Snowed under by silks and spangles but topped by a knopper

A year ago, Janet made a brilliant decision – to attend the Haddo House Christmas craft fair and not the one at Brodie Castle. All summer long Janet was very busy making her tweed crafts for sale at the Loch an Eilean visitor centre, but went into panic mode from mid-summer making items for the two day fair at Haddo House in Aberdeenshire in early November. “How many of these do you think I should make, and what about these?” Week by week storage boxes were filled with an amazing array of goods all made from Harris tweed bought on the islands or Scottish tweed from a local supplier in Elgin. Never having attended a craft fair as big as the Haddo House event left Janet guessing a little as to what items would sell and for those that did, how many to make. Eventually, November arrived, and we set off with a car loaded to the gunnels to Aberdeenshire. Day one was setting up and days two and three selling to the hundreds of visitors who had paid their entry fees to the National Trust for Scotland who were running the fair. The Trust also have responsibility for the “big hoose” (right) and grounds. Janet was helped throughout by daughter Laura who lives nearby. The two days of visitors and sales were blessed with frosty but glorious weather, no doubt a big help in tempting folk out to visit the event. After two very busy days we managed to get everything packed away into the wee Fiesta before heading back to Laura’s for a welcome cup of tea and glass of wine.

Haddo House is set in a large area of mature policy woodland and farmland an ideal area for me to do a bit of exploring, so once the stall was up and running, I was free to have a wander. Of interest on the first day were some of the areas of mature oak woodland, with interesting stands of old beech and Norway spruce. As we were setting up the stall it sounded as though a war had started outside as the estate must have organised a pheasant shoot ahead of the arrival of the visitors at 10am, so I just hoped it would be safe to be wandering off the tracks. As I crossed the car park to pick up my gear a dead pheasant lying in the middle of the parking area showed the guns had passed quite close by! A hint of the BBC Autumn Watch programme was also encountered on the road under the beech trees, chaffinches and bramblings were feeding on the beech nuts/mast which had fallen, the nuts having been conveniently opened by passing car tyres. The reason for heading for the oak trees was linked to a bit of work I had been doing back in Strathspey – looking for various species of galls growing on leaves and twigs. The Highland Biological Recording Group (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Frameset.html ) had listed 3 oak leaf galls as their “species of the month” something for members to look for to add to our knowledge of their distribution in Highland Region. All of the galls I was looking for are the result of an “attack” on the tree by a group of small wasps, the gall being the end development for the wasp larva to grow in. The wasp attacks are quite complex, some occur in the spring and it is their offspring that create the galls that we see later in the year see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall_wasp for more information, but for the most detailed information see http://hedgerowmobile.com/Cynipoidea.html . At Haddo the easiest galls to look for were the spangle gall (Neuroterus quercusbaccarum above right) on the underside of fallen leaves and these were found quite quickly, along with the less common silk-button gall (Neuroterus numismalis above left). On the ground I also found several round galls which initially I thought, as most people do, were oak apples. However, these turned out to be oak marble galls (Andricus kollari). A real rarity for this part of the world would be finding the knopper gall (Andricus quercuscalicis) which, as it grows, covers the acorn. The HBRG website says “there are few if any records this far north” which seemed to be a bit of a challenge, though this gall had been found in Moray in September 2010. Raking about in the leaves on the ground just a few acorns were to be seen, perhaps this was a bit early as most of the leaves and possibly acorns, were still on the tree. However, persistence paid off and there, covering the acorn and part of the acorn cup was a strange green “bonnet” looking growth – a knopper gall (group of 3 right), new to Aberdeenshire!

On the second sale day I was tempted by the distant view of Mither Tap O’Bennachie (left), the highest point in rural Aberdeen-shire (518m or 1700’ high), its distinctive shape being visible from miles around. It was a hill I saw a lot of as a youngster whilst holidaying with my parents at my granny’s house at Drumoak by the River Dee. So, with Janet and Laura delivered to Haddo, I headed for the hills. The starting point was the Forestry Commission car park by their visitor centre, following the path to Mither Tap, one of three hills which collectively make up the Bennachie range. With the sun shining, and despite the frosty day, there were lots of folk making their way up the hill, the steady climb taking me about 45 minutes to reach the Iron Age fort at its summit (right). On one side, the sea at Aberdeen was visible whilst in the distance in the other direction the similar distinctive shape of Benn Rinnes at Dufftown was prominent, and beyond that the Cairngorms. Brilliant. Time for a few photos from the frozen summit (left) before heading back down to the car park keeping an eye on the clock for the end of the craft fair at Haddo. For a few interesting “tales” about Bennachie see
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3846/bennachie.htmluarian.com/site/3846/bennachie.html . Back at the car by 1pm, I had just time to pop in to see Uncle Bill at Pitcaple. Darkness was falling as I got back to Haddo and with just an hour to go before the end of the event, there were still masses of folk visiting the stalls and milling around the house grounds. Tired but smiling faces at the stall indicated that the day had been a success, so a great weekend all round. And the Brodie Castle event a few weeks later? If Janet had chosen this craft fair we wouldn’t have been able to get there due to the snow!

