We arrived home from the big day in Edinburgh at 7.30pm still trying to take in the events, sights and scenes of the day to be greeted by the cat wanting to be fed and a message on the phone confirming the lesser butterfly orchid count at Glencairn would definitely take place the next day. The local paper, the “Strathy”, had also been in touch asking if I had a photo of the day for the Thursday edition of the paper. Thankfully, the one kindly taken by the Queen’s Piper of our family group fitted the bill and was dispatched by email. Finally, a few garden canes were “borrowed” from Janet’s garden supplies and my box of red and white marker tape dug out from the garage. Tape and canes would be made up into a series of line transect markers for the orchid count and, expecting a reasonable number of orchids to be present, I remembered to pop my hand-tally counter into my pocket. Back to normal then!
Next morning I met up with Andy, the Rare Plants Project man from the Cairngorms National Park, and in
hot but damp conditions the 2012 LBO (lesser butterfly orchid) count started. It was obvious from the first line transect counts that numbers would be down on last season and by lunch-time we were at about 600 flowering spikes. On some line counts we were also seeing quite a few small white orchids, but these would have to be counted separately on another day. With a bit of sun appearing during the afternoon a few six-spot burnet moths started to appear, buzzing around the fragrant orchids along with a couple of small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies. As I counted the open birch-wood section I noticed several birch leaves lying on the ground, full of lots of similar sized holes, a bit like someone had been seeing how many holes they could get in each leaf with a hole-punch. Unusual, and I didn’t have a clue what might be responsible but kept the image in my mind as I completed the orchid count. 970 flowering spikes had been counted, up, surprisingly, from 800 in 2011. In the evening I checked out a local twinflower patch with chalet guests Christopher, David and Anita and in between swatting midges took a few photos of the newly opened “twin” flowers. All around the site were masses of unopened spikes of creeping lady’s tresses orchid (left), possibly one of the best patches I have ever seen.
Towards the end of June I had attempted to count my other LBO site in Tulloch but many of the flowers hadn’t opened and great care was needed not to damage the plants by walking on them; plus they were very
difficult to actually find. However just over 20 were counted, not bad for this particular site and possibly the added grazing the farmer had tried to deploy earlier in the year was paying dividends. Thankfully I had left a small piece of red and white marker tape at each orchid location, a very helpful guide when I returned to the site the day after the Glencairn count because at the first tape I couldn’t find the orchid! At this location it looked like it had been eaten by a deer. I had returned to finish the line transect count, having only completed half the area on the first visit, so this I did before going to check on the orchids marked by tape on the first visit. The count of the second half of the site produced only one more orchid and as I re-visited the tapes, marking the orchids from the first count I found that many of the flower spikes had been “felled”, possibly by slugs. With the very wet weather experienced this summer the grass at this site, despite the extra grazing, was very tall, and the wetness had helped an explosion in slug and snail populations. Possibly the slugs had developed a
taste for LBO stems. Whatever, the molluscs appeared to have had a big impact on the flower spikes; and it was just as well that I had carried out the earlier count. The culprit was then also found in a group of three flower spikes with felled flower stems and black slug still in attendance (above right) munching on one of them. The final count was 24 LBO and 6 small white orchids and in amongst the birch trees there were birch leaves again, full of holes. The very useful HBRG website came to my rescue and Murdo had just posted a “look out for” message about the wee moth Incurvaria pectinea “which makes the leaves look as if they have been attacked with a paper-punch”. A perfect description of what I had been seeing (see
http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Latest.html 21 June). This second visit to the site was also productive in other ways with a spectacular wood tiger moth (left) resting in vegetation along with an emerald moth, probably waiting for the temperature to rise so that they could get airborne on what had been a wet day.
