well. Now that’s something that doesn’t happen everyday. So, in preparation for the family gathering late in the afternoon of the 31st, I went for a quiet walk down on Tulloch Moor, mainly for the fresh air but always with an eye on what there might be to see. My last decent bird record for 2011 was a black grouse male out in the birches, and, with the weather being quite mild for late December, a couple of wood ants were actually out on the top of their nest, very odd. One birch tree at the end of the track was covered in the less than spectacular lichen Cetrina sepincola, but on the same twigs was another lichen which I thought I had seen on the British Lichen’s website, Melanelia septentrionalis (no, I can’t pronounce the names either! but see left). The books said that this lichen was a bit of a Cairngorms speciality, so I thought it worth checking out. Sure enough, it looked like the website photo but just to be sure I thought I would put the picture on iSpot (http://www.ispot.org.uk/node/242502 ), though the site now shows a few photos as I added to the original ID request to help the expert dealing with my request. The photos covered the two species mentioned above. The experts suggestion was that all the lichens were C. sepincola but I wasn’t so sure and a later second opinion confirmed my thoughts and indeed the lichen was the “rarer” species. I arrived back at Firwood just as the gang had gathered and, with a few bottles of bubbly keeping cool outside the backdoor, we were set for a good evening as we saw in the New Year.New Years Day morning was crisp and sunny so before lunch we all had a walk up the road and along a bit of the Speyside Way, with Finlay accompanied by his red caterpillar shaped balloon. We waved everyone of
f about mid-afternoon, before nipping down the road to “first-foot” Bill and Rita. The next few days were a mix of a bit of babysitting for Ruth, an interview with my old local paper the Accrington Observer, and replying to lots of emails from friends and ex-work colleagues re the award. During this time a pain in my right hip, which had been on the go since early December, was getting worse despite the daily application of Pernaton cream, but, with a few “target” species in my mind to try and find, I plodded on in the hope that gentle exercise would help. Two of the target species grew on willows and came about as “species to look out for” after my find of the spring hazelcup fungus before Christmas. However, my gentle walk (!) to a brilliant bit of ancient willow woodland near Dulnain Bridge soon degenerated into something more physical as I came across a sheep with its head stuck in a rylock fence. If the sheep had had the sense to go into reverse rather than panic and keep pushing, I wouldn’t have had to intervene. With deep muddy hoof-mark holes on one side of the fence and very heavily grazed vegetation on the other, it was obvious that the sheep had been there for some while, and sore hip or not, I would have to pull the sheep out. Ouch! This group of willows are brilliantly big; many of the trees are on their sides but still well alive, all providing lots of niches for mosses, lichens and fungi – a real hidden gem. Despite the early frost, the sun had come out and a few robins and coal tits were si
nging away. There are more ancient willows here than at the site I found in Glenmore last year but size and quantity isn’t everything, and none of the important Lobarian lichens, so prolific at Glenmore were found here. The funny brown jelly fungus Exidia recisa was everywhere on the dead willow twigs but the fungus I was looking for, the brilliantly named Scarlet Splash wasn’t to be found. But, as I keep saying, when looking for one thing something else usually turns up, and when I came across a brown jelly fungus as above but growing on fallen birch twigs, a light went on in my head about a request last year on the Highland Biological Recording Group website, asking folk to look for something similar (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/LatestFiles/Exidia.pdf ). I checked the website once I got home and sure enough the jelly fungus was Exidia repanda, something I’d not looked for before. Could the distribution map on the website really be true, with only a couple of known locations in this part of Scotland, or was this going to be like the earlier “rare” lichen, and an oversight because of a lack of folk in the winter looking for it? Read on!To test out my last thought I decided to visit the damp birch woodland at Rynettin in Abernethy Forest and on the first birch tree that I visited there were a group of brown jellies on a dead twig, a doubling of the number of dots on the distribution map in a couple of days for this part of Scotland. Most birch woods I have visited since have also produced rec
