It all really started on the days when Janet attended the craft fair at Rothiemurchus. As we travelled in on the evening of 17th December to set up her stall it
started to snow, not much, but enough to slow us down as we drove to the church hall where the fair was being held. I had spent that day in the forest at Glenmore and after mooching about in a patch of Norway spruce for four hours I was totally frozen and glad of the half hour walk back to the car to warm up. There had been a threat of snow all day and finally at 6pm it arrived. As we drove back from the church hall the snow had stopped but I was cursing because I had another days work in
Glenmore to complete and the light dusting of snow might make that impossible, but more about that later. The following morning there was a good inch of snow lying and really it has been a story of snow and frost ever since. 6” had fallen by the time we packed everything up at the craft fair on the 19th and I seem to have done nothing but clear snow from around the house ever since. Travel to work for the last few days before Christmas reverted to Janet dropping me off at the end of the Forest Lodge track and walking in and out from the office, and even this became impossible on 23rd when another 6” of snow was dumped all around. Laura and Douglas just about got to the house from Aberdeenshire on Christmas-eve and, when another 7” of snow greeted us on Christmas morning we were quite worried that Ruth, Sean and the boys w
ouldn’t be able to get to us for Christmas dinner and present opening. The house drive was cleared of snow yet again and at 11.30am Ruth’s car appeared in the drive to a big cheer and present opening could begin. Phew! Janet produced a brilliant meal and Laura and Douglas some excellent bottles of champagne but all the time a wary eye was watching weather outside. A new experience was linking the Firwood gathering to family in Lancashire by “skype” as dinner was drawing to a close, a sign of things to come in the developing world of computer technology. There were lots of oh’s and ah’s as baby Archie’s turn came round to appear on screen, the first time the clan in Lancashire had seen him for “real”. Amazing.
Boxing Day was very frosty with the temperature plummeting to -14 deg C at 7pm, and we managed -16 deg C during the night of 27th not managing to get above -12 deg C during the
following day. The birds feeding in the garden were hopping about on one leg, trying hard to keep the other one warm whilst pecking at the food. Since 17th December we have only managed to get the thermometer above freezing on two occasions (day or night!), the maximum being +0.5 deg C, and there doesn’t seem to be any end of the big freeze in sight. Frost and snow conspired to knock many New Years Eve events on the head, and the “happy new year” greetings have been very subdued as everyone digs snow and stops everything from freezing. Undisturbed snow on the football pitch in the village is now 18-20” deep and all around house gutters are hanging thick with icicles, many having fallen off. Trees are bending double with the weight of snow and throughout the forest trees and branches can be heard snapping. Adding up all the daily snow fall measurements at the house for the period given earlier we have a total of 40”. We have only seen one snow-plough go up the road since before Christmas the Council blaming bendy trees and branches over the road or is it really a money saving exercise! Their response to the crisis ha
s so far been pretty pathetic. Cleared heaps of snow around the house are now 4-5’ deep and we are running out of places to throw the stuff particularly when all the snow avalanched off the house roof over new year, filling the drive with 1-2’. Grandson Finlay lent a hand to clear the snow with his new tractor/digger, an eye popping present he received at Christmas. Needless to say we haven’t ventured very far from the house during the period and with only one outing into the woods since the main snow falls so lots to write about from around the house!
Keeping the birds alive has been one of the major tasks during the diary period, dishing out food, thawing out the water bowl each morning and topping up with fresh water. The garden area is now filling up with two foot diameter lumps of ice from the water bowl though many have now been buried by the snow. The seed feeders are currently being topped up twice a day but interestingly the peanut feeders are not bein
g used as much as when we have no snow. A couple of crested tits have been regular in amongst the 30-40 coal tits. Chaffinch numbers must be in the region of 40-50 birds and the yellowhammers show up brilliantly against the snowy background (left). Despite the cold the blackbirds, robins and dunnocks continue to fight over the food and the rook and jackdaw mafia drop in a couple of times a day to see what is available. Both species have now mastered the art of hanging on to the peanut feeders! Rarities comprise the odd greenfinch and goldfinch, the latter having forsaken our garden for Bill and Rita’s down the road with its gourmet niger seed feeder (right) where up to 18 birds have been seen. Charming! The biggest rarity has been a single brambling and the garden is visited daily by at least one sparrowhawk. It is only when the sparrowhawk goes charging through that you realise just how many birds are at the feeders or around the garden as with a great din of synchronised flapping the birds dive for cover in the surrounding trees.
