each night a vigil was undertaken but without a sighting. After one particular late night vigil the family were intent on having a lie-in until at 8.30 IN THE MORNING one of the children looked up from her book to see the elusive creature heading towards the goodie shelf. Everybody up and there in broad daylight was the pine marten, on the shelf, licking the jam off the sandwich. Camera out, souvenir photo captured, though the animal was so close it was a job to fit the whole thing in the picture, and after a leisurely feed the marten headed off towards the garden. Was the marten waiting for the next audacious move? Mum opened the bedroom window and flung out a generous handful of raisins. Within minutes the marten is back to tuck into the new supply, completely ignoring the big fat juicy sultanas left out from the night before. About the same time I was up and having breakfast when I could hear the chorus of bird alarm calls from the chalet feeders. I dashed upstairs to get a better view, but saw nothing and had to guess that the marten might have been in about. The evening before I had been to Loch Morlich to look for bog orchids and as I battled with the myriad of midges (having forgotten the midge spray) I could hear two red-throated divers calling on the loch. I must let the chalet guests know just in case there were heading that way, so, as I could see them getting ready to load up the car, I popped out to give them the news. Before I could say a word I could see that the Fisher family had something much more important to tell me! “Guess what we have seen?” said everyone in unison and one by one I heard all about the part each had played in the morning’s event with mum finally getting out the camera to show me the photo that now takes pride of place in this month diary. (I think I remembered to tell them about the divers!) From first to last photo we learned that the marten was on site for about half an hour.Saturday arrived and I recall to new arrivals Ken and Pam the successful encounter. I know from Ken’s last visit that to see a pine marten was a lif
etime ambition. So the late night vigils start all over again despite me telling everyone to have a “relaxing” holiday. The jam works again and Ken and Pam have a few “after dark” encounters until one evening the marten arrives at 8.30pm with just enough light for Ken to catch everything on camera. Brilliant, and Ken’s photo also takes pride of place at the start of this diary entry. It hasn’t stopped there and all the visitors during the month managed to see the pine marten and I was even lucky enough to see P marten walking casually across the rockery on his way to sticking his head in the squirrels peanut box. So, we may have the fattest pine marten in the area also in need of dental treatment! It has been great that with a little effort, our visitors have managed to see something they though might never be possible.August was also a busy
month for craft lady (should that be person?) Janet. The first event nearly didn’t happen because of the torrential down-pour during the previous couple of days, but on a dry day the Grantown Agricultural Show went ahead. It was an early start as we headed off to help get all the tents erected for the folk selling goods at the Cairngorm Farmers Market. The attendees vary from farmers selling meat produce, to soap and candle makers and also ex-work colleague 
Malcolm with wife Ailsa selling some brilliant wood crafts. As the show opened there was much interest in the judging of the various sheep entries. Heftier cattle followed later in the main ring. All day long it was fun watching vans and wagons being towed through the ever deepening ruts of mud to enter and exit the show field. At all the recent craft events Janet’s own-designed bags seem to prove most popular just like the one pictured. The same day I had to dash off to the Aviemore health centre to get the troublesome knee x-rayed, showing the reason for there being almost no hill/mountain outings covered in the diary this year – osteoarthritis! Help! It still seems to work reasonably okay on the low ground though.Two days later and we were off to the Abernethy Highland Games, tent erected the night before and daughter Laura popping
over to help with sales during what turned out to be a busy day, with most of the day enjoying warn sunshine. Whilst Laura helped Janet I departed to make the most of the sun, and walk week 20 of the butterfly transect and, in the heat, it didn’t disappoint. Along the Tulloch Moor road and across the moor there were, in places, clouds of Scotch argus butterflies taking off from scabious flowers along the route, in these three sections alone 114 were counted, almost as many as would be counted in a whole season in some years. Dark-green fritillary (right), small tortoiseshell and green-veined whites were the only other species recorded. Checking back over the very crinkled weekly recording form reminds of the fun I had that day in another way. After all the rain the rivers and bogs were very full of water and on Section 11 of the transect (see http://www.ukbms.org/SiteFactsheet.aspx?siteId=51 see Species lists at bottom of page also) a short stretch of bog has to be negotiated and having been walking this route for over 30 years – not a problem. However, the normal route I take was very full of water and, knowing one tiny bit tests out the height of my wellies, I decided to take a detour to avoid the worst. All fine until I placed my foot on a nice tussock o
