g from the Roman period. Lime kilns were built to convert limestone (calcium carbonate) to quicklime (calcium oxide), by burning it. The burning process drove out carbon dioxide leaving calcium oxide in the form of a powder – quicklime. By adding water to it in a controlled manner (a dangerous) process called “slaking”, the quicklime was changed to calcium hydroxide used in the construction industry for mortar, plaster and lime-wash. In its “un-slaked” state the quicklime was taken out onto the fields and spread evenly before being harrowed into the soil, “slaking” naturally with time. Adding quicklime to fields reduced the acidity of the soil, increasing fertility by allowing absorption of nitrates like those contained in animal dung. So what has this got to do with Taylor’s diary? Well, a lime quarry was mentioned in the last diary and, the more I have been enquiring about these archaeological relics, the more are turning up. In this general area acidic soils predominate so in the 17th Century if local folk could find a small 
or large outcrop of limestone or base-rich rock, they would quarry it, burn it, and spread the resultant quicklime on their fields. Today, the limekiln structures can be found in many places, and with a bit of searching, or help from geologist friend Donald, the source of their limestone can usually be found. The small quarries on Laggan Hill were the ones visited in the last diary, but Donald suggested there were many more to the west, so, on the next available day, I headed once more up the hill to the quarries at Upper Finlarig, and wow, they were huge and there were lots (right), several days-worth of searching would be needed to see what plants and li
chens could be hiding there. It took four visits over four part days to systematically work my way through the now mostly vegetated quarries. There was just a chance that something might be lurking in the grassy quarries and sure enough more locations for quaking grass were found. Despite this being November, dove’s-foot cranesbill (left) was still in flower, as was thyme, milkwort and in a couple of water-filled quarries what looked like iris leaves turned out to be branched burr-reed (Sparganium erectum) and even a couple of these had fresh seed heads. The best quarries for lichens were those with a bit of exposed rock and in 5 of these, the rare Solorina spongiosa lichen from the last dairy was found and in the base-rich water of one lochan mare’s tail (Hipperis vulgaris) was emerging from the water. On the way in to the quarries a strange tall plant with big round seed-heads and huge, dock-like leaves turned out to be Tibetan cowslip (Primula florindae) an escapee from the garden of the “big hoose”. I thought one of my best finds was a section of rock full of fossils but thankfully Donald was able to let me down gently by explaining that these rocks were too old, around
700 million years, and were formed about a 100 million years before most structural life-forms wandered the earth. Amazing, and puts my 65 years on earth into perspective. What I had actually found was probably dolomite crystals but in an unusual string form which lead me to thinking they were fossils. Dolomite was often deposited by hot fluids mobilised by the earth’s mountain building process all those years ago. Something more mind boggling is that the earth is thought to be about 4,600 million years old, time to stop! A little blue blob on the geology map lead me off in a different direction and as a thank you to Donald I found a new tiny limestone quarry along with its very own kiln. Amazingly this little quarry was home to the other Solorina lichen S. saccata and, can you believe it, a MIGRANT hoverfly by the name of Scaeva pyrastri.410 tonnes and what do you get? Well, in this case, a huge hole in the ground for the bits of the wind turbine that you don’t see, and a part of the process that I feel few folk are aware of – the scale, that is. Most of the objections to the sprawl of these monsters across our landscape are for the bit that you see for miles around (and for all the other problems unearthed see Concerned About Wind Turbines at http://www.cawt.co.uk/index.php ) and there is little mention, if any, about the groundwork’s required to hold up the tower and blade. As you know from an earlier diary (Come back Nellie May 2010) I was involved in carrying out an independent bird surveys of the site of a wind-farm proposal, close
to daughter Laura’s house, for the local residents objecting to the proposal. Despite the Planners turning down the application, the farmer had appealed and I was back over to lend support for the visit of the Reporter, who was tasked by the Scottish Government with looking at the appeal. Whilst there, Laura asked if I had seen the work being carried out nearby on the base of a soon to be installed turbine, the scale and engineering of which was completely mind blowing. Inside a hole in the ground had been arranged 65 tonnes of steel reinforcing rods and the site was just about ready for the first pour of concrete – 53 wagons of the stuff would be needed – amounting to 345 cubic metres or a whopping 700 tonnes! Just in case the figure is queried it was derived using Google figures a maximum of 2.5 tonnes/cubic m or a minimum of 1.7 tonnes/cubic m, the average of the two was used. Installing the turbine to cut down on CO2 emissions means the turbine has to work for quite a while