They floated high o’er yonder hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of dark coloured butterflies,
Beside the track, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. (With apologies to W. Wordsworth).
I’m not too sure how the Times newspaper managed it, but their campaign for sunshine and dry weather for the Olympic Games worked (in the main), the spin-off being that some of the same weather reached the Highlands. This was good news for the late summer emerging butterflies, the main beneficiary in this part of
the world being the Scotch argus (left), the most common butterfly in most years during the month of August. Despite the poor weather between April and July, most Loch Garten butterfly transects were walked but with few species emerging in any numbers. Thank goodness for green-veined whites I say, without which there would have been little to record, but with the arrival of a bit of sun, a few ringlets put in a late appearance along with some small heaths. Small tortoiseshell, common blue, large heath and meadow brown were also occasionally seen. But it was the transect, walked on the 12 August after several days of good weather, that drove me to
poetry(?). Scotch argus were recorded in almost all 11 sections of the transect with the 3 sections associated with Tulloch Moor being the most spectacular. The road section produced 109 butterflies, the moor track section 72 and the moorland habitat section back to the road 102! Despite there only being 72 on the track section it was this area that was most amazing with butterflies taking off from the ground and forming mini clouds as I walked along the track corridor through the trees, clouds of butterflies being something not often experienced on this particular transect. In all, 297 Scotch argus butterflies were recorded, the highest single count in the transect’s thirty-five year history and higher than most year’s annual
total! The butterfly transect also provided records of six-spot burnet moths, a superb bee-mimic hoverfly
(Arctophila superbiens) and another record of the spiked shield-bug (
Picromerus bidens above
right
). More
unusual was a wee fly identified by Murdo as (
Tryetoptera punctulata left
) the snail hunter fly. I wasn’t too sure why this wee innocuous looking fly could be a snail hunter so while it remained captive in its jar I lifted a few plant pots in the garden and found small snails which I introduced into the jar. The fly initially hopped onto a snail’s shell and had a slow ride round the jar, but there was no attempt to do anything to attack the snail. The fly did though spend a bit of time on one of the snail’s slime trail and appeared to be feeding there so perhaps this is what it “hunts” for? Both fly and snails were released unharmed. As I type there is just one more butterfly transect to complete (1 of 26 between April & September) so it will be interesting to see what the overall picture for the year will be like – more about that next month.
Janet has had a busy month with craft sale events with two Farmers Markets, the local Abernethy Highland Games and stock to a couple of local shops. Amazingly the outing to the Grantown Show was in dry conditions this year compared to the mud bath of 2011, and the Olympic weather also prevailed for the
Highland Games, all good news for the event organisers ensuring enough income for next year’s events. Once the tents had all been erected for the Grantown Show and the stock delivered to Janet’s tent it was off up the road towards Forres to check out an old, large limestone quarry on the Altyre Estate. Botanical recorder Ian had alerted me to its existence after he had lead an outing there a month earlier to look for some unusual plants, so with lichens in mind I was quite keen to see what might be there. If I had managed to check the maps properly I would have found a clue to the quarry’s existence as it just happens to be in a wood called Limekilns Wood next to a house called Limekilns Cottage, so, with the car parked by the main road I wandered along the track towards the quarry. The woodland and vegetation in this area, despite only being about twenty-five miles from Nethybridge, is a mixture of oaks and birch with adjacent productive conifer forest and clumps of brambles everywhere, something quite rare nearer to home. A patch of Sitka spruce to the left of the track was marked for thinning and was displaying a typically needle carpeted forest floor almost devoid of any vegetation, but every so often I could see clumps of fungi which would need to be checked. However, a
lady was approaching walking her dog so I decided the last thing I should do was disappear off into the trees, so this would be something to check on the way out. The quarry, according to the map, was set back from the track so I had to pick the right spot to push my way through the birches and conifers to find a way in, but, having picked a likely spot I was lucky enough to walk right onto the old kiln that would have been used many years ago to burn lime (see an earlier diary re this process). Impressive walls of crumbly rock just ahead indicated I had found the quarry and the first plant of note was twayblade so a quick GPS location was taken just in case Ian had missed these plants on his earlier visit. About twenty plants were seen in total, but, not wanting to be
distracted from my main reason for the visit, I headed for the rocky outcrops. My initial hopes of large areas of exposed rock being home to lots of lichens were soon dashed as most of the rock was in a very soft and crumbly state, far too loose for lichens to become established and though all sections were visited, nothing of note was found. All around though were speckled wood butterflies, a real rarity close to home, and a strange orange collar-like growth on stems of grass looked fungal and turned out to be the choke (
Epichlöe typhina above left). So, back on the track, and aware that I would be needed shortly to help Janet pack up, I headed back to the Sitka plantation to quickly check the fungus growing on the plough-lines. The first group of fruiting bodies had the appearance of something I see quite regularly in Loch Garten pinewoods but when I picked