f cotton grass and down I went but ensuring the top half of my body – and my weekly recording sheet - ended up on top of the sphagnum and heather hummocks a couple feet away. As fast as I went in the bog I came out again, even though I failed to touch the bottom of the watery channel, and with pants and wellies full of water and lots of bits of sphagnum moss, I squelched my way to drier ground at the edge of the bog where I was able to tip out the water and wring out my socks. It would be interesting to know what the foreign visitors who stopped their car to ask me directions once I had reached the road said to each other as they drove off! Despite the mishap I arrived back at the Games in time for packing up the stall and tent.The outing to Loch Morlich, mentioned earlier, proved quite interesting. I have long wondered whether some of the Abernethy bogs would be suitable for the diminutive bog orchid (left). I have seen it growing in the trickle of a small stream in the forest but have never seen it actually in a bog, so knowing it had been found at Morlich in the pa
st, it was worth having a look to see if it was still there. Looking for something that is no more than 20mm high at best, is a good test for both back and eyesight as you wander bent over, along the edge of the bog. After a while it becomes apparent that it is unlikely to be growing in heavily vegetated sites so the search becomes narrowed down to the slightly gravellier lightly vegetated sections, still a big task in this area of many peaty pools. Persistence pays off and eventually a group of six orchids is found, but this is certainly not a plant in the top ten for stunning beauty even though it is carrying the “orchid” tag, the beauty thing is in the fact that it is hard to find, often defeating those who go in search of it. This plant has a couple of unusual features to allow it to grow in what is a watery habitat. Large roots are virtually absent these having been reduced to root hairs which have a heavy mycorrhizal (fungal) infection to provide the plant with its nutrients. The base of the plant also has what looks like a bulb from which the flowering shoot emerges. The “bulb” is actually two pseudobulbs growing one above the other, the lower one carrying the dried remains of the previous season’s leaves and the upper is surrounded by the bases of the new leaves. Time to try and capture these unusual features with the camera, ‘try’ being 
the operative word as, despite me carrying the “new” Nikon P7000, I was finding that this camera suffered from the same problem as earlier versions – most of the time not focusing on the “spot” in the middle of the lense. However, this version did have a manual focus feature so with lots of messing about (can’t really lie-down in a bog) I managed to capture several in-focus pictures. Over a period of four hours the peaty pools were searched and a total of 4 sites were found though the last one was a bigger test than all the rest in that all that was growing was the bulbil section described earlier (right). These bulbils may be the new plants for next year as quite often they are found growing side by side with flowering plants. A brilliant wee plant and worthy of the time taken to find. A check of similar habitat in Abernethy a few days later failed to find anything, but this bog was ten times more complicated than the ones looked at at Loch Morlich.The start of this mo
nth also saw the completion of the Osmia bee nest box project, well the outdoor part at least, so visits were made to all the sites and the boxes taken down. A quick check of each box failed to find any occupancy but it has been suggested that any sealed cells containing next years bees, may be further down in the tubes, so this will mean lifting out the paper tubes and holding them up to the light to check. It has been a very poor summer weather-wise for these bees (and most other insects) and I will be surprised if we find anything – but watch this space. Whilst at Culbin Forest removing the nest boxes I spent a little time wandering a few tracks to look for tooth fungi and managed to find 3 species. 90% were Hydnellum peckii (Devils tooth). Yes, it’s that time of year again and, after a quick trip to Lancashire to see Janet’s mum, it was down to the serious business of track walking to carry out this year’s survey. This will be the fifth year that the Abernethy-wide survey has been carried out by myself and after this year it is hoped that a write up of the findings over these five years can be completed. On the first few outings it was looking like Hydnellum peckii and Hydnellum caeruleum (Blue tooth - left)) were appearing early but to try and keep each years survey about t
he same, the same tracks were being walked on the same days as in previous years. After a few outings I was able to calm down a bit as, in general, most tooth fungi seemed to be appearing at about the same time as normal. Having re-found the rare Hydnellum gracilipes with Martyn and Alan last year it would be interesting if it re-appeared at the same sites again this year. But before I had made visits to these sites something that looked to be the same fungus was found, again under heather, way out in the forest (right). Because there have been so few confirmed records of this species (I was involved in finding the only 5 known locations in the UK last year) a small sample had to be collected and the fungus placed on a glass slide for a couple of days to drop spores (left), 
