this summers bee survey on the 1st went off without a hitch and with Murdo from Highland Biological Recording Group attending I was reminded to keep an eye open for fallen holly leaves covered with a black, spotty fungus appropriately known as Holly Speckle fungus (Trochila ilicina). When the meeting finished I checked the holly tree in the garden and there were the speckly leaves (left) so, inspired, I headed off to Abernethy Forest where I knew of a couple of trees by a track. Along the way I passed an old wood ant nest where the brown shield-moss (Buxbaumia aphylla) had been found in previous years but on this occasion only one capsule could be found. Further along the track the first holly bush, resplendent in a covering of red berries, had the speckled leaves on the ground as did the second bush a hundred metres or so from the track. It was becoming apparent that most holly bushes would probably have the fungus on their fallen leaves, but do beware if you go looking, the holly speckle only grows on the upper surface of the fallen leaves, there is a similar fungus but for this species the black dots appear on both sides of the leaf.On the 2nd I reached a landmark age and qualified for the state pension and
hence became STMBEOAP! This was also the day for a visit to the physio before heading off to see if the treatment was working by continue a general search of a brilliant bit of mixed broadleaved woodland near Huntly’s Cave. A bit more winter botanising produced records for sanicle and a big rosette of the leaves of thale cress. All through February there seemed to have been lots of geese moving about with quite a lot resident in the RSPB Insh Marshes area. This was quite handy for the weekly visit to look after grandson Archie and whilst Janet tackled some household chores for Ruth I took Archie out of the way to teach him a little about his local birds, well, the bigger types. A visit to the relatively new hide at Insh Marshes allowed a view across the frozen landscape to see the distant feeding whooper swans with over 40 in view. A walk along the trail towards Tromie Bridge brought us right up to a group of feeding greylags (right)and, because it was quite cold, they were reluctant to fly off and we were able to get good views and allow Archie to 
learn a new word “geese”. On our way back the farmer was just driving into the field on his tractor with feed for the cows and eventually the geese took flight and flapped and honked overhead, quite a sight. From the log book in the hide we could see that local birder Dave Pierce had been keeping an eye on the geese and one entry showed that over 100 Greenland whitefronts were feeding with the greylags near Dell of Killiehuntly and that between Kingussie and Newtonmore there were 6 bean geese, both quite unusual records for this area particularly as they had spent quite a bit of the winter there. Ruthven Barracks also looked resplendent in the winter sunshine.A few days later the Queen reached the landmark of 60 years on the throne, quite an amazing fe
at and for a change I headed for the bogs in the Garten Wood section of Abernethy Forest. This area will always remain important to me personally as well as to the RSPB as it was the first acquisition of land to add to the original Loch Garten Reserve, the second building block in the creation of the now nationally important Abernethy Forest NNR (map left shows 1st purchase blue & 2nd purchase green in current Abernethy boundary). The year was 1983 and the Society was buying a piece of land which, though part of the bigger Abernethy pinewood, had been managed for the previous 25 years as a commercially productive woodland. In drawing up the fairly basic woodland and habitats map to provide the detail required to value the site and to make a case for purchase, it was obvious to me that much work would be needed to return the area to something worthy of being called a nature reserve. Much of the old woodland had been felled during the two Great Wars and re-stocking had been by planting. Thankfully, this was ahead of the “everything Sitka spruce” era and ploughing all the ground before planting so the area was mostly Scots pine probably from local seed grown in the est
ate tree nursery. The last decade before the sale was the most damaging when the bogs and wet areas in the woodland were seen as waste lands and most within Garten Wood had been systematically drained and Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine planted with little hope in some areas of the trees ever growing into anything worth sending to a sawmill! The important thing to the owners was that they had brought in grant money to do the work. So, for most of the 1980s we worked our way through Garten Wood removing the exotic conifers, thinning the dense Scots pine plantations and, most importantly, and uniquely at the time, 
blocking the forestry drains with log and peat dams. A dam in just the right place could, almost overnight, create a shallow pool over several hectares and now, 25+ years on, the open water has mostly gone but the water is still there now covered with sphagnum mosses and sedges the building blocks of a re-activated peat bog. Located as they are, within the forest, these bogs are correctly called forest mires, a rare habitat in the UK, and are home to a few duck species, lots of dragonflies, perhaps one of the best sites locally for the big Dolomedes raft spider, some unusual sedges and several species of sphagnum moss. In a couple of areas the re-wetting process was just in time to save a population of bog cranberry (Vaccinium microcarpum). The main Abernethy populations of the rare northern damselfly (Coenagrion 
