day. My Dad took lots of wedding photos and many a night I would go to bed in a room with a strange glow and to the tap, tap of the plastic tongs pushing the photo paper round in the tray of developer liquid. From camera lens, to roll of film, to roll of film being developed in little round tank and the film image then being transferred to paper under the glow of the orange light, the resultant photo then being hung up to drip dry. What a brave man, no second chance, and no instant image on the back of the camera to check that everything looks just about right. I’ll tell you about the set of cow’s horns appearing out of the brides head in some future diary, and how my dad managed to “manipulate” them away.Our local volunteer who has walked the Loch Garten butterfly transect for the last few years warned me that he would not be able to carry on with the survey due to pressure of other work. With no obvious replacement from within the reserve team I was drafted back to continue a project I started up way back in the late 1970s, collecting annual butterfly abundance information, for ITE (as it was) at Monks Wood. The Loch Garten transec
t comprises a mix of farmland, roadside verge and moorland, and takes about an hour to walk. It’s a fair old commitment (hence the lack of takers!) in that the transect has to be walked weekly, from the first week of April through to the last week of September! And only when the sun shines! Normally I would paste a web link here for you but the http://www.ukbms.org/sites website is down currently, but do try it later and you can see the results from Loch Garten and all the other sites over the years. So far, small tortoiseshell, green-veined white, orange tip and green hairstreak (right) have been recorded, it will be interesting to see if dingy skipper can be re-located after an absence of many years. Watch this space.My brother John made a flying visit (2 nights and 1 full day) but during his short stay he managed to leave what could be quite an impressive mark.
John is famous in the family for finding things in/on mole hills! His best find to date has been a Queen Anne sixpence from 1790. So, on his one day outing he did an Abernethy round trip, visiting one or two old croft sites en route. Having lunch at one site (right) he was tempted to check out the local mole hills and found, what appears to be, a piece of flint (left), along with a bit of clay pipe and several bits of pottery. It just happens that I have been working on the archaeology of the Abernethy reserve and the words “flint find” had stuck in my head, so I checked these out. Close to John’s find were the Clachaig flint find and close to Forest Lodge, the Lynmagilbert flint find 
(http://her.highland.gov.uk/ ENTER site and type MHG4611 in Record ID you can view the Clachaig record and MNG4619 the Lynmagilber record). Both of these records date from 1868. Last week I tried my luck and visited the Lynmagilbert site, found a few molehills and, entering my destructive mode, kicked them over. A bit of blue pottery, and nothing else. Much of this area is alluvial, sandy, river deposit, and the area I visited didn’t look like it would be producing anything too interesting. I will be visiting the Highland Archaeologist next week, and John’s find will be going with me, so I will need to report back via the next diary.From what you have read so far everything would appear to be fine with the old hip – well, more or less. A big test would be the second round of black grouse lek counts on 8 May, an early morning half hour hike to my lek counting spot. These co-ordinated counts of all the reserve leks are undertaken twice each spring (mid-April and early May) to give a reasonable picture of what is happening to the black grouse population on the reserve. As count day approached we looked like we were short of counters so Michael our chalet guest was roped in to assist. A quick outing the night before showed him where he was going and where to lo
ok and at 4am the next morning we left Firwood firstly to drop Michael off where he was due to count and than for me to drive on to where I could walk to my counting location. I got there, the hip was fine but there seemed to be a major problem – no black grouse! Overnight there had been a fall of snow (right) and I did wonder whether the birds had spotted me against the pale background as I made my way in to the counting spot. Half an hour later and still no birds, so not a problem linked to me, and I began to wonder if someone was camping or photographing the site but hidden in the junipers. A heavy snow shower passed through the site and at 6.15am I found out why there were no birds on the lek site. As I scanned the site looking for signs of any birds in the bushes or heather, a large brown bird homed in to view, sporting large white flashes on wings and tail. Sea eagle? No, just an immature golden eagle which had been perched up near by and the obvious reason why the birds had stayed well away from the lek. Momentarily it perched in one of the trees close to the lek and then floated lazily off over the forest. Briefly a single male black grouse ventured on to the lekking arena but wasn’t happy and soon disappeared. At 7am it was time for me to disappear, bacon butties beckoned as the count figures were compiled back at Forest Lodge at 7.30, and for the first time in 20 years of counting I had drawn a complete blank. The lek was re-visited the next day and, without the presence of Aquila chrysaetos, a full compliment of birds were present. A morning to remember, and the hip survived.Despite the snow and a few showers of rain, we are lacking real rain and the forest is very dry.
Along the forest tracks yours truly has been in action trying to save frog spawn and tadpoles as the pools started to dry up. In many cases I was just too late but in others hopefully a few were saved. It has been dry but quite cold with night time temperatures regularly below freezing, -3 degrees C being one of the recent lows. On one chilly Sunday Laura was over visiting and we made our way to Jack Drakes nursery to see the plants as well as purchasing a few large slices of cake to take home for lunch. In between the showers the sun came out and it was quite warm, so much so that an occaisional butterfly appeared and there were lots of wee flies and a few bees round mountain willow catkins (Salix lapponic
a hybrid). I just happened to have a tube in my pocket and collected one of the small bees for Murdo to identify. At the same time a large, bee-like insect appeared (above left) on the scene, a robber fly was my first instinct, but the fly looked just a little smaller. There were two of them and mating took place. The action of the fly was to “attack” the other small bees and hoverflies on the willow. A second tube appeared, and the fly was sent to Murdo. The small bee was nothing unusual Andrena haemorrhoa, but the “robber” fly turned out to be a hoverfly and initially caused a bit of excitement because it might be Criorhina rannunculi, a fly that is very rare this far north (right). A couple of days later and the fly was confirmed as Criohina, and, because there are so few current records for this area, the specimen was sent to the National Museums of Scotland for their collection! So I now have a beetle in the British Museum and a fly in the Scottish!That’s it for another diary, enjoy the read.
Best wishes
Stewart & Janet
Sunset and lone pines Abernethy Forest
All photos © Stewart Taylor