Back in Strathspey the oak gall search continued, and the more I looked the more I found. In the general Aviemore to Grantown on Spey area there aren’t really many oak woods, only 3 good stands and a few scattered ancient trees, so there weren’t many searches to undertake. However, rooting about amongst the fallen leaves means that you don’t keep up the search for more than a few hours, so usually more than one visit was needed to carry out a reasonable search. In all the woods visited the knopper gall was found, all new to Highland Region! It even turned up under the 3 lone oaks on Abernethy. In an oak wood near Aviemore a 6mm diameter red gall (right) turned out to be the cherry gall (Cnips quercusfolii) but a much larger (25mm) slightly spongy gall had me really puzzled, more so when I cut it open to find there was not 1 larva but many (right). Searching the internet for clues I came across a picture of something called the artichoke gall (Andricus fecundator), looking very like something I had picked up during the day but rejected as being a gall because of its shape – I would have to return. Eventually I found the name of the larger gall – the genuine oak apple (Biorhiza pallida), a first for inland Highland showing just how under-recorded oak galls and galls in general are. But could I re-find the discarded artichoke gall? I needn’t have worried, as I made my way back into the wood there were two of them growing proudly on a low oak branch. It also turned up in all the oak woods visited locally. Whilst in the Abernethy oaks I found what looked like a drowned eyed ladybird, on a waterlogged oak leaf, which I popped into a tube to photograph once it had dried out a little. On opening the tube 15 minutes later out it walked as large as life and was released into some dry oak leaves where hopefully it would survive the winter.

I was honoured to have an outing with a group of expert bryologists early in November. Andy at Forest Lodge had asked if I would like to accompany the group as they visited one of the forest bogs to see one of the Country’s rarest sphagnum mosses at a site Andy had found a few years earlier. The aim of the visit was to see and photograph the moss and collect, under licence (because it is so rare) a sample for retention in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and a further sample to be sent for DNA analysis. Personally I have never really got to grips with sphagnum mosses so I would be totally in everyone else’s hands if I was to see the moss, but, having seen it, it might be possible to look for it when visiting other suitable bogs. The moss was Sphagnum balticum and it didn’t take the group long to find tiny cushions growing amongst the other sphagnum mosses at the site. Thank goodness there was help to hand; I would never have found the moss on my own. Although it is a tiny moss (right), it has a habit of growing in the top-most layer of the other sphagna, as though trying to keep itself just above the actual bog water surface. It often grows with another sphagnum moss which looks very similar – Sphagnum fallax, posing real problems for a beginner like myself. The bog we visited has a good and healthy population and, despite being next to a once occupied croft, no one has ever attempted to drain or lower the level of the water in the bog. A wonderful site particularly when compared to the hundreds of hectares of forest bog that I tried to “repair” following inherited forestry draining operations during my time working at Abernethy.

Whilst searching the various lichen identification website one night I came across an old record of a lichen, normally associated with the sand dunes of the Findhorn coast, rather than the woodland dominated habitats of Tulloch and Abernethy. The lichen is the stunningly green Peltigera malacea (left) with many locations near Findhorn Bay and Culbin Forest, but very few recent inland sites. I recognised the approximate location of the Tulloch site so set off one morning to have a look. The only information about the location was “under a Scots pine on a slope”, but, knowing it was usually associated with sand, the possible sites would be limited. Two hours of searching and I didn’t think I had found it, something similar turned out to be Peltigera hymenina. I would need to go and see the lichen for real at the coast, with Culbin Forest possibly the best option. With camera bag and tripod loaded on my back, I set off from the car park but within 20 minutes wished that I had stopped long enough on the car park to grab one of the Forestry Commission trail leaflets. There seemed to be tracks going everywhere but thankfully, all the main junctions had numbered posts to aid navigation, so I aimed in roughly the right direction but listed the junction numbers in my notebook as I walked. Eventually I reached the general area where the lichen had been recorded about 3 years ago, so time to remove the camera bag and search a little more carefully. I noticed that the general track habitat had changed, the vegetated mainly pure sand, had given way to sand with lots of small pebbles though still with a surrounding woodland of long-needled pines. Confusion again to my untrained eye with Peltigera hymenina but I needn’t have worried because in amongst the sparse heather was the brighter green thallus (leafy bits) of Peltigera malacea – in quantity. Phew! Just time for lots of photos before heading back towards the car. On the way I noticed the remains of several species of tooth fungi, and, in some areas, clumps of serrated wintergreen (Orthilia secunda). Somewhere nearby I knew that there would be a few plants of one flowered wintergreen (Moneses uniflora) so how appropriate it was to come across a memorial to THE lady of Culbin, the great botanist Mary McCallum Webster http://www.moray.gov.uk/museums/botanical/webster.html , who spent many hours in the forest recording the plants growing there. Now I knew what I was looking for I returned to Tulloch and started a systematic search of the sandy, pebbly area visited a few days earlier. After about half an hour I was rewarded by finding a tiny patch of a lichen with a bright green thallus – it was still here and this was the first time it had been re-found since first being recorded here 12 years ago. This may still be the only known inland site for this lichen – wicked! Several similar bits of potentially suitable habitat have been checked locally but as yet, no new sites have been found.

I didn’t really want to mention the next bit, but, after a break of just 8 months, it’s back. Snow, snow and more snow, the first arrival was on the 24 November, and by the 30th, 24 inches had fallen and with temperatures dropping to -12 degrees C, it wasn’t going anywhere fast. A talk in Strathpeffer had to be cancelled, and the car didn’t leave the house for 4 days, and then it was to undertake a hairy run to Grantown for bird food. Oh well, it has been useful to try and catch up with transferring all my records from my notebook to MapMate, and Janet has been able to stock up on tweed crafts for the next fair in early December.