I have to thank chalet guests Sid and Jenny for my next outing. I have often though about a trip to the RSPB’s reserve at Troup Head but had never actually made it, but Sid and Jenny did. Their description of the spectacular sea cliffs covered with seabirds along with good views of breeding gannets tempted me but
when they produced a wee blue flowering plant for identification, I was even more interested. The wee plant was spring squill, a plant I have only ever seen in its seed production phase when visiting South Uist, and though it is known from the Troup Head area, there are no recent records, a perfect excuse for a visit. A check of the BBC weather map showed reasonable conditions with no suggestions of coastal sea mists, and after a morning butterfly transect I set off with tripod and a full range of camera gear to cover close ups of flowers along with distant views of gannets. The car park for the reserve is quite a way from the B9031 (east of Banff) and is accessed through a working farm, so RSPB directional signs were most welcome in pointing the way. The sun was out and the day was warm so boots were donned for the walk from car park to cliffs. However, wellies would
be a must, due to the initial path through long grass, had it been raining. The familiar scent of a seabird colony was soon being picked up along with the calling of thousands of birds, but before I ventured to the edge of the cliffs there was a wee plant to look for, and sure enough, close to one of the paths there were lots of flowering spikes of spring squill, though most of the flowers were already past their best. Common blue and green-veined white butterflies were on the wing but were massively outnumbered by six-spot burnet moths which were everywhere. The square sections of rylock fence running by the cliff-top path were covered in six-spot larval cases showing the site must hold a huge population. The cliff views didn’t disappoint either, the ledges on sheer cliffs toward Pennan were covered with guillemots and kittiwakes whilst the steep vegetated ones to the west were occupied by gannets. So I headed west, assembled the camera and big lens, and settled back to watch
gannets coming and going from their breeding sites. Scanning through the birds there were very few young gannets to be seen and I had heard reports of puffins along these cliffs (not a huge population) had been affected by heavy rain, with some burrows having been flooded. Perhaps the gannets had also suffered at the hands of our quirky summer weather. Down on the sea a couple of small boats were working on lobster pots and from the edge of the rocks to my right a small canoe appeared, the male occupant paddling steadily below the cliffs. I wasn’t sure whether it was the lobster boats coming closer to check the pots at the base of the cliffs or the lone canoeist but suddenly many of the gannets were in the air circling around and it was only now that I was aware of just how many birds were breeding at the reserve – thousands! After an hour or so I
made my way eastwards along the path towards the sheer cliffs, passing big stands of red campion, bird’s-foot trefoil and thyme, all very photogenic. A yellow shell moth flew by and as I followed to try and get a photo I stumbled on a patch of white flowers which initially I noted as white campion or bladder campion. Thankfully my photo allowed the plant to be correctly identified as sea campion (left), not hairy as white campion and without the inflated calyx (the section of the flower behind the petals) of bladder campion. After pointing out a group of puffins on the cliffs to a family from Holland it was off to Banff for fish and chips before heading for home.
The timing of the Troup Head visit had been just about right because for the next week the weather was quite changeable, dull and with regular rain. A couple of potential new sites for lesser butterfly orchids were checked as was the site where the dark-red
helleborine had flowered a couple of years ago – all without success. The Glencairn LBO site was also revisited to count small white orchids with an amazing 400 being found though many were quite small and didn’t look like they would progress to full flowering, and then it was time to pack the cases for our holiday trip to South Uist. CalMac had put the time of our ferry departure from Uig on Skye back by four hours so we had a leisurely drive west, even having time for a stroll around Portree along the way. Lots of shearwaters were seen during the sail and we got to Kate’s cottage (right) before 9pm, just in time for our first short-eared owl fly past (left). A gentle walk from the cottage the next day took in lochans with water lobelia, fields with fewer lesser butterfly
orchids than usual and my first contact with the
Colletes floralis sand dune bee, not to mention the masses and masses of flowers everywhere. The lack of a corn bunting contact was a little odd but we put it down to the wind. A long drive up to a craft fair on Berneray the next day provided us with a nice surprise. A walk along the beach at Clachan on the way back provided me with several new sites for the Colletes bee and when I eventually caught up with Janet she asked if there was something unusual about one of the gulls in the flock on the shore – it was all white! It certainly looked like an Iceland gull and I managed to get a few photos with my wee camera to check once we got back to the cottage. Back at the car we thought it best that I assemble
the camera and big lens and go and get a “proper” photo which the gull was kind enough to let me take. And yes, it was an Iceland gull (right)and not an albino version of another gull. Amazing. We had parked by the cemetery for the walk on the beach, usually a good place for corn buntings but again nothing was seen or heard. The most amazing fact from the day was a count of 9 short-eared owls during our journey up and down the islands. The next days outing to Frobost paid double dividends with both a calling corn bunting and corncrake, but the corn buntings from previous years close to the cottage had definitely gone. Perhaps one of the most memorable outings from the holiday was to Eriskay, the place is just brilliant whatever else happens on a visit to this island but my offer to show Janet a patch of pyramidal orchids (found in 2011) turned out to be remarkable.