hastulatum) are within these restored sites the most obvious one being the now public viewing site next to the road to Loch Garten and the Osprey Centre. As I made my way in from the road I was presented with a most amazing sight – brand new log and peat dams (above right), adding to those installed in the 1980s and continuing the re-wetting of areas of woodland adjacent to the drains. On the day of the Queens Jubilee there were two other bonuses. By a track I found a moss that Andy at Abernethy had told me about (above right), fragile fork-moss (Dicranum tauricum) with an identification characteristic I am very much in favour of – the leaves break and stick to your finger if you rub the moss (left). Quite a rare moss 
within Abernethy with only two known sites, though often found growing on the top of old fence posts. The second bonus was found on a small willow, again by the track. I stopped to look for an illusive aphid (a Highland Biological Recording Group “find” request) I have spent the whole winter looking for but didn’t find, but there glowing in brilliant scarlet finery was the scarlet splash fungus (right), as found in January, but this time it was in Abernethy and was a new species for the reserve. Brilliant.The fingers have spent a bit of time typing this month with a first draft completed of the write up of five years-worth of tooth fungi survey work in Abernethy in the hope that it might be accepted by the editor of Field Mycology. A shorter note was also completed for the rare breeding birds section of a future edition of British Birds on the recent fortunes of the British wryneck population. This wee woodpecker,
once extremely common in the south of England, and a coloniser of Highland Scotland in the 1970s, is now, sadly, a rare breeder within our shores. So one write up covering something positive and one completely the opposite with the last proven breeding record of wryneck way back in 2002. With the weather being so good (little rain or precipitation here either) it has been quite hard to stay in to catch up with things and so the outings to search some of the lime-rich rock outcrops continued. On one outing to Ord Ban on Rothiemurchus I was in for a bit of a shock when nature decided to fight back! I was making my way across a steep slope above the B970 road and as I strode over a large fallen birch tree I stood on one of its smaller branches. Whack! The branch had snapped and from about ground level had sprung up to hit me square in the face – well, mostly on my nose. For a while as I knelt on the ground all I could see were stars, my face in my hands, not
daring to look what colour they might be. My glasses seemed to have survived but I noticed there was some blood on my hands as I took my glasses off to check them. I got the feeling the blood was coming from within my nose and within a few minutes it had stopped. To check what damage I had done I decided to take my own photograph (above left) and I could see that the branch had scrapped a bit of skin off my nose but the rest seemed fine. I phoned Janet to let her know what had happened and to ask her to get the newspaper as I didn’t really want to go shopping without knowing the full extent of the damage. I hadn’t actually reached the rock outcrop I wanted to check so it was on with the show and I was rewarded by finding a small population of the bright green lichen Peltigera leucophlebia and something new for the area growing at the base of a mature sycamore Leptogium lichenoides. Not sure whether the 13th February had anything to do with the days happenings.Back on safer ground I had a
day wandering up the River Nethy to check a nice area of mature alder trees. As I left the track to get to the river I noticed something quite worrying on the fence ahead, as I could see from a distance that the top wires of the fence had been twisted and knew that this probably meant something had met a nasty end. I’m not quite sure how it happens but I was fairly certain that I was going to find that a red or roe deer had become trapped by a leg where the fence wires were twisted, and sure enoug
h that was what I found (left). In this case it was a yearling red deer and stuck in the twisted wire of the fence was a single hoof (right) with a lot of evidence of quite a struggle on the ground and, a little way from the fence, the well eaten carcass of the deer. I have seen this occurrence a few times on my outings and on one occasion was actually able to release a trapped roe deer from its deadly trap. What seems to happen is that as the deer are leaping the fence they drop, for some reason, one of their legs. The leg drops between the top wires of the fence and the wires twist trapping the leg, usually leaving the deer suspended upside down from the fence to endure a long and lingering death, as i
n this case. Despite this only being mid-February several flies were on the wing and a pair on the fence were mating no doubt the female intent on laying her eggs on the carcass of the deer. So, in natures way of looking at things, the red deer had died but foxes and possibly pine martens and badgers had had a feast, if I had cared to lift the carcass I am sure there would have been a few types of burying beetle and despite there not being blue bottle flies so early in the year, some flies had appeared to ensure their youngsters had something to eat once they hatched out. A buzzard may have also had a feed and no doubt some of the smaller birds would find a few juicy maggots to feed on in a week or twos time all ensuring that the deer had not died in vain.About the same time an email arrived from Colin at the Forestry Commission in Inverness, telling me of a find he had made and would I be interested in seeing it. Whilst checking an area of forest on the shore of Loch Ness for future management he had spied a large dead lump of oak and, having an interest in looking for green shield-moss capsules