Stay warm & enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet

Grandad Lightyear by Finlay!

Ryvoan Pass sunset

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Snowed under by silks and spangles but topped by a knopper

A year ago, Janet made a brilliant decision – to attend the Haddo House Christmas craft fair and not the one at Brodie Castle. All summer long Janet was very busy making her tweed crafts for sale at the Loch an Eilean visitor centre, but went into panic mode from mid-summer making items for the two day fair at Haddo House in Aberdeenshire in early November. “How many of these do you think I should make, and what about these?” Week by week storage boxes were filled with an amazing array of goods all made from Harris tweed bought on the islands or Scottish tweed from a local supplier in Elgin. Never having attended a craft fair as big as the Haddo House event left Janet guessing a little as to what items would sell and for those that did, how many to make. Eventually, November arrived, and we set off with a car loaded to the gunnels to Aberdeenshire. Day one was setting up and days two and three selling to the hundreds of visitors who had paid their entry fees to the National Trust for Scotland who were running the fair. The Trust also have responsibility for the “big hoose” and grounds. Janet was helped throughout by daughter Laura who lives nearby. The two days of visitors and sales were blessed with frosty but glorious weather, no doubt a big help in tempting folk out to visit the event. After two very busy days we managed to get everything packed away into the wee Fiesta before heading back to Laura’s for a welcome cup of tea and glass of wine.

Haddo House is set in a large area of mature policy woodland and farmland an ideal area for me to do a bit of exploring, so once the stall was up and running, I was free to have a wander. Of interest on the first day were some of the areas of mature oak woodland, with interesting stands of old beech and Norway spruce. As we were setting up the stall it sounded as though a war had started outside as the estate must have organised a pheasant shoot ahead of the arrival of the visitors at 10am, so I just hoped it would be safe to be wandering off the tracks. As I crossed the car park to pick up my gear a dead pheasant lying in the middle of the parking area showed the guns had passed quite close by! A hint of the BBC Autumn Watch programme was also encountered on the road under the beech trees, chaffinches and bramblings were feeding on the beech nuts/mast which had fallen, the nuts having been conveniently opened by passing car tyres. The reason for heading for the oak trees was linked to a bit of work I had been doing back in Strathspey – looking for various species of galls growing on leaves and twigs. The Highland Biological Recording Group (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Frameset.html ) had listed 3 oak leaf galls as their “species of the month” something for members to look for to add to our knowledge of their distribution in Highland Region. All of the galls I was looking for are the result of an “attack” on the tree by a group of small wasps, the gall being the end development for the wasp larva to grow in. The wasp attacks are quite complex, some occur in the spring and it is their offspring that create the galls that we see later in the year see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall_wasp for more information, but for the most detailed information see http://hedgerowmobile.com/Cynipoidea.html . At Haddo the easiest galls to look for were the spangle gall (Neuroterus quercusbaccarum) on the underside of fallen leaves and these were found quite quickly, along with the less common silk-button gall (Neuroterus numismalis). On the ground I also found several round galls which initially I thought, as most people do, were oak apples. However, these turned out to be oak marble galls (Andricus kollari). A real rarity for this part of the world would be finding the knopper gall (Andricus quercuscalicis) which, as it grows, covers the acorn. The HBRG website says “there are few if any records this far north” which seemed to be a bit of a challenge, though this gall had been found in Moray in September 2010. Raking about in the leaves on the ground just a few acorns were to be seen, perhaps this was a bit early as most of the leaves and possibly acorns, were still on the tree. However, persistence paid off and there, covering the acorn and part of the acorn cup was a strange green “bonnet” looking growth – a knopper gall, new to Aberdeenshire!

On the second sale day I was tempted by the distant view of Mither Tap O’Bennachie, the highest point in rural Aberdeen-shire (518m or 1700’ high), its distinctive shape being visible from miles around. It was a hill I saw a lot of as a youngster whilst holidaying with my parents at my granny’s house at Drumoak by the River Dee. So, with Janet and Laura delivered to Haddo, I headed for the hills. The starting point was the Forestry Commission car park by their visitor centre, following the path to Mither Tap, one of three hills which collectively make up the Bennachie range. With the sun shining, and despite the frosty day, there were lots of folk making their way up the hill, the steady climb taking me about 45 minutes to reach the Iron Age fort at its summit. On one side, the sea at Aberdeen was visible whilst in the distance in the other direction the similar distinctive shape of Benn Rinnes at Dufftown was prominent, and beyond that the Cairngorms. Brilliant. Time for a few photos from the frozen summit before heading back down to the car park keeping an eye on the clock for the end of the craft fair at Haddo. For a few interesting “tales” about Bennachie see
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3846/bennachie.html . Back at the car by 1pm, I had just time to pop in to see Uncle Bill at Pitcaple. Darkness was falling as I got back to Haddo and with just an hour to go before the end of the event, there were still masses of folk visiting the stalls and milling around the house grounds. Tired but smiling faces at the stall indicated that the day had been a success, so a great weekend all round. And the Brodie Castle event a few weeks later? If Janet had chosen this craft fair we wouldn’t have been able to get there due to the snow!