to pay its way. Best figures found via the internet shows that to make 1 cubic metre of concrete 190 kilogram’s of CO2 is produced and to make 1 kilogramme of steel, up to 2.5 kg is produced. So, excluding the tower and the blades and the energy used to dig and fill the hole and deliver the concrete the CO2 produced = 228,000 kg or 229 tonnes (on figures from 2007)! The companies installing the turbines and the folk whose land they are built on are often quoted as saying “the sites will be returned to their previous state once the 25 year FIT (feed in tariff) payment period is ended. At the end of the project’s operational life the wind turbines would be decommissioned, the principle elements removed, and the site restored leaving little if any trace. The wind turbines would be removed from the site and the foundations covered over with topsoil and re-seeded.” It makes you wonder what Tony Robinson and the Time Team would make of the lump of concrete and metal in a few hundred years time.Thankfully, the work at Firwood in early November required no concrete, was completed in 8 hours, and was producing electricity by the end of the day. I’m talking about solar photovoltaic panels of course, 16 of them, all blending in nicely with the dark blue
of the metal roof, and, on a good day, producing 4-6 kilowatts of power. Installing PV’s though in November is not the best time to harvest the sun’s power with just a month and a half to go until the shortest day. The inverter in the house (DC power to AC power) doesn’t kick in until about 9am and has knocked off by 4pm, so I look forward to ticking off my annual landmark dates, shortest day, Christmas and New Year, birthday in February and then onwards to snowdrops and clocks going forward in March and then lets see what the panels can produce. Thankfully our contract was all signed, sealed and delivered a couple of days ahead of the criminal act of this coalition government when they announced 
that the Feed in Tariff, with six weeks warning to the renewables industry, would be cut by half on the 12 December. Okay, the tariff level of 43 pence per unit was set a bit high to tempt folk to invest in the scheme, but to cut the level in half with so little warning will result in massive financial losses to those small to medium businesses that have done exactly what the government has been asking them to do by investing in new industries and employing lots of people. Already the solar industry is laying off huge numbers of trained staff, adding to the dole queues and proving what many folk knew couldn’t be true when Cameron and Co stated they would be the greenest government ever! A bit like many of their other promises I’m afraid. Sorry, this is the season of goodwill, and I’ve stepped down from my soap-box, but thankfully for now, I am just so glad my money is stuck to the roof rather than stuck in the bank.Early in the month, and in brilliant weather, we made our trip to
the NTS Haddo House Christmas Fair. All Janet’s hard work over the last few months was put on display and the mix of colours from the tweed bags, robins, Scottie dogs and of course, Dammit Janet dolls (left), looked stunning. The stall was set up on the Friday evening and from the doors opening to visitors on the Saturday morning until their close late on Sunday afternoon, there was a steady flow of shoppers to the stalls. Th
ankfully daughter Laura was on hand to help which allowed me to disappear off into the surrounding countryside to see what was to be found. The grounds of Haddo were given a good search last year so I headed off towards the coast but on the way I passed through an ancient bit of mixed woodland with a small burn running through it. I thought it was worth a quick look but ended up spending a few hours there. Whilst checking a few beech leaves for galls, I could hear splashing from the burn behind me, and on turning round expected to see a mink hunting through the water. No mink but more splashing so I crept closer to have a look and as I did so it dawned on me that the splashing was probably caused by a fish and being early November, that fish had to be a salmon! Sure enough as soon as I could see the water there was the distinctive tail and fin out of the water as the female fish splashed around creating the gravel “redd” in the burn bed in which she would deposit her eggs, ready for the male to fertilise. The wee camera with its fixed, 40mm lens wasn’t really able to show what was happening, so I watched for a while before wandering off down the burn to check a few ancient alders for green shield moss capsules or the alder tongue fungus when I came upon more splashing, in fact at any obstruction in the burn there seemed to be salmon splashing about. At one location the salmonwere right below my feet so I tried the video facility on the camera which worked quite well. Quite an amazing experience and totally unexpected. Back at Haddo there were still lots of folk visiting all the stalls so I just had time to have a wander out past the house and round the loch as the sun was starting to depart for another day. At the top of the loch I spied a few old, well grown alders and to provide a fitting end to an interesting day, there were several alder cones blowing raspberries at me – a brand new site for the alder tongue fungus and quite a way from any previous find. So, a good couple of days and Janet had at least covered our petrol money.
