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.html
uarian.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 so
mething 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 good
ness 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 everyw
here 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
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 seehttp://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3846/bennachie.html
uarian.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 so
mething 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 good
ness 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 everyw
here 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
All photos © Stewart Taylor