Back in Strathspey the oak gall search continued, and the more I looked the more I found. In the general Aviemore to Grantown on Spey area there aren’t really many oak woods, only 3 good stands and a few scattered ancient trees, so there weren’t many searches to undertake. However, rooting about amongst the fallen leaves means that you don’t keep up the search for more than a few hours, so usually more than one visit was needed to carry out a reasonable search. In all the woods visited the knopper gall was found, all new to Highland Region! It even turned up under the 3 lone oaks on Abernethy. In an oak wood near Aviemore a 10mm diameter red gall turned out to be the cherry gall (Cnips quercusfolii) but a much larger (25mm) slightly spongy gall had me really puzzled, more so when I cut it open to find there was not 1 larva but many. Searching the internet for clues I came across a picture of something called the artichoke gall (Andricus fecundator), looking very like something I had picked up during the day but rejected as being a gall because of its shape – I would have to return. Eventually I found the name of the larger gall – the genuine oak apple (Biorhiza pallida), a first for inland Highland showing just how under-recorded oak galls and galls in general are. But could I re-find the discarded artichoke gall? I needn’t have worried, as I made my way back into the wood there were two of them growing proudly on a low oak branch. It also turned up in all the oak woods visited locally. Whilst in the Abernethy oaks I found what looked like a drowned eyed ladybird, on a waterlogged oak leaf, which I popped into a tube to photograph once it had dried out a little. On opening the tube 15 minutes later out it walked as large as life and was released into some dry oak leaves where hopefully it would survive the winter.

I was honoured to have an outing with a group of expert bryologists early in November. Andy at Forest Lodge had asked if I would like to accompany the group as they visited one of the forest bogs to see one of the Country’s rarest sphagnum mosses at a site Andy had found a few years earlier. The aim of the visit was to see and photograph the moss and collect, under licence (because it is so rare) a sample for retention in the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and a further sample to be sent for DNA analysis. Personally I have never really got to grips with sphagnum mosses so I would be totally in everyone else’s hands if I was to see the moss, but, having seen it, it might be possible to look for it when visiting other suitable bogs. The moss was Sphagnum balticum and it didn’t take the group long to find tiny cushions growing amongst the other sphagnum mosses at the site. Thank goodness there was help to hand; I would never have found the moss on my own. Although it is a tiny moss, it has a habit of growing in the top-most layer of the other sphagna, as though trying to keep itself just above the actual bog water surface. It often grows with another sphagnum moss which looks very similar – Sphagnum fallax, posing real problems for a beginner like myself. The bog we visited has a good and healthy population and, despite being next to a once occupied croft, no one has ever attempted to drain or lower the level of the water in the bog. A wonderful site particularly when compared to the hundreds of hectares of forest bog that I tried to “repair” following inherited forestry draining operations during my time working at Abernethy.

Whilst searching the various lichen identification website one night I came across an old record of a lichen, normally associated with the sand dunes of the Findhorn coast, rather than the woodland dominated habitats of Tulloch and Abernethy. The lichen is the stunningly green Peltigera malacea with many locations near Findhorn Bay and Culbin Forest, but very few recent inland sites. I recognised the approximate location of the Tulloch site so set off one morning to have a look. The only information about the location was “under a Scots pine on a slope”, but, knowing it was usually associated with sand, the possible sites would be limited. Two hours of searching and I didn’t think I had found it, something similar turned out to be Peltigera hymenina. I would need to go and see the lichen for real at the coast, with Culbin Forest possibly the best option. With camera bag and tripod loaded on my back, I set off from the car park but within 20 minutes wished that I had stopped long enough on the car park to grab one of the Forestry Commission trail leaflets. There seemed to be tracks going everywhere but thankfully, all the main junctions had numbered posts to aid navigation, so I aimed in roughly the right direction but listed the junction numbers in my notebook as I walked. Eventually I reached the general area where the lichen had been recorded about 3 years ago, so time to remove the camera bag and search a little more carefully. I noticed that the general track habitat had changed, the vegetated mainly pure sand, had given way to sand with lots of small pebbles though still with a surrounding woodland of long-needled pines. Confusion again to my untrained eye with Peltigera hymenina but I needn’t have worried because in amongst the sparse heather was the brighter green thallus (leafy bits) of Peltigera malacea – in quantity. Phew! Just time for lots of photos before heading back towards the car. On the way I noticed the remains of several species of tooth fungi, and, in some areas, clumps of serrated wintergreen (Orthilia secunda). Somewhere nearby I knew that there would be a few plants of one flowered wintergreen (Moneses uniflora) so how appropriate it was to come across a memorial to THE lady of Culbin, the great botanist Mary McCallum Webster http://www.moray.gov.uk/museums/botanical/webster.html , who spent many hours in the forest recording the plants growing there. Now I knew what I was looking for I returned to Tulloch and started a systematic search of the sandy, pebbly area visited a few days earlier. After about half an hour I was rewarded by finding a tiny patch of a lichen with a bright green thallus – it was still here and this was the first time it had been re-found since first being recorded here 12 years ago. This may still be the only known inland site for this lichen – wicked! Several similar bits of potentially suitable habitat have been checked locally but as yet, no new sites have been found.

I didn’t really want to mention the next bit, but, after a break of just 8 months, it’s back. Snow, snow and more snow, the first arrival was on the 24 November, and by the 30th, 24 inches had fallen and with temperatures dropping to -120C, it wasn’t going anywhere fast. A talk in Strathpeffer had to be cancelled, and the car didn’t leave the house for 4 days, and then it was to undertake a hairy run to Grantown for bird food. Oh well, it has been useful to try and catch up with transferring all my records from my notebook to MapMate, and Janet has been able to stock up on tweed crafts for the next fair in early December.