With the Christmas turkey having fed the family on Christmas
day, kept the two of us in meals and sandwiches for a further four days, made a pot of soup from the carcass, it was time to put what remained out in the garden for the birds to pick over. The blackbirds and starlings had reduced it to a scatter of bones when Janet noticed a very strange bird having a go (left). A second take and she realised that we had a new bird for the garden – a jay! Being at work on the day it appeared, I thought I had missed my chance to see this new arrival but with Janet raiding the freezer for more chicken bones and me not being able to get to work the following day we kept an eye on the new pile of meaty bones in between clearing snow and helping out our neighbours. At lunchtime it re-appeared and fed for a while before disappearing with a large chunk of meat and bone. The camera was ready and waiting for its return (right)an
d a few reasonable photos were obtained as it fed on the chicken carcass. Locally, this is quite a rare bird with a single pair known to be regularly breeding in the Craigmore section of the reserve, but with also an increasing number of winter records of individual birds around the area in the last 10 years. With the camera out and ready I had been using it to watch the squabbling starlings fighting over the fat ball lying on the packed snow. Was that a ring on one of the birds legs? A second chance to check the starling came a few minutes later and sure enough on one leg was a metal ring topped with a second, orange colour ring and with a green/white coloured ring combination on the other leg. A few minutes later a second starling was seen with a different colour combination, blue over green on its left leg. Without the big lens on the camera I would never have seen the rings so again, watching out for one thing gave a bit of information on another. A quick phone call to Keith confirmed that he had ringed them at a site about a mile away from
Firwood, one as a juvenile from one of his nest boxes in 2009, though the colour rings were only added in January 2010, the same time that the second bird was ringed. It will be interesting to see if either of the birds turn out to be linked to the Firwood nest box this summer. In amongst the starlings a large black and white bird suddenly appeared at the fat ball – a great spotted woodpecker (left) and amazingly when both starling and woodpecker squared up to one another, it was the starling that won. With the daytime temperature down at about -8 deg C the woodpecker (a male) was as desperate as all the other birds to take on as much food as possible during the day so as to try and survive the even lower temperatures that would come with night-fall. So an interesting hour without even going any further than the window.
There has been an interesting development in the
world of the green shield-moss. Having found so many capsules linked to Norway spruce in Abernethy during the last growing season, I was keen to test whether they would also be found in other Norway spruce stands outside Abernethy. To this end I contacted Colin (area Ecologist) at the Forestry Commission in Inverness to see if he could point me in the right direction of any semi-mature stands in the Inverness District area. A phone call from an excited Colin just before Christmas informed me that he had found two capsules growing on a recently wind-blown Norway spruce in Glenmore Forest Park (below left) and, unlike the long-dead spruces linked to the moss in Abernethy, this tree had only blown over in the last couple of years. This I had to see, and
while Janet was attending the craft fair at Rothiemurchus, I spent the same two days in Colin’s stand of Norway spruce (above right) seeing what I could find, and it was quite mind blowing. I didn’t find Colin’s tree straight away but was drawn to a couple of piles of felled logs that hadn’t been extracted at the time of the last thinning, and straight away, there were a few capsules. There were capsules on a few stumps, capsules on root buttresses of felled spruces, and, amazingly, capsules on roots of “live” spruces, the first time I had found the moss not linked to a deadwood habitat. Not only were they growing on the roots (which are normally protruding above the ground) but also, more regularly, on the soil debris on top of the roots (left) as indicated by the white peg. A whole new world for the moss in the UK, not dependant on deadwood, and potentially an abundant habitat in many Norway spruce
plantations in this area and also further a field, and possibly, at last, the most favoured habitat for the green shield-moss has been found. We just need the snow to melt so that a few more sites can be visited to see whether this “Taylor” theory will hold water. If correct, I don’t see any reason why the moss shouldn’t be growing in woodlands south of the Scottish border – it has yet to be recorded outside Scotland, so have a good look at the photo (left), find yourself a 60 year old stand of Norway spruce, and be the first to find it south of the border! There are still only about 20 folk who have found this moss for themselves in the UK so you would also be joining an elite band of natural history recorders. I’d be happy to receive any records from north or south of the border via the Firwood website email address.
The lichen work written about in the last diary also turned up a brilliant wee species from the aspen woods close to the River Nethy. When I visited the site a few
weeks ago a leafy lichen complete with spore bearing apothecia (right) looked a little different so I set up the camera and tripod and took a decent photo which eventually found its way to Dr. Brian Coppins.
