The month of June started off with an interesting email giving details of an aspen tree flowering in Aviemore
by the new school building site. Flowers on aspen (left) are quite rare and most regeneration is by suckers growing from underground roots of the parents, so a trip was made to see this special event. If the flowers are rare a spectacular aspen flower parasite (fungus) has to be even rarer, and thereby hangs a tale which I may have told before. In May 2001, the Highland Aspen Group organised a one-day conference covering all things aspen for enthusiasts, land owners, foresters etc to highlight the importance of aspen in the Scottish landscape and for the important range of biodiversity the trees support. Around that time experts were suddenly becoming aware
of many rare species being found on and in association with aspen trees, and the conference was perfectly timed to bring all this information into the public domain. So perfect was the timing that on the evening of the conference Loch Garten osprey staff were gathering in the Heatherbrae Hotel (now closed) to celebrate the hatching of the first osprey egg and as I walked up Dell Road to the hotel I passed a group of young aspens opposite the church, and a few of the trees were flowering. Having a strange mind for remembering odd facts, I was taken back to Ern and Val Emmett’s presentation earlier in the day when they had mentioned a fungus growing from aspen flowers, and there in amongst the seed part of the
catkin flowers were these strange banana-shaped growths (right); could this be the fungus Taphrina johansonii? A catkin was removed and carried carefully to the pub where a matchbox was produced to safeguard the specimen until an expert (Ern) could see what I had found. Amazingly, fungus experts Gordon and Ann were visiting Abernethy and they were meeting Ern and Val the following day when my find was confirmed as the rare Taphrina! To see the full proceedings of the 2001 conference go to http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/kingussie2001/aspen_contents.html . Since 2001 this fungus has only been recorded once by expert Liz over on Deeside see http://www.fieldmycology.net/FRDBI/FRDBIrecord.asp?intGBNum=8871 and the visit to Aviemore sadly, didn’t add another record. It did though produce a pair of mating 2-spot ladybirds (left), a new location for this diddy ladybird.
This wasn’t though, the end of “bananas” growing on trees locally. Following up my common twayblade finds by the River Spey in May I set off in search of a group of 3 that had been found by the Speyside Way
in 2010. As I made my way along the ex railway-line from Grantown I noticed a wee bug on a bird cherry tree and on the leaves by the bug were strange red, gall type growths (right) which were photographed and a sample taken for the microscope if needed. Once home the brilliance of Google again came to my aid as I typed in “galls on bird cherry leaves”, and instantly there it was along with a name Eriophyes padi. Sadly the bug, so far, remains un-named. A couple of days later I was walking the butterfly transect in Tulloch where there are a few
mature bird cherry trees and on checking their leaves, there was the gall. Hanging from the trees were also groups of bird cherry flowers, but with some very strange “bananas” (left) protruding from the flowers, another Taphrina fungus but which one? Asking Google I found that Taphrina padi was the fungus otherwise known as the Pocket Plum gall, a frequently recorded fungus during damp springs – and boy, has it been damp! The twayblades that started this series of new records were still there, 8 young plants, 7 of them with developing flower spikes.
Not content with banana-shaped fungi, April this year was notable for the quantity of the orange “teeth” of fungus Gymnosporangium clavariforme appearing on stems of juniper bushes, and even a wee bush in a flower pot in the garden had some. This fungus appeared in the May 2011 diary and has been commented on before because of its duel fruiting habit. In spring, the orange teeth appear where the primary host juniper occurs, in the scientific world this is known as the “telial” stage. All the books say that the secondary host for the fungus is hawthorn, which has always surprised me because hawthorn is quite a localised bush in this area yet there are masses of juniper bushes infected every year. Perhaps the fungus in its telial stage isn’t dependant on finding its secondary host each year to survive – I don’t know. However, this year, with the
fungus appearing on a juniper bush in our garden and on juniper bushes in Tulloch there would be a possibility of looking for the secondary growths, known as the “aecia” stage, because at both sites hawthorn bushes were present. Well, well. At Tulloch red marks started to appear on the hawthorn leaves in late May and as the flowers changed to berries in early June strange cup-like structures (right) started to appear, covering most of the berries and some of the leaves. A check of the ornamental hawthorn in our garden also had growths and when I checked the internet for photos it was obvious that these cups were the secondary phase of the Gymnosporangium fungus, the cup-like structures being the source of spores which would infect juniper bushes again next year. Amazing. As I was photographing hawthorn berries, Ian, one of the Osprey Centre summer staff stopped to say that he had found a large red-belted clearwing moth (Synanthedon culiciformis) on Tulloch Moor at the start of June, the first record on the reserve since Dr. Harper’s find in 1974! Well done Ian. I have yet to see one despite several searches so to see what this amazing moth looks like go to http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=381 .