Stay warm & enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet




Sunset from Ryvoan theass



Grandad Lightyear!



All photos © Stewart Taylor

Waxcaps & waxwings

As I start last months diary there are at least 10 blackbirds and 7 yellowhammers in the garden this morning and there are pine marten tracks – IN THE SNOW. It’s back, with just a six month break we are once again clearing snow. Two foot deep and counting! I digress.

In the last diary there wasn’t room for one item of great significance, a rare fly came back to Abernethy. It was not re-found but, as part of the pinewood hoverfly (Blera fallax) re-introduction programme, about 50 larvae were released, into prepared, man made “rot holes” close to where the last adult fly was seen over 20 years ago. This project has appeared several times in earlier diaries, the last time was in July 2009 when Ellen Rotheray was shown right at the start of the project, when the first captive larvae were just emerging as adult hoverflies in the hope that they would breed and create more captive larvae for release. Ellen was successful and later in 2009, several larvae were released into prepared rot holes in Scots pine stumps where woodland had been recently felled. This year it was the turn of captive bred larvae to be released at Abernethy and, having had a long involvement in all things Blera at Abernethy over the last decade, I was invited along to help. In preparation staff at Abernethy had been out with their chainsaws preparing artificial breeding holes in fresh Scots pine stumps and trial slots in felled logs. All the stump holes had been filled with Scots pine chips and all holes and slots were then filled with water. Everything was ready for Ellen’s arrival with her precious jar of hoverfly larvae (left). About 50 larvae were introduced to the breeding holes and all that we can do now is await their development and hope that Ellen manages to see adult flies or new larvae in the breeding holes next summer. Fingers crossed. To see a brief update on the project go to
http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlands-nature/species-action-framework/species-action-list/hoverfly/update/tecting-scotlands-nature/species-action-framework/species-action-list/hoverfly/update/ and for Ellen’s recent presentation click on “see a video of the pine hoverfly talk”.

The whole of October was spent cat-sitting, after daughter Ruth’s cat had a major accident, probably with a car. The initial vet diagnosis was that all the toes on Monty’s left back leg were broken and that if the leg was placed in plaster the toes might start to mend. With limited room at Ruth’s home and with two young children and a dog to look after, we thought Firwood would be a better home until the “healing” period was over. After the first vets visit Monty returned with his leg in plaster (left) and, after a couple of days, was tapping his way around the house on three good legs and a fourth regularly held out behind but regularly clonking on the wood and tile floors. Despite the obvious pain and plaster-cast he seemed to be getting on fine, though being accurate with the litter tray took a couple of days to master! A week later the cast was removed and everything checked by the vet and a new cast applied. This time Monty didn’t seem too happy but a return to the vet the following day assured us that all was as it should be. Through the next week however, Monty seemed to be in pain and started to spend more time sleeping than tapping his way around the house and on the next vet visit at the end of the week Ruth and Janet were given the news they were prepared for but dreading, there was no circulation in his foot and that an amputation would be necessary. In situations like this vets don’t just remove the foot, they recommend the whole leg is amputated, and so, the following day, Monty returned for the operation. Apart from the shock of initially seeing a three legged cat with a large area of shaved hair and a set of stitches looking a bit like the back end of a Christmas chicken (right), Monty seemed reasonably happy helped no doubt by a daily dose of painkiller. Within a few days he had mastered the art of hopping around the house and by the time the stitches were removed after ten days, he was getting quite mobile and desperate to get outside. Another week and Janet found a great way of exercising Monty by trying to race him to the top of the stairs and a few days later the door was opened and he made his first outing into the garden. Just three weeks after the operation Monty had regained his freedom and was disappearing for a couple of hours at a time, though the two of us were regularly hovering by the door wondering just where he had got to, particularly one evening when he hadn’t returned by midnight! A week later and Monty made us a gift of a young rabbit and the following week returned to his home patch. With his past history Monty has just six lives left, take care young cat.

A late red admiral was in the garden on 9th October, just a few days ahead of one of the most amazing TV events of recent times – the emergence from the ground of the Chilean miners which progressed so well that it now seems like part of a dream. Well done to all those involved. Not so good news though was the behaviour of our local MP the “red-headed rat” sorry, “ginger rodent” who swanned into Parliament by conning us to vote for him only to break nearly all the promises he made. The most devastating locally was at RAF Kinloss where staff were preparing to receive the first replacement Nimrod only to be told sorry, we don’t need them any more and oh, by the way, we are closing down the base. RAF Lossiemouth might follow. “But I’m fighting hard for faster broadband speeds in the Highlands” he boasts, but let’s not mention promises to students, pensioners and the schools sport partnership! I wasn’t quite so kind as to call him a ginger rodent when I emailed him! Perhaps the swift rise from Press Officer for the Cairngorms National Park, Tourist & Housing Authority to Chief Secretary, HM Treasury has something to do with it.