Peltigera collina was the name that came back, a new species for Abernethy Forest and a first for OS Square NJ01. Not only is the lichen rare in this part of Scotland (see
http://data.nbn.org.uk/interactive/map.jsp?srchSp=38026 ) but to find it with spore bearing apothecia (the black bits on the lobes) in Britain is quite rare. Again it goes to show just how special our small group of 25 aspen trees are for rare lichens.
Stop-press. We have a thaw, +1.9 deg C today as I type (12 Jan) so will I be writing about floods in the next diary? Watch this space.
Happy reading
Stewart & Janet
Frozen umbellifer start of big freeze 11 December 2009
All photos © Stewart Taylor
started to snow, not much, but enough to slow us down as we drove to the church hall where the fair was being held. I had spent that day in the forest at Glenmore and after mooching about in a patch of Norway spruce for four hours I was totally frozen and glad of the half hour walk back to the car to warm up. There had been a threat of snow all day and finally at 6pm it arrived. As we drove back from the church hall the snow had stopped but I was cursing because I had another days work in 
Glenmore to complete and the light dusting of snow might make that impossible, but more about that later. The following morning there was a good inch of snow lying and really it has been a story of snow and frost ever since. 6” had fallen by the time we packed everything up at the craft fair on the 19th and I seem to have done nothing but clear snow from around the house ever since. Travel to work for the last few days before Christmas reverted to Janet dropping me off at the end of the Forest Lodge track and walking in and out from the office, and even this became impossible on 23rd when another 6” of snow was dumped all around. Laura and Douglas just about got to the house from Aberdeenshire on Christmas-eve and, when another 7” of snow greeted us on Christmas morning we were quite worried that Ruth, Sean and the boys w
ouldn’t be able to get to us for Christmas dinner and present opening. The house drive was cleared of snow yet again and at 11.30am Ruth’s car appeared in the drive to a big cheer and present opening could begin. Phew! Janet produced a brilliant meal and Laura and Douglas some excellent bottles of champagne but all the time a wary eye was watching weather outside. A new experience was linking the Firwood gathering to family in Lancashire by “skype” as dinner was drawing to a close, a sign of things to come in the developing world of computer technology. There were lots of oh’s and ah’s as baby Archie’s turn came round to appear on screen, the first time the clan in Lancashire had seen him for “real”. Amazing.
following day. The birds feeding in the garden were hopping about on one leg, trying hard to keep the other one warm whilst pecking at the food. Since 17th December we have only managed to get the thermometer above freezing on two occasions (day or night!), the maximum being +0.5 deg C, and there doesn’t seem to be any end of the big freeze in sight. Frost and snow conspired to knock many New Years Eve events on the head, and the “happy new year” greetings have been very subdued as everyone digs snow and stops everything from freezing. Undisturbed snow on the football pitch in the village is now 18-20” deep and all around house gutters are hanging thick with icicles, many having fallen off. Trees are bending double with the weight of snow and throughout the forest trees and branches can be heard snapping. Adding up all the daily snow fall measurements at the house for the period given earlier we have a total of 40”. We have only seen one snow-plough go up the road since before Christmas the Council blaming bendy trees and branches over the road or is it really a money saving exercise! Their response to the crisis ha
s so far been pretty pathetic. Cleared heaps of snow around the house are now 4-5’ deep and we are running out of places to throw the stuff particularly when all the snow avalanched off the house roof over new year, filling the drive with 1-2’. Grandson Finlay lent a hand to clear the snow with his new tractor/digger, an eye popping present he received at Christmas. Needless to say we haven’t ventured very far from the house during the period and with only one outing into the woods since the main snow falls so lots to write about from around the house!
g used as much as when we have no snow. A couple of crested tits have been regular in amongst the 30-40 coal tits. Chaffinch numbers must be in the region of 40-50 birds and the yellowhammers show up brilliantly against the snowy background (left). Despite the cold the blackbirds, robins and dunnocks continue to fight over the food and the rook and jackdaw mafia drop in a couple of times a day to see what is available. Both species have now mastered the art of hanging on to the peanut feeders! Rarities comprise the odd greenfinch and goldfinch, the latter having forsaken our garden for Bill and Rita’s down the road with its gourmet niger seed feeder (right) where up to 18 birds have been seen. Charming! The biggest rarity has been a single brambling and the garden is visited daily by at least one sparrowhawk. It is only when the sparrowhawk goes charging through that you realise just how many birds are at the feeders or around the garden as with a great din of synchronised flapping the birds dive for cover in the surrounding trees.