before being dried and the whole lot sent off to Martyn at Kew for confirmation. For this first sample the news came back that yes, it was H. gracilipes so, in addition to walking the tracks for mile after mile looking slightly sideways, I was now going to be tempted to lift bits of heather in any suitable locations. Interestingly, this first find was quite different to those found last year where on most occasions, the fungus seemed to be “stuck” to the overhanging vegetation, the lifting of the heather often damaging the fungus. On this occasion, it seemed to be self-supporting, being found by parting the vegetation on top of it. With a track most days to be walked from mid-August to mid-September, I was hoping for good weather.For a change of scene, I had the opportunity to nip over to Deeside, and with the help of Liz, be able to see one of Britain’s rarest tooth fungi and the habitat it occupied – Bankera violascens (left). First found in nearby Glenmore Forest during an international mycological gathering in the early 1990s, the Deeside location is currently, the only known UK site. Sa
dly, the Forestry Commission weren’t aware of the importance or the location of the Glenmore site before the Norway spruce trees were felled, and, without the tree cover and the mycorrhizal tree root association, the fungus can no longer be found. Conversely, on Deeside with awareness, the Sitka spruce trees local to where the fungus grows are being left un-managed to ensure its continued presence. The weather for the run over the tops didn’t look too bad, though heavy showers were a possibility. A visit to something so rare deserves an outing for the “big” camera, so after parking the car by the Deeside road I loaded the camera bag and tripod onto my back and made my way up the hill with a calling jay not far away. Was that a distant sound of thunder? Probably not. As I reached the site about three-quarters of an hour later, light rain started to fall, so very quickly camera, tripod etc was assembled and a few photos taken of the fungus and the track bank (right) on which it was growing. By now the rain was becoming serious and the umbrell
a was erected and waterproofs donned. With the umbrella protecting the camera bag full of gear I had a quick look around the track and managed to find a new tooth fungi for the site Sarcodon squamosus (Scaly tooth). As the rain got heavier there was a clap of thunder right overhead – time to make a swift exit, and, to try and shelter the less-than waterproof camera-bag, I had to carry it on my front so the tiny walker’s umbrella could keep the worst of the rain away! The most thunderous welcome I have had yet on Deeside! Visits to a couple of mature local spruce woods failed to find any additional sites.It was the next butterfly transect walk that produced the biggest s
urprise. Something I had seen on an earlier visit had casually been recorded as Devils tooth as I pushed on with the butterfly count. On this visit though the Devils tooth identification didn’t ring true so I took a few photos (left) and a small sample to check once home. The edge of the cap of the sample collected told me immediately that I was looking at something unusual in that it had a slight blue hue, and once home it looked like I was dealing with Hynellum concrescens, a species only recorded once before on Abernethy. Once again the identification was confirmed by Martyn, and another piece was added to the tooth fungi jig-saw puzzle as the sample was sent off for full DNA analysis.By the end of August the Garten ospreys had departed and there were l
ots of swallow families whizzing about overhead. The last willow warblers, spotted flycatchers and tree pipits were recorded and as I wandered the tracks there were lots more jays around than I have ever heard before. A visit to the Garten bog to look for orchids wasn’t in vain as I came across that brilliant bog resident the raft spider (Dolomedes fimbriatus) floating on the surface of the water. Towards the end of the month I received an interesting email from BSBI County Recorder Ian, about a plant I have spent quite a bit of time looking for this summer – hairy stonecrop (left). He had spent a little time like myself, visiting the approximate location of one of the old records and he didn’t just find one or two plants like 
me, he found hundreds, showing, to a degree, how it may have grown in the past at the other sites. This I had to see and though the growing season for the plant was well advanced, there were a few flowers still present. So there I was, camera on tripod and bum in the air when I hear a voice behind me asking if I’m alright. Obviously someone wandering around in a slightly unusual area had got the local gamekeeper worried. He was probably more worried by what he found I was really up to!Finally, the camera saga came to yet another end late in the
month. Out of focus pictures, a fault with some of the manual settings I had had enough and, once again, the camera was returned. Quite sad really because the camera took great portraits and landscapes but, for close ups I was always cursing. So, if you take lots of close ups steer clear of the Coolpix P7000 well at least until Nikon make the spot focus work properly. The replacement this time has taken me back into the SLR world with the compromise being the Nikon D3100 coupled with their brand new 40mm macro lens (right). Almost twice the price but at least I am back in control and you can even turn that bit on the lense to focus. No doubt you will see some of the output over the next few months.All the best
Stewart & Janet
Abernethy Highland Games sales team
A vertical SSSI in Lancashire
Loch Garten landscape via Coolpix P7000
All photos © Stewart Taylor apart from the pine martens