Sorry, a second digression. Through all of these events my main focus has been on the autumn flush of fungi with the first pipe club fungus as reported last year again popping up all over the birch & hazel woods. Perhaps last year I didn’t look closely enough or perhaps there weren’t many fruiting but in several of the birch and hazel woods visited during October its smaller relative, Macrotyphula juncea the slender club (right with bigger relative) has been found in great numbers. Poking around in the fallen leaves looking for this fungus has brought home to me how quickly nature works. In amongst the fallen leaves the first fungal webs were well established (left) the first stage in the conversion of the newly fallen leaves to humus to enrich the woodland soil for the next growing season. I have also been looking at fallen leaves in local hazel stands to see if I could find fungi growing on the fallen nuts. In Norway, a small fungus in the Mycena family has been found growing on hazel nuts but not so far in this country (see http://home.online.no/~araronse/Mycenakey/nucicola.htm ) so, nothing ventured nothing gained and my first visit was to a tiny patch of hazel wood on the RSPB Abernethy NNR. Quite quickly I started to find fallen nuts and, just occasionally, there was a fungus growing on them. Heart beating faster, something new to UK? Sadly, the fungus I was finding didn’t really have a stem and when I checked under the tiny cap, there weren’t any gills as such, so time to calm down. The fungus turned out to be a Discomycete, (a large and taxonomically difficult group of Ascomycetes in which the fleshy fruiting body is disk-like or cup-shaped) called Hymenoscyphus fructigenus, sometimes called the hazel nut fungus (right), and during an afternoons search I found about half a dozen nuts with fungi. Also growing on the buried twigs were a few fruiting bodies of jelly babies (Leotia lubrica) a fungus which really does look like its name! A few flowerless spikes of woodruff were also new to the site and a squawking jay was heard.

The field at the end of the Firwood road, recently threatened with lots of houses, was visited to see if there were any waxcaps, a group of fungi which if present in numbers, indicates a field of high conservation value, probably an ancient type grassland, with little past agricultural management (ploughing etc) and little use of fertilizers over the years. My visit found quite a few waxcaps probably 8-10 species including the blackening Hygrocybe conica (left) and the largest but less common Hygrocybe punicea (right) and worthy of a visit by a mycologist if possible. My timing couldn’t have been better. The local conservation group (http://www.bscg.org.uk/ ) had just managed to get a small grant together to allow a few potentially good waxcap fields in the local Highland area to be surveyed and this field was to be one of them; the surveyor being local expert mycologist Liz Holden. So I was able to tag along and point out a few of my locations to save time. The magical number of different waxcaps in a field to make it “important” is 12 but the mini-survey just missed this target by 1. However, this information is adding to the importance of the field with its good population of field gentians, moonwort ferns, and now waxcaps and should hopefully help if the field is threatened with development in the future. The field’s owners though will need to be watched, another field they own in Grantown, where a planning application was turned down because of its biological importance, was heavily fertilized last spring in an attempt to reduce its floristic interest, a real underhand act of vandalism. Sadly, these fields don’t have quite enough importance to receive any legal protection and slowly, one by one, they are being lost.

Nethybridge was to the fore when the now well publicised invasion of waxwings started back in October with the first birds being seen on 23rd. Whilst walking to the local shop I flushed a group of birds from one of the gardens and initially identified them as starlings. I did think at the time it was an odd place to see a small flock of starlings and it wasn’t until my visit to the shop again the following day, that I realised my mistake. The group of birds were again flushed from a small rowan tree but this time they called and were instantly identified by their tinkly bell calls as waxwings. Within 20 minutes our near neighbours and chalet guests were watching the rowan tree when the seven birds returned to feed, followed a short while later by another five birds. The flock eventually grew to thirty birds, and as the last of the rowan berries were eaten, they moved on to a cotoneaster hedge nearby. I nipped down to the tree early the following morning and was lucky enough to get a photo of the birds perched in a neighbouring cherry tree, the photo eventually finding its way into the local paper. A few days later and there were reports of up to a thousand birds from residents and birders in Inverness. In addition a great spotted woodpecker was drumming by the house on 31st and more jays were seen, occasionally in oak woods but also in the Abernethy pinewoods. A bird obviously on the increase locally.

The month ended with another good find locally. Mid-month I met up with a lady from Edinburgh who was the original finder of Hydnellum cumulatum, a tooth fungus which was new to the UK when found. I was interested to know exactly where it had been found and Mary was quite keen to see where I had found it and to see it again for the first time since her find in 2002. The visit went well and there were a good number of fruiting bodies at the site we visited. On our way back from the site Mary mentioned that an unusual fungus had been found recently in another ancient pinewood, and it was what is known as a resupinate fungus (Resupination generally means being upside-down, supine, facing upward) and that it had been found, as the description suggests, on the underside of fallen pine branches. The fungus, salmon fungus (Erastia salmonicolor),doesn’t have a stem, but is stuck, limpet-like, to the underside of branches. On our way back to the car we checked a few branches but didn’t find the fungus which, Mary informed me, had only been found in three woods in the UK. Hmm! One of the tooth fungi that I had been looking for during this years survey that currently hasn’t been found in the UK also grows at sites in Norway under branches and fallen logs, so this was a habitat I had been checking – so now I had two things to look for when out and about. My first nice find under the edge of a fallen log was a bonny wee fungus called Mycena pterigena (left) growing on fallen bracken stems. With an afternoon spare late in the month I thought I would dedicate an outing to lifting fallen branches and realised that a similar purple coloured fungus to the salmon fungus was growing under some logs, but only where the log was actually touching the ground. The search narrowed to this type of log. The purple fungus also seemed to only be on logs that had been lying for a couple of years and were starting to loose their bark though the purple fungus was only growing on the bark that remained. Bingo! A few logs later there was a pinky coloured limpet-like fungus growing on the underside of a log (right) and when I applied a little amount of dilute, liquid potassium hydroxide (known as KOH or K in the lichen world) to the fungus, it turned a nice cherry red, a key identification feature. A small sample was taken and sent off to Mary for checking and a few days later the good news arrived to say that my fungus was the salmon fungus adding a new UK site and another new record for Abernethy. Brilliant.