The elm wood mentioned in last months diary continued to impress and on the way back from visiting my BTO BBS square nearby, I called in to try and re-find a rust I had found on a wood anemone leaf (each to
his own!). On the way to the location a distant couple of “big plants” caught my eye and as I approached them I knew I was looking at a member of the buttercup family (left) but with flowers yet to open. I took a photo so that I could confirm once back home that I had found a couple of globeflowers. Janet confirmed that my initial ID was correct and when I checked NBN to see how many local records were known I found the nearest site was at my previously visited site of Huntly’s Cave (http://data.nbn.org.uk/interactive/map.jsp?srchSp=NBNSYS0000002692 ), a good excuse for another visit to see if they were still there. After a morning putting the finishing touches to a talk for the Boat Village Hall series at the end of June, I headed off to stretch my legs and descended once again into the gulley below the climbing rock at Huntly’s Cave and, with lady luck on my side, found a couple of plants right away. Searching around for more I found masses of beech fern, red campion, a small amount of herb bennet growing with shining cranesbill and climbing corydalis. Below the steep path by the climbing rock was perhaps the original record site for the NBN globeflower record with 10 flowering spikes and just as I was taking their photo a couple of tourists appeared from the path enquiring if I knew where they could find “Huntly’s Cave”. Sadly I
couldn’t help them because despite my searches I hadn’t seen anything that looked like a true cave. Crossing the burn and heading up the slope on the opposite side to the rock I came across mountain melick grass along with something I hadn’t seen in a long while, a rather sad looking reptile, a slow worm. This legless lizard looked like it had been attacked by something and had scarring all along its body and a rather painful looking hole, with exposed bone, at its tail. Sensing my presence it slowly slithered away to hide under one of the many rocks where I left it in peace. As I clambered about amongst the rock gullies I came upon something that might have had a link to the damaged slow worm, a latrine which would have had to belong to a pine marten or a wild cat due to its location. Perhaps mammal and reptile had met or perhaps the mammal had young nearby and one of them that had been “playing” with the slow worm, inflicting the damage. The gully was loosing its botanical richness as I headed north above the burn so it was time to tackle the climb back up to the car after another interesting outing.
free drinks being handed out to all and sundry. Then the torch but it was late, and didn’t start its passage until 12.56, no doubt someone would be in for a rollicking! With bus and relay passengers at the front, more vehicles behind, police out-runners and police on push-bikes it really was quite difficult to know exactly where the torch carrier was, and in the blink of an eye torch bearer 038, Sam Macphee from Burghead was past and up the road towards the huge numbers of folk on the main part of the High Street. Time for a swift exit, up a couple of linking side roads, arriving just in time to see the whole cavalcade reach the end of its U-shaped tour through Grantown with torch bearer 040 (039 did the middle bit of the town) Abi O’Grady from Morayshire running the final section. As with all the torch bearers there are stories to tell – here is Abi’s http://www.london2012.com/torch-
relay/torchbearers/torchbearers=abigail-o-grady-1785/ . Within what seemed to
The last visit was made to the farm wader count site on 21st to try to get as accurate a count of breeding success across the site, no mean task with grass growth pretty amazing with all the wet weather. It is nice to report that several families were seen with 1-2 redshank broods, 2-3 oystercatcher broods and possibly as many as 5 lapwing broods. What isn’t so good is that this is the total success over several hundred acres and that all the broods were found in just 3 fields. The wet weather has been a real saviour to these birds meaning that wet areas from April remained wet and remained unmanaged
throughout due to mainly standing water (right). Not too sure how the juvenile birds have coped with the ongoing deluges since the count, but fingers crossed a few made it to flying stage. This has to be one of the most depressing surveys to undertake when an area of this size should be producing dozens of wader chicks and here I am saying that it was nice to report probably a maximum of 10 families. Our “green and pleasant land” is certainly very green, but not very pleasant for any form of wildlife anymore.
June has also been flower counting month, though the count of the brilliant lesser butterfly orchid (LBO) field had been delayed until first week of July to allow the flowers to open, they having been badly held back due to cool, wet weather. Several years ago I recorded LBO’s near Whitewell on Rothiemurchus Estate and
was asked to see if they were still there. The day before I visited a pressed grass fell out of my flower book (as it does regularly!) and telling myself how lazy I had been not to have checked it out since collecting it on the Isle of Lewis in 2010, I did a dissection. Combining microscope and the book ‘Grasses of the British Isles’ arrived at the name marsh foxtail (Alopecurus geniculatus). Next day, under leadened skies, I headed off to Rothiemurchus in search of LBO’s. I parked the car and had a wander round in sodden grass and found a few small white orchids (left) which are also known to be at the site. So, I was distracted as usual quite early into my visit, and started to search the wider area around the small whites just in case there could be a few LBO’s hiding there. There wasn’t, but there were more small whites. Eventually I arrived in the general area where I had previously seen the LBO’s, even remembering a few of the features from my earlier visit, but despite a wide-ranging search, none could be found. However, more and more small whites were found so
my objective changed and I spent a couple of hours wandering back and forth searching all suitable sites. At one stage I ended up on a badly rutted and water-filled track where a grass suddenly looked very familiar and for the second day in a row I was looking at marsh foxtail (right), this time in full flowering glory – well it looked good to me! Once home I totted up all my GPS locations for small white orchids and was amazed when the total came out at 89 flowering spikes, perhaps one of the better counts for this site. I finished the day doing something I hadn’t done since I was living in Lancashire some 39 years ago – visit Lewy’s barbers shop in Aviemore to try out a hair and beard trim in preparation for a very special day in a couple of weeks time.
That's it for another month
Enjoy the read
Stewart & Janet
Bikeathon Kingussie for Leukaemia Research
Honey bee visiting broom
Large red damselfly
All photos © Stewart Taylor