ords so the map is slowly filling up. A big problem with recording species which emerge in winter is that the keener folk who know quite a bit about plants and fungi (lichens and most mosses can be identified throughout the year) is that they, like some of our birds, are summer visitors, recording species whilst on holiday. In an effort to try and overcome this problem Scottish Fungi (http://sites.google.com/site/scottishfungi/ ) and the Highland Biological Recording Group (http://www.hbrg.org.uk/ see TRY) have suggested species for folk to look out for, with some success. The Rynettin visit was also very productive wit
h a few black dots on dead but still attached leaves on Salix aurita (eared willow) turned out to be willow tar spot (Rhytisma salicinum) but at the bottom end of the wood came the find of the day if not month – the beautiful lichen Pannaria rubiginosa (above right) on a less than impressively sized willow tree (left). The tree was half dead and leaning at a severe angle, but was covered with this lichen accompanied by Nephroma laevigatum. This was only the second Abernethy reserve site for the Pannaria and the third for the Nephroma, well worth having cold feet with a finds like these and, not to be outdone, a lump of rotting birch close by had a couple of capsules of the green shield-moss. A couple of days later though, this find was trumped. Searching more willows in Craigmore (Abernethy RSPB) for the elusive scarlet splash I ended up in a group of fairly old hazels. To exit the deep gulley I had been in I had to make my way up 
through a group of these hazels and, stopping for a breather, I glanced up into the adjacent mature bush to see the main stem covered in the “other” Pannaria, Pannaria conoplea (right), and after climbing up into the tree to obtain a few photos I hurried home knowing that this could be a good find. Sure enough, the lichen turned out to be new for Abernethy and quite a rare lichen this far east. Brilliant.Towards the end of each m
onth the Times newspaper carries an article on what to watch out for in the coming month in the night-time skies and throughout most of the month of January they mentioned that brightest object high above would be Jupiter. On the 26 January they said that the planet would be quite close to the new crescent moon and that a couple of nights later they would also be joined by Venus low down in the west. So, on the 26th, over an intermittently cloudy Loch Garten, I waited to see the first of these events. One minute the crescent moon was shining brightly only to disappear as Jupiter appeared from behind its patch of cloud, despite the early evening being quite frosty. Momentarily 
both would appear together (left) and the opportunity to photograph the event arrived, but one or other had disappeared again before I could attempt another photo capturing the heavenly event as it was also being reflected on the water of the loch. Time to thaw out. The newspaper was right and a couple of nights later the moon and the two planets shone clearly from a frosty sky, getting even better a few nights later when all three were in a straight line (right), but, by now increasing in distance from each other. Inspired? You can see the whole thing again on 26 February. Sadly cloud obscured another, short-lived celestial event at around the same time, the Aurora Borealis, which, at times, was visible in our area.Mid-month I was a little undecided as to where to explore that day and on the way to making my mind up I popped into Tesco Aviemore to do a bit of shopping. As I wandered the aisles I bumped into caper-man Kenny who asked where I was off to and my location was chosen when I said the rocky bits above Loch an
Eilien. So thanks to Kenny I headed up through the trees to what looked like an interesting rock face. Hmm, crumbly rock, with little ledges covered with a thin layer of soil looked very interesting and before too long something that looked like bright green Solorina lichens were found. The first ones were very young and lacked the distinctive central black “eye” (apothecia) but as I wandered along a few more ledges munching my crackers and cheese and Janet’s home-baked bun (which almost escaped to run off down the hill) I started to find more an
d more of the lichen (left), with all the right features. This was Solorina saccata a lime-loving lichen and the rock outcrop had to be the source of the lime-rich rock which once fed the lime kiln way down below by the visitor centre. As I was approaching the rocks I knew I was roughly in the right area for the old quarry because along the way I was finding plants of wood sage and wild strawberry, plants of richer soils. All the bending and stretching to squint through my hand lens didn’t seem to be helping the sore hip, and I’m not sure that this was the sort of “gentle” walking it had been hoping for. Inevitably, a few days later after a 4” fall of snow had been cleared from the driveway as well clearing a few tracks for Bill and Rita down the road, I had to give up and, armed with a biography of Seton Gordon borrowed from Rita, I took to my bed.The book I had borrowed was “The Life and Times of a Highland Gentleman” by Raymond Eagle, published in 1991 by Lochar. Janet found what was