Another great month, enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet

Archie's first birthday by Finlay

Autumn colours & old hay rake

All photos © Stewart Taylor

September, a month of looking at teeth but without a dentist in sight

As I type this, the leaves are falling rapidly from the trees, the geese have arrived from their breeding grounds and, in a mild spell of weather a week ago, a lone red admiral and a small tortoiseshell butterfly were to be seen on the last of the buddleia flowers. The weather forecast for today is snow on high ground over the next couple of days. Help!

To find out why this man is so happy, read on.

With butterflies in mind I have to say what a struggle the Loch Garten butterfly transects were this year, but, having said that, the actual numbers recorded increased quite markedly from 2009. Many of the regulars were down in numbers but that recent arrival – the ringlet – doubled its numbers, and the Scotch argus had its best season for many, many years, showing an increase of over 300%. The long-distance migrants, red admiral & painted lady, failed to appear on the transect but overall the total number of species was only one down on last year, a single northern brown argus being the only gain. Transects were walked on 20 of the 26 weeks, 4 being missed due to cold weather in April and 2 through lack of sun in September. Quite a commitment. Details of the last two years of the survey are given above.

Looking back over the 26 weeks the highlights have to be re-finding the netted mountain moth, the regular views of the northern emerald dragonfly and recording the continued existence of the colony of six-spot burnet moths. Two new species of fungi were found for the Abernethy Reserve, Helvella macropus and Helvella lacunose, and shining guest ants were found on two new wood ant nests. So again, recording one thing has produce lots of good records of other species.

Once again I got the weather wrong, sunny and calm at Firwood but not quite the same a bit higher up. In early September I had the opportunity to get a lift to the ex-Bynack Stable site at the bottom end of Strath Nethy and the chance to go looking for dragonflies high up on A’Choinneach at a location where I had seen Aeshna juncea way back in 1995, at what could be one of the highest recorded sites in UK. During the drive out several groups of Duke of Edinburgh gold award participants were on the move from their overnight camp sites. These groups were to be a feature of the whole day. Leaving the vehicle by the bridge over the River Nethy I realised that the benign conditions experienced in Nethybridge weren’t going to be a feature of the days walk. The tops were shrouded in clouds and the wind, forecast for tomorrow, had already arrived at this slightly higher elevation. A bit of a challenge and with not much chance of seeing any dragonflies. By the bridge were a couple of tents possibly a safety feature for any of the Duke of Edinburgh folk who might have to pull out from the hills, a nice picture against the dark mountains. The first hour was spent walking through the lower peaty section of the strath and an hour and a bit later I was looking from the Saddle, down into Loch Avon (right). I’d forgotten just how long it takes to plod the 7km or so up Strath Nethy. At the Saddle a couple were sheltering from the wind behind a huge boulder, having their lunch. As I waved and turned left and upwards, it was becoming obvious just how windy it was going to be higher up. Amazingly, as I headed up the hill the clouds were rising with me and it was possible to look across to the Ciste Mhearad ridge were I had been just a couple of weeks ago. Heading down the hill (left) were the first of several groups of DoE students aiming for a nights camping by Loch Avon close to the Shelter Stone rock. On the top of A’Choinneach three more DoE groups passed me as I sheltered in the rocks having a bite to eat. As I looked around a familiar patch of a red stemmed moss came into view – my first patch of slender cruet moss (right) at over 1000m asl – just! The warmth from the strengthening sun made the battering wind just about bearable, but it wasn’t the day to be hanging around so I headed off to where I had seen the dragonfly egg-laying all those years ago. The location was about 940 metre asl, not quite as high as the UK record by about 50m. The route then took me to Bynack Beg and then on down the track back towards the vehicle. In places, this track is now up to 10 metres wide as the folk walking up to the Bynack More Munro keep trying to find a new “soft” route to walk on, hence the track gets wider and wider. In one place a brand new track is appearing in the heather which to me must be more difficult to walk on. A week later I hear that help is at hand and work is to start in a few days time to repair the track to the same standard as the first 1000m from the bridge, which was repaired some ten years ago and is now a single, narrow track which everyone sticks to. By the bridge over the River Nethy the two tents are still there and with the tops clear and the sun shining the view was magnificent.