(Buxbaumia viridis), had given the fallen tree the once over. Colin is one of the few folk who, having attended a mosses course at Abernethy Forest, has gone on to check out suitable sites for this rare moss. His diligence was rewarded and there on the top of the root end of the huge tree were two bright green capsules (right). I wouldn’t normally have made a trip to Loch Ness to see a green shield-moss capsule but Colin’s find was the first time in the UK that the moss had been found growing on an oak tree so a trip was worthwhile just to get a photographic record of the moss in situ on the tree (left). As management was also planned, Colin was also keen to hear suggestions as to how to minimise damage to the mosses l
ocation. As I parked up close to the site I was amazed by how much hazel woodland there was along the shore of the loch and having been checking out the few trees that occur in the Nethybridge area for fungi and lichens, I knew I would have to spend a little time seeing what might be present at this site before returning home. The oak tree on which the green shield-moss was growing was a real monster, hundreds of years old, and giving an indication as to the type of natural woodland that would have once occupied the site before being “converted” to a productive spruce forest probably between the two Great Wars. After photographing the mosses and log a search of the immediate area failed to find anymore though the holly speckle fungus was found on leaves below a nearby tree. The good news from Colin was that this area was being converted back to a native woodland, which would be predominantly broadleaved trees, and the guidance he needed was how many sitka spruces should be left close to the fallen oak tree to help the moss survive into the future.Immediately I entered the hazels on the other side of the road I could see the l
ong-term value the restoration work on the opposite side would have. The first hazel tree (bush really) I looked at was covered in lungwort lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria) and many of the others had populations of blue crust-like lichens – Parmeliella testacea and triptophylla and on the ground were flowering primroses and new spring leaves of sanicle and woodruff. A group of 3 pale brown dead stems, about a foot tall, from the 2011 growing season though had me puzzled, but did have me thinking that I might have found one of the broomrapes, so a sample and a photograph (right) would be needed to help with checks once I got home. As I drove back over the tops towards Loch Ruthven the setting sun made a brilliant scene with sky, loch and hill-top bathed in a fiery glow. It was 
too early to check Ruthven for returning slavonian grebes and too late in the day to head over the tops to the River Findhorn (eagle alley) so it was home via the A9. The flower books were thumbed through once home and I was convinced that my find was not a broomrape but navelwort (Umbilicus rupestris), almost as rare as any broomrape this far north, so time to contact Ian. “Your plant is bird’s-nest orchid – 100%” came the reply “a good find”. So, from a visit to the quieter eastern shore of Loch Ness I returned monster-less (who doesn’t!) but had had a great day with some nice finds thanks initially to Colin’s efforts.The reasonably mild and kind weather had mistle thrushes singing by 17th, song thrush arrival in Nethy the following day, the same day that
the first blackbirds were quietly singing. I haven’t looked for the local winter raven roost this year but 30 flying over Firwood mid-month seemed to be heading in the general direction of the site used in the last couple of years. 2012 has so far, been quite dry and so it wasn’t unexpected that when the first light rain appeared on 27th the first squashed toads would start to appear on local roads. The following day though, I was surprised to find a nice pool under a group of willow bushes below the A939 Tomintoul road alive with frogs which were heard long before they were seen. There were 20-30 frogs and already lots of spawn and I wondered if it would be possible to video their activities on my wee camera, so, as the frogs dived for cover, I positioned myself on the edge of th
e pool propped up on one of the willows – not very comfortable! One brave frog didn’t move and within five minutes it started to croak. Immediately heads and eyes started to pop up all around the pool and within another five minutes the frogs were behaving as though I wasn’t there and within another five minutes they were hopping all over my wellies (left), probably thinking they were the biggest frogs they had ever met! As my feet started to become numb and my thighs having endured the longest “squatting against the wall” exercise for ski preparation, I gingerly departed the scene. The reason I found the frogs was that as I made my way along a wee burn, I noticed a neat pile of rocks a few metres back from the water-course. Neat rocks can only mean o
ne thing and I was interested to see if the spring trap inside had been set legally. It obviously hadn’t been checked for a long time and the rabbit bait was just fur and bones, and the egg had possibly fermented and exploded. However, the trap had worked and there, hanging from its jaws was a wood mouse – that well known threat to pheasant poults, there being no other “wild” game at this location. Photo taken I replaced the flat-stone lid and headed off back towards the car flushing a couple of “real” woodcock along the way.BST isn’t far away, enjoy the read.
Stewart & Janet
Janet's "Tweedy Bird Brooches"
Hazel catkinds and flowers
Coltsfoot first flower of the year
All photos © Stewart Taylor