At the site there seemed to be many more flowers than in 2011 and so, between us, we wandered back and forth over the wider area and when we finally met up again my notebook entries added up to 770 flowering spikes, about 700 up on the previous year! On the way back to the car we thought a celebratory drink in the “Politician” pub (named after the ship that ran aground on the island carrying a cargo of whisky and which lead to the film Whisky Galore being made) was in order but as we passed the cemetery we noticed there had been a recent burial and we began to wonder if it was the last resting place for a recent TV personality. As we set out on our holiday we had heard of the death of one of the stars of the recent BBC series “An Island Parish”, Father Callum MacLellan. Eriskay was his beloved home island and on the day before our visit his funeral had taken place, attended by hundreds of mourners. As a teenager Father MacLellan witnessed the plundering of the whisky cargo from the grounded Jamaican-bound SS Politician by the islanders in 1941.
On board were 264,000 bottles of the stuff, and, with war-time rationing starving them of their drams, they managed to plunder around 24,000 bottles before the authorities managed to catch up with them. In 1947 Compton MacKenzie wrote his now famous book, ‘Whisky Galore’, based the incident. Even today bottles of whisky from 1941 turn up, one of which can be seen behind the bar of the Politician pub! We would have had quite a job getting into the pub if we had turned up the day before but as it was we had an enjoyable drink with a bit of home baking before heading back up the road.
The next day was the mid-point of our holiday and it poured down. A check of the TV listing showed that the end of the Tour de France would be shown live and it was so good to see Brad win the race, and Cav
win the final days sprint in Paris for A FOURTH TIME! By early evening the rain had almost stopped so I nipped out to a local loch and found mare’s tail and tread-leaved water-crowfoot (left), a first for me in South Uist. As a watery sun was setting two red-throated divers sailed overhead, calling, as they headed out to sea. The next day the video facility on my wee camera proved its worth when I managed to film one of the sand dune bees excavating its breeding hole, leaving the characteristic fanned out pile of sand at the entrance. The sun re-appeared later in the day so I made a dash south to a small “island” (an island only during the highest tides) called Orasay to see if a colony of grayling butterflies still bred there. As I parked the car and made my way
across the sand to the island two strange things happened. I could see a group of people watching something along the shore-line, the group looked like an organised bird-watching tour so I assumed they were checking out the dunlins and gulls following the waves in and out. I said hello as we passed and out of curiosity checked the shore myself because in the distance I thought I could see a small, dark goose. The bird in my binoculars looked like a brent goose (right), an odd bird to be in the Uists in July, so I decided to dash back to the car for the camera and big lens. In doing so I caught up with the birding group and out of curiosity asked if what they and I had seen was a brent goose. The leader who turned round to answer my query was Mike Phillips, a
regular visitor with groups to Loch Garten when I was the warden, and someone I hadn’t seen in years. “Pale bellied brent” was the answer to my query and after a hurried chat I dashed back with my camera to try and get a photo. By now the late afternoon was cooling down and the sun was coming and going so I would be luck to see the graylings, but Mike had assured me that they still bred on the island and that they had seen some about an hour earlier. I spent about half an hour dodging about amongst rocks playing hide and seek with the goose before heading off to look for the butterfly. Sometimes you can get lucky and find one resting, too cold to take flight, but with the natural habit of the
