Waders, wings overhead and walkers

Sorry this is a bit late but June is such an important month with birds at maximum production, everything greening up and flowers grasses and sedges becoming recognisable, and the notebook with pages of records to sort. So let me take you back to May and bring you up to date with what else we were getting up to apart from visiting the Western Isles.

A different couple of mosses have been testing me out recently. Over the last few years I have been finding a spectacular “hump-backed” shaped moss growing on – animal droppings! Don’t worry, none of the dropping is visible when the moss has become established, and the moss’s size seems to vary with the size of dropping, smaller for a pine marten scat and bigger for a fox dropping. The moss is also equally at home growing on bones of dead animals, though I have never found it on this medium. The first moss cushion, found about 3 years ago, seemed quite big to me and was named as Tetraplodon mnioides – slender cruet-moss (right). However, now being the proud owner of a decent microscope and a bit of the moss was looked at properly, the basal leaves had teeth (above), turning it in to Tetraplodon angustatus – narrow cruet-moss (front moss below left). The size of the moss though was all wrong and at some stage a moss expert will need to take a closer look at its structure to ensure the two species haven’t been hybridising. As seems to be par for the course for me when I start looking at something, I don’t just find one moss cushion, I find quite a few, and this had happened again with these two mosses. Up until my recent finds there were 6 Abernethy Reserve records for narrow cruet-moss and 8 for slender cruet, the most famous find being by Gordon Rothero when, in 2005, he found both mosses growing together, on the same scat (see http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Resources/galleryold3.htm#tetangtetang ). So far I haven’t equalled Gordon’s feat but I have added 23 new locations for the narrow cruet-moss and 12 for the slender one. In a couple of cases the mosses have been growing within a few inches of each other, so we are getting close.

Who would have thought that an erupting volcano in Iceland could cause so many problems! Not a plane was heard for about three days and then, as restrictions were eased, the Nethybridge area of the Highlands suddenly found itself directly under the flight-paths of transatlantic flights that were trying to “fly round” the problematical dust cloud. At times it was possible to see the vapour trails of 3 planes, all following each other south no doubt heading to Heathrow. On the same day that this photo was taken, close to Rynettin in Abernethy Forest, 3 wrens were heard singing showing a few more survived than was first thought but numbers still remain low.


After 51 years it has finally happened, you can now boil a kettle of water at the Osprey Centre without the help of the gas powered generator. On the 19 May 2010 workmen from Scottish and Southern Energy connected the far end of 2.5 km of cable to the transformer near the B970 road at Croftnacarn, bringing to an end two months of digging, cable laying and trench-filling. It also brought to an end the frustrations endured by Centre shop staff when the generator packed-up and the high tech till couldn’t work. It also brought to an end the interference seen on the closed-circuit TV screens caused by the generator and did away with the tricky reverse all the way up the Osprey Centre track by the Calor Gas tanker because there was no room to turn at the Centre. It also brought PEACE, no more thump, thump, thump in the background as the generator started up to charge the batteries that ran everything electrical in the Centre, Reception and forward hide. Hurray!

A major survey is underway this year, the Strathspey Wader Survey, covering all suitable wader breeding habitats close to the River Spey from Newtonmore in the south to Grantown on Spey in the north. This survey is undertaken every five years to monitor the number of breeding waders in mainly farmland habitat comprising the most important inland site for waders in the UK. The section allocated to me runs from the bridge over the Spey at Boat of Garten to the boundary of the farm called Cottorton to the east, about 1.5 km of farmland on the south side of the Spey. Surveys have to be undertaken close to dawn or 3 hours before sunset to ensure drumming snipes are recorded. All fields have to be visited or looked over which means the survey covers about 3km of walking. Birds are recorded by field, a bit difficult with very mobile curlews, and the crop or agricultural use of each field is also noted along with presence or absence of grazing stock. All the regular species of wader was recorded, curlew (nest right), lapwing, oystercatcher, snipe and redshank, and a note made of skylarks, reed buntings and a few other key species. Three visits are needed, early and late May and early June, by which time most birds should have young but by mid-June the vegetation is just to high to see anything on the ground. I have to admit to this being the most depressing survey to be involved in, I love the walks and the birds encountered, but I feel we are just monitoring the decline of what was a hugely important group of farmland birds. During the two surveys I have been involved in, five years apart, I have never seen an oystercatcher chick, birds sitting on eggs yes but seeing the birds with a happy family – no. Farming practice has a part to play – fields still being sown and rolled in late May, and no doubt the populations of crows and jackdaws take their toll. There is now little room for these birds as the maximum area of every field is cultivated and even fields which years ago would have been classed as un-viable, are now disappearing under the plough, removing in one operation a very valuable habitat for general biodiversity. One application of fertiliser is enough to destroy the floristic importance, something I’m not sure farmers are aware of. Wet bits in sown fields are re-visited to plough and re-plough to try and drain losing in one go valuable damp ground feeding sites for many of the waders involved. One small area which is vital for the continued presence of one to two pairs of redshanks (waterlogged ground) continues to be drained even though there is no agricultural gain. “Ah, but we got a grant to dig a pond” but what is the point of a pond in the best bit of redshank habitat, the only bit of redshank habitat, in the whole of my survey area! I could go on, I just thought many of these practices had been got rid of many years ago, but obviously not. One gem from the survey was re-finding a single spike of cowslip (left) in a small area of birch woodland, first found 5 years ago.