happening hard to believe, me, lying in bed all day and, reading a book! Once I got into the book I had a job to put it down and at the end of day two I had read it from cover to cover. There’s lots about piping, Seton Gordon was an expert player and a well respected piping competition judge, but all through the book memories and events of my own time in the Highlands were stirred. A few days earlier a letter had arrived from the Lord Lieutenant of Inverness-shire congratulating me on my award. The Lord Lieutenant is Donald Camer
on of Lochiel whose father was a close friend of Seton Gordon, and it was Donald Cameron who loaned me a very precious medal when RSPB celebrated the 50th anniversary of the return of the osprey in 2004. This medal (left & right) was presented to the then Cameron of Lochiel in 1894 by the Zoological Society of London in recognition of his work in trying to save the osprey from UK extinction an event which despite his best efforts, eventually happened in about 1916. Seton did a huge amount of pioneering work surveying and monitoring golden eagles and lugged heavy plate cameras huge distances to take some of the earliest good photos of eagles at their nests. In my first year at Loch Garten in 1976, one of the hottest summers of recent times, Seton Gordon dropped in, unannounced, at the Osprey Centre. He was in his 90th year and was driving himself over to Deeside to meet up with the Royal Family and probably to go on to watch the Braemar Highland Games. He even managed an outing into the Cairngorms with his friend, Adam Watson. I accompanied Seton round the viewing hide and then on to the forward h
ide where the volunteers maintained the twenty-four hour watch. It was a very hot day and the female osprey was on the nest, wings spread, shading the chicks from the sun. This action reminded Seton of a golden eagle he had photographed in possibly the 1920s, doing exactly the same thing under similar sunny conditions and as he left he promised to send me the photograph. Would a ninety year old man in the middle of a long drive remember such a promise? A few weeks later a thank you letter duly arrived and accompanying it was the photo of the golden eagle. As I progressed through the book I was amazed as I turned one of the pages to see the very same photo staring out at me. Golden eagle (left) © Seton Gordon Literary Estate. It was also a great honour in 2007 to be recognised, along with Seton Gordon as one of 36 “Highland Naturalists”. See http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/biography/seton-gordon and http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/biography/stewart-taylordnaturalists.com/biography/stewart-taylor . Amazing.The couple of days in bed helped ease the pain in the butt and
prolonged sessions with the ice pack also seemed to help. Currently, Kirsty the Grantown physio has me on a course of stretching exercises and there is a great improvement to report. Inspired, I wandered along the Explore Abernethy path by the River Nethy and, unable to help myself, I wandered into the fallen alders and leaning willows adjacent to the path. There were lots of the brown jelly fungus hanging from the dead willow branches and twigs but was that something a bit red growing with them? It sure was and at last I had managed to catch up with the scarlet splash fungus (Cytidia salicina right) and it really is just like its name implies – well done Liz for choosing such a truly descriptive name. To see Liz’s write up visit http://sites.google.com/site/scottishfungi/species-profiles/cytidia-salicinaprofiles/cytidia-salicina where a distribution map is also available – again, there aren’t many Scottish dots! 
Being around the house for a few days allowed time to catch up with birds in the garden and throughout the month a brambling (left) has been a regular visitor to the peanut feeder. It stayed around long enough to be one of 18 species counted on the 29th for the garden bird count. The most numerous was chaffinch with 30+ birds, 4 yellowhammers and a single goldfinch added colour and Janet managed to see a treecreeper in the apple tree. At the end of the count the records were forwarded to the RSPB and the BTO.That’s it for another month, enjoy the read.
Stewart & Janet
Starlings were rare in the garden this winter
Loch Garten sunset
Ice covered Cladonia lichen
Sunset Lochindorb
All photos © Stewart Taylor
Golden eagle © Seton Gordon Literary Estate