Back home news filtered through about several bean geese having being seen in the Insh Marshes area, but I failed to find them, with the same result when possibly the same geese turned up at Broomhill, just outside Nethybridge. Whooper swans,
greylags and mallards feeding in cereal fields though weren’t too bad a consolation. During the month I was involved in making a bunk bed (right) with ladder for daughter Ruth, and as I was knocking off at half-nine one evening, I thought I should fill up the seed feeders for the birds for the following morning. As I rounded the edge of the chalet I was aware of something scampering about and running up the hawthorn bush by the squirrel box feeder. As I froze the automatic outside light knocked off casting me into darkness but I was sure that whatever I had disturbed was still in the bush and sure enough a little while later something started to growl at me. This went on for about a minute before I was aware of the animal descending from the bush and heading off, along the ground, and into the woods beyond. I’m only guessing, but I think this is the first time I have been growled at by a pine marten!Around the same t
ime I heard that the time had arrived for the pylons, running close to the Speyside Way, to be felled and removed from site. The cables had been removed about a month earlier but now the contractors were back to finish off the job and this was something I had to see. Just 3 people were undertaking the work, one man on a converted Hymac digger and the other two doing the cutting and felling work. At each pylon a wire hawser was attached close to the top of the structure and the other end to the arm of the Hymac. All the metal-work around the two pylon legs closest to the Hymac was cut (left), leaving the section of the L girder nearest the Hymac untouched. The hawser was then tensioned and the two gu
ys cut right through the two legs furthest away from the Hymac. A gentle pull on the hawser and the pylon started its journey down to earth with the two bits of uncut girder gradually bending, controlling the fall and stopping the bottom of the pylon from flying up into the air. The bent girders were then cut to sever the structure and the Hymac, complete with metal cutting jaws dismantled the pylon into sections suitable for extraction from site later in the week by helicopter. Finally, the cutting jaws were replaced by a digger bucket and the four concrete leg bases b
uried in the ground. A few days later the same guys were back on site working as ground crew, attaching the cut sections to the hook at the end of the cable slung below a PDG helicopter. All the sections were then taken to a central site for cutting into smaller sections before being deposited into a couple of huge trailers ready to be transported from there to a recycling yard up on the coast at Portsoy. Quite a slick operation, 8 pylons felled and removed from site in 5 days. Now all that needs doing is for Google Earth to re-photograph the site and for the Ordnance Survey folk to amend their maps. And for the tree-less ex-powerline wayleave running through Abernethy? Who knows, trees will eventually fill the gap, but perhaps parts of the wayleave could be kept tree free to benefit the many wood ants already nesting there, particularly the rarer narrow-headed wood ant (Formica exsecta) which has developed a particular liking to these linear gaps in an otherwise wooded landscape.Enjoy the read
Stewart & Janet
Sunset over Haddow House
Highland Biological Recording Group 25th Anniversary, 5 Chairmen, 1 Secretary and Stephen Moran who made it happen
Rynettin sunset (again!)
All photos © Stewart Taylor