A second and third visit was made to the planned wind turbine site close to daughter Laura’s house to survey the associated bird populations. Several singing skylarks and yellowhammers, tree sparrows on the edge of the site and 2 pairs of both lapwing and oystercatcher sitting on eggs. As I walked along a minor road by a bright yellow field of flowering oil seed rape I thought I heard a sedge warbler singing, and another, both within the rape field. Is this a substitute for a damp field full of rushes or the bird adapting to a completely new habitat? Occasionally the singing male’s head could be seen close to the top for the 3’ high flowering plants and I wondered whether it would be possible to catch one on camera. So, with the early morning survey finished and a quick bite of breakfast I returned to the field and waited, camera at the ready. Lots of photos of the tops of yellow flowers and masses of insects and just occasionally a bird stayed in view long enough for its photo to be taken. Amazing.

In early April a request was received from Butterfly Conservation asking interested folk to visit flowering patches of bearberry, (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi – what a brilliant name) during May to see if they could find the small dark yellow underwing moth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coranarta_cordigeracordigera ). Whilst walking the Loch Garten butterfly transect I noticed that the bearberry on Tulloch Moor was flowering really well this year, so could the moth be there? The only record for the area was a moth, found by me way back in May 1988 – whilst walking the butterfly transect. So, when the sun was shining, patches of bearberry were visited as time allowed during May and also whilst walking the butterfly transects. Despite a few visits the moth wasn’t re-found but a bonus was finding several new locations for the netted mountain moth (left), not, as the name implies a true mountain moth, but a species that is a day flier like the underwing, and also a lover of bearberry. Finding this moth in early May is a real bonus saving lots of confusion by the very similar common heath moth which only started to appear in numbers later in the month.

Our hats go off to Pam and John Shaw (right), friends from Lancashire, who stayed with us for a couple of nights, the two nights though, being 6 days apart! In between times they walked the whole length of the Speyside Way. Firwood is quite handy for this sort of thing having been built right by the side of the long distance footpath

Janet has been busy with her cottage craft business. Following the craft fair at Rothiemurchus at the start of our snowy winter, last December, Eleanor, the organiser, asked if she would like to sell her crafts in the re-furbished visitor centre on the shore of Loch an Eilean. Opening in time for Easter, sales were brisk and have continued to tick over quite nicely ever since meaning lots of visits to top up the shelves with new produce (left). Whilst sewing away Janet has also been keeping an eye on what is happening in the garden, ensuring the flower spectacle remains at its best and also to shout through to me that there is something unusual in the garden. No doubt, taking a break from eating the apple blossom, a pair of bullfinches were regular visitors to the peanut feeder, as was the male pheasant with his harem. It is quite amazing just where breeding pheasants can now be found from the gardens in Nethybridge right out to the forest edge in Abernethy Forest, an introduction of an exotic bird species which has gathered pace in recent years.

We remain very firm members of the Giles Pearson Appreciation Society (http://www.giles-pearson-antiques.co.uk/ ) with Janet spotting a dresser in his showroom made from a mixture of unusual woods. On a visit to ensure the piece was what we wanted after a little restoration we made a day out of the trip and added a visit to the River Findhorn and the famous Cawdor oaks. Lunch was taken by the River Findhorn near Ferness where we had an amazing hour. Janet found a few unusual plants including few flowered leek (Allium paradoxum) a plant which is spreading its range in the UK, along with a “feral” patch of rhubarb which provided enough stems for a rhubarb crumble. I visited the huge ash trees along the bank of the river and turned up another site for the lichens lungwort and the rare script lichen Schismatomma graphidiodes. Whilst taking a GPS reading for the leek I noticed a rather large morel growing on the roadside banking and thought it looked like something that had been found growing by the Forest Lodge track some years ago. As an aid to identification I took a photograph (right), always well worth doing, and just as well I did. When we got home I checked the fungus in Phillip’s guide and it looked very much to me like Morchella elata, sorry, no common name, and when I then checked the National Biodiversity Network map for that species, I found there was only one dot on the map for this part of Scotland see http://data.nbn.org.uk/gridMap/gridMap.jsp?allDs=1&srchSpKey=NBNSYS0000019644 . A copy of the photo was sent to Liz Holden for confirmation and the reply was that my ID was correct and a new location had been found for this rare fungus. Thanks Giles.

That’s it for another diary edition, I hope another will follow before we disappear off to the Western Isles.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

Loch Mallachie reflections

Ash cloud sunset over Dufftown



All photos © Stewart Taylor