day, kept the two of us in meals and sandwiches for a further four days, made a pot of soup from the carcass, it was time to put what remained out in the garden for the birds to pick over. The blackbirds and starlings had reduced it to a scatter of bones when Janet noticed a very strange bird having a go (left). A second take and she realised that we had a new bird for the garden – a jay! Being at work on the day it appeared, I thought I had missed my chance to see this new arrival but with Janet raiding the freezer for more chicken bones and me not being able to get to work the following day we kept an eye on the new pile of meaty bones in between clearing snow and helping out our neighbours. At lunchtime it re-appeared and fed for a while before disappearing with a large chunk of meat and bone. The camera was ready and waiting for its return (right)an
d a few reasonable photos were obtained as it fed on the chicken carcass. Locally, this is quite a rare bird with a single pair known to be regularly breeding in the Craigmore section of the reserve, but with also an increasing number of winter records of individual birds around the area in the last 10 years. With the camera out and ready I had been using it to watch the squabbling starlings fighting over the fat ball lying on the packed snow. Was that a ring on one of the birds legs? A second chance to check the starling came a few minutes later and sure enough on one leg was a metal ring topped with a second, orange colour ring and with a green/white coloured ring combination on the other leg. A few minutes later a second starling was seen with a different colour combination, blue over green on its left leg. Without the big lens on the camera I would never have seen the rings so again, watching out for one thing gave a bit of information on another. A quick phone call to Keith confirmed that he had ringed them at a site about a mile away from 
Firwood, one as a juvenile from one of his nest boxes in 2009, though the colour rings were only added in January 2010, the same time that the second bird was ringed. It will be interesting to see if either of the birds turn out to be linked to the Firwood nest box this summer. In amongst the starlings a large black and white bird suddenly appeared at the fat ball – a great spotted woodpecker (left) and amazingly when both starling and woodpecker squared up to one another, it was the starling that won. With the daytime temperature down at about -8 deg C the woodpecker (a male) was as desperate as all the other birds to take on as much food as possible during the day so as to try and survive the even lower temperatures that would come with night-fall. So an interesting hour without even going any further than the window.
world of the green shield-moss. Having found so many capsules linked to Norway spruce in Abernethy during the last growing season, I was keen to test whether they would also be found in other Norway spruce stands outside Abernethy. To this end I contacted Colin (area Ecologist) at the Forestry Commission in Inverness to see if he could point me in the right direction of any semi-mature stands in the Inverness District area. A phone call from an excited Colin just before Christmas informed me that he had found two capsules growing on a recently wind-blown Norway spruce in Glenmore Forest Park (below left) and, unlike the long-dead spruces linked to the moss in Abernethy, this tree had only blown over in the last couple of years. This I had to see, and 
while Janet was attending the craft fair at Rothiemurchus, I spent the same two days in Colin’s stand of Norway spruce (above right) seeing what I could find, and it was quite mind blowing. I didn’t find Colin’s tree straight away but was drawn to a couple of piles of felled logs that hadn’t been extracted at the time of the last thinning, and straight away, there were a few capsules. There were capsules on a few stumps, capsules on root buttresses of felled spruces, and, amazingly, capsules on roots of “live” spruces, the first time I had found the moss not linked to a deadwood habitat. Not only were they growing on the roots (which are normally protruding above the ground) but also, more regularly, on the soil debris on top of the roots (left) as indicated by the white peg. A whole new world for the moss in the UK, not dependant on deadwood, and potentially an abundant habitat in many Norway spruce 
plantations in this area and also further a field, and possibly, at last, the most favoured habitat for the green shield-moss has been found. We just need the snow to melt so that a few more sites can be visited to see whether this “Taylor” theory will hold water. If correct, I don’t see any reason why the moss shouldn’t be growing in woodlands south of the Scottish border – it has yet to be recorded outside Scotland, so have a good look at the photo (left), find yourself a 60 year old stand of Norway spruce, and be the first to find it south of the border! There are still only about 20 folk who have found this moss for themselves in the UK so you would also be joining an elite band of natural history recorders. I’d be happy to receive any records from north or south of the border via the Firwood website email address.
weeks ago a leafy lichen complete with spore bearing apothecia (right) looked a little different so I set up the camera and tripod and took a decent photo which eventually found its way to Dr. Brian Coppins. Peltigera collina was the name that came back, a new species for Abernethy Forest and a first for OS Square NJ01. Not only is the lichen rare in this part of Scotland (see http://data.nbn.org.uk/interactive/map.jsp?srchSp=38026 ) but to find it with spore bearing apothecia (the black bits on the lobes) in Britain is quite rare. Again it goes to show just how special our small group of 25 aspen trees are for rare lichens.