grayling to lay over flat against rocks, this seemed unlikely and proved to be the case. Next day Janet had a bit of a tummy bug so I decided to look for Irish lady’s tresses at a location where it hadn’t been seen for many years, but along the way, I nipped over to Orasay to see if I could catch up with the graylings. A group of swans on a roadside loch looked a little “different” and on checking the third swan (left) was a whooper, not a bad start to the day. I was blessed with regular sun when I got to the island and after a few minutes began to see several graylings flying about before landing on rocks and lying over sideways to lie flat against the rock making themselves very difficult to see (right). The also didn’t like something about my 105mm camera lens because
every time I got close enough to photograph one, as soon as I pressed the button to allow the lens to focus the butterfly was off leaving me with lots of photos of bits of butterfly just disappearing from view! Time to go and look for a few flowers. The old tresses record was from a wettish grazing area adjacent to a big drain and the drain was full of tubular water dropwort flowers one of few locations for the plant in the Uists. There was more mare’s tail in the drain and a wee moth which kept landing on the water in the drain was a moth I found in Abernethy last year, brown china moth. At the approximate area for the tresses I used my Leki poles as guides and walked back and forth across the site looking down at my feet – I just hoped that no one was watching! A tiny single leaf at my feet made me stop in my tracks, mark the location and search the immediate area to see if I could find more, hopefully, with a single flowering stem growing from the leaf. More leaves and then a full plant, confirming that I was looking at a group of adder’s tongue ferns, none more than 30mm high.
And that was my main find at the site, the tresses failing to play ball on this occasion – mid July is, by all accounts, a little early to be searching, but all good fun. I managed to cross the drain before walking the mile or so back to the car along its bank, the highlight of the walk being a corncrake which took off from my feet, stopping me again in my tracks as I looked around to make sure there weren’t any chicks that could be trampled. As the last day of the holiday approached I made contact with a local birder/naturalist to ask about the lack of corn buntings only to be informed that the population had crashed, possibly due to changes in farming practices (sound familiar!). Silage is now the main winter feed for cattle with little seed available for the buntings. Management in some areas is changing again affecting the winter seed food supply. Whilst there we saw one field
converted from a rocky iris rich field to a rock free grassy sward using mini-digger and tractor mounted swipe – what will be growing there next year? The problem though might be deeper than these changes because in areas where field management has been aimed at helping the birds, numbers haven’t recovered and even providing supplementary winter seed feed isn’t having an impact. It will be really sad to loose such an iconic bird, but with such a rapid decline, the writing might be already on the wall.
During our last few visits to South Uist I have been trying to find the parasitic plant, thyme broomrape. There are old records for Eriskay and it has been seen recently on an uninhabited island near Barra. There are now so many sheep on the islands that you get the feeling that unless there are good populations of thyme on inaccessible rocky ledges, the broomrape has little chance of growing. Perhaps the sheep have something to
do with the corn bunting decline? However, a wee bit of information was found about the broomrape surviving on Skye and that was an island we would have to travel through on the way home. It was be a bit of a long shot but would be worth having a short search as we passed the site, a typical crumbly base-rich maritime cliff/hillside, we would just have to hope there were no sheep! So, as Janet made a cup of coffee, the search started, checking for any clumps of thyme on the roadside steep slope (not an actual cliff). Luck was on my side and within twenty minutes 3 flower spikes had been found though sadly, all were past their best, due, probably, to the very dry weather the island had experienced for most of the summer. If only we had stopped on the way out to South Uist, but no doubt there will be a “next time”. So, we arrive home just in time for the start of the Olympics and Danny Boyle’s incredible opening ceremony.
Sorry we are a bit late but enjoy the read
Stewart & Janet
Corn marigold found near Troup Head, new to the site
Swallow feeding young South Uist
Wow! Sunset South Uist
Photos © Stewart Taylor