Around all these other happenings the annual tooth fungi survey was progressing, the fifth year of the survey and the fourth that I had undertaken. To try and ensure the survey is carried out in a similar way each year, the same sites are visited on about the same date each year, and it was obvious, after the first week, that there seemed to be many more tooth fungi than in 2009 – potentially, another increase in the number if sites. The methodology is the same so there must be a genuine increase going on. However, this year was going to be hugely important for this group of fungi and quite an honour that I was going to be able to help. Martyn Ainsworth, the man responsible for identifying the dried Abernethy material which revealed two tooth fungi species that were new to Britain, would be spending five days on the reserve. (See http://www.kew.org/kewscientist/ks_37.pdfpdf Fungal Conservation heading). Meeting up with Martyn I asked what he would like to achieve during his visit and he produced a neat “shopping list” containing several species that would be easy to find, one that was my re-find of a few years ago – Hydnellum cumulatum one of the new UK species, and one, Hydnellum gracilipes which had yet to be re-found and with only a dried specimen to say that it had ever been growing in Britain. Alan Lucas, another hugely experienced mycologist (and ornithologist) accompanied Martyn to help with the recording and searching (see all three of us above). Day one gave Martyn an introduction to one of the more species rich sections of Abernethy and he was able to see lots of specimens of a tooth fungus called Hydnellum scrobiculatum, a species which he is confident does not occur in the UK. The British species is probably something different and may eventually be re-named, so lots of photographs were taken (right) and a little material was collected to go away for DNA work. Day two saw us visiting a few old quarries which are important for tooth fungi along with the short, and largely man-made track to the Osprey Centre home to 8 of the reserves 13 species of tooth fungi. Amazing. Day three was dedicated to checking a few of my sites for Hydnellum cumulatum, a species Martyn had only seen as dried material. The first visit was to the site where the first British record came from in 2002, a site I re-found just last year. From there we visited the big population found in 2006, along with a smaller population on a track nearby. On our way back to Forest Lodge we thought a visit to the area where the elusive Hydnellum gracilipes had been found in 2001 would be useful and with four folk looking anything was possible. The first “find” was a rare, tiny fungus called Stereopsis vitellina (left) the Roothole Rosette, found originally in this area during an outing with Peter Orton in 1999. A good start. As Martyn finished photographing the Stereopsis Alan was beckoning to us in a very provocative but excited fashion. Alan had lifted up a section of track-side heather and there, in all its frail and pinkish glory was Hydnellum gracilipes, the only known specimen in the whole of the UK (right)! What a find, and, probably having been present when first found, it was great to be present when it was re-found. However, despite the fungus looking and growing like H. gracilipes, we will all need to wait until it has gone through the analysis and sequencing process at Cardiff University – but we were all pretty confident. Martyn’s shopping list was now complete. To round off a brilliant few days Martyn gave a presentation to all the Abernethy staff team about his work on the British tooth fungi, and the problems still to be overcome. Hopefully his few days at Abernethy will help greatly with the latter.

As we said cheerio Martyn’s parting comment was that all we needed to do now was find some more, which to me, sounded a bit like a challenge. A few days later the bulk of the tooth fungi survey was completed and my preparation for a talk to the Friends of Abernethy at the end of the week was sorted, so time for a bit of “heather lifting”. My initial intention was to see if I could find more of the tiny Roothole Rosette, which has a very limited UK distribution. On one track 3 new locations were found, but on many more there was nothing, and, after an hour or two bent over lifting track-side heather, the old body was complaining. On another track an impressive group of Hydnellum aurantiacum tooth fungi caught my eye and whilst bent over having a closer look I thought I should also check under the track-side heather, and there it was again – the second UK site for Hydnellum gracilipies (right). A day beating juniper bushes trying to find the juniper shield bug failed miserably but it did lead me to a steep, wooded bank above the River Nethy. Stopping to take a GPS reading of a group of tooth fungi growing on a deer track saw me lifting a bit of heather, and there, deep under the heather was a group of Roothole Rosette fungi which I lay down to photograph (left). Lifting the heather to take my photograph I noticed groups of fungal teeth hanging from the heather – H. gracilipes again, with another group a few metres further along the same deer track. My final site was found, again under deep heather, on a steep bank below a track with the Roothole Rosette again close by. Looking for this unusual and secretive tooth fungus is a bit destructive, detaching heather stems from the edge of tracks or breaking through a “curtain” of dead and live heather stems on a steep bank so, having found the probable “natural” growing sites the searching stopped. The bigger tooth fungi survey did prove to be very interesting with 990 sites found this year, up from 770 in 2009. I keep trying to tell folk that Abernethy Forest is special; the last couple of months have shown that it is very special.

Taking the car to the local garage again proved very interesting. The garage is next to one of the oldest stands of aspen trees in this area, and while the car was in the garage there was time for a wander through the aspens. In the birches growing with the aspens there were a couple of hundred siskins and redpolls feeding on the ripe birch seeds. A calling jay was more unusual. The recent winds had brought down some aspen leaves and growing from some of them were red rowan berry sized galls (right). Out of interest I popped a few into a tube to take home. Typing “aspen leaf galls” into Google showed that they probably belonged to a wee midge by the name of Harmandiola tremulae, something not known from this part of the UK (http://data.nbn.org.uk/gridMap/gridMap.jsp?allDs=1&srchSpKey=NBNSYS0100003334 ). To check, I sent the photo to ispot the Open University Biodiversity Observatory website (see http://ispot.org.uk/node/88803 ) and had an entomologist agree with my identification. I will probably need to wait though until next year and see if I can capture an actual midge to confirm 100%. Ispot was also used to identify a young shield bug, found in Abernethy on a discarded but unused dog poo bag. See http://www.ispot.org.uk/node/73378 . This bug, Troilus luridus (left), was a first for Abernethy, Highland Region and Scotland. Brilliant.

Not a bad month, enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet

One of a flock of 4 crested tits

Glacial terraces Strath Nethy

All photos © Stewart Taylor