one and turned it over I was greeted by spiny teeth not gills, so time for a quick head-scratch. With all the work on tooth fungi in Abernethy over the last few years this fungus should have been easy to identify but it didn’t look quite right for any of the 14 regular species I had encountered. It did look a bit like the Drab Tooth (
Bankera fuligineoalba above right) but without all the usual pine needle debris stuck to its cap. As I looked around there were quite a lot of fruiting bodies so a few photos were taken (below right) along with a couple of samples to check once I returned home. Back home, after dismantling the Farmers Market en route, I set a couple of the fungus on glass slides to allow a spore print to be obtained (left), whilst also checking books and fungi websites. I stuck with
Bankera being the species but was heading in the direction of
Bankera violascens, a rare species in the UK and a fungus I had travelled to Deeside to see the previous summer at its only currently known UK site. Help! Next morning, the spore print was white and the spiky spores were of
the right size so time to send copies of photos off to a couple of folk who might be able to help with the correct ID. Initial responses were positive and eventually a sample sent away to be checked also confirmed that I had the right species. A return visit to the wood found over 1100 fruiting bodies, so quite an important site and hopefully my emails to the estate about taking a little care when thinning the trees might pay dividends but, to date, there hasn’t been a response. Despite its rarity the fungus doesn’t have any “legal” protection because it is classed as an introduction growing as it does with introduced spruce trees, so it is down to the estate, knowing what they have in their plantation, to manage the wood as they see fit. Hopefully, some patches might be left un-thinned, but I’m not too hopeful. Back at the car an odd dead something on the road caught my eye which on checking turned out to be a slow worm.
Mid-August so it must be tooth fungi time, but for the first time in five years, not the big Abernethy Forest-wide survey, the previous surveys having provided about as much information on numbers of species, fruiting bodies and distribution as was possible. However, I was keen to know a little more about the distribution of
the recently re-found
Hydnellum gracilipes and when I was asked to check the Forest Lodge access track for tooth fungi species ahead of some major repair works; I thought this a good time to visit a few typical sites along the way. The first quarry that I looked at didn’t disappoint and there, under the curtain of heather was my first new
H. gracilipes (left) site for the autumn, and one of the best photos yet, not a bad start. The rest of the track produced most of the other species from known locations from previous surveys with fruiting bodies of the grey tooth (
Bankera fuligineoalba) displaying the typical ID feature of pine needles stuck to their caps. To help protect the tooth fungi locations bits of red and white tape were tied to the adjacent vegetation so that these important bits of habitat could be clearly taped off to ensure they weren’t damaged during the repair work. Patches of serrated wintergreen flowers were also marked as were all the locations where the green
shield-moss had been found during the 2011/12 growing season. By the end of the month seven new locations had been found for
H. gracilipes not bad for this hidden-from-view species. At one location, by one of the smaller burns running through the forest,
H. gracilipes couldn’t be found but to make up for this an enormous population of the roothole rosette (
Stereopsis vitellina right) was found probably the biggest recorded anywhere to date. Both species are found in very similar habitats, and where the photo of the roothole rosette was taken, unbeknown to me, a single fruiting body of
H. gracilipes had sneaked into the picture (on left in photo above), both growing together probably another UK first!
During August there was quite a bit of crossbill activity locally and, with green cones on the Scots pines becoming fully grown young seeds inside the cones became available to feed on. The first indications that cones are “ripe” is seeing the apple core like stumps on the tracks where squirrels have stripped off the cones bracts to access the seeds. Crossbills on the other hand prise open the bracts and use their crossed beak mandibles to extract the seeds before dropping the damaged but intact cones to the ground. On a visit to Loch Mallachie and Loch Garten to count tooth fungi I was sure I could hear cones being opened by
big-billed crossbills with just a hint of very quiet song from the feeding flock of about ten birds. The clatter of cones being dropped confirmed my thoughts and, with very quite song continuing, I wondered whether this would be the start of an attempt at autumn breeding. In the past, quiet singing males in spring have lead me to finding nest building females close by, and though the birds by Loch Mallachie were in a flock, perhaps this was the start of courtship behaviour by one of the males. Many years ago, when again a decent autumn cone crop was developing I managed to find a pair of birds nest building in the middle of October, and though the seeds are much harder to extract from immature green cones, with a good crop there is every chance that young could be reared successfully at this time of year. I didn’t get the chance to watch this nest regularly after the nest was built so can’t comment on whether it was successful or not. A bit of time was also spent late in the month looking at a mixed oak/birch/aspen wood near Aviemore for lichens, plants, bees and insect galls to help the local conservation group build up a picture of its importance due to some of the woodland being threatened by a planning application. It’s quite amazing that you drive past a woodland for years without actually knowing how good it is for biodiversity and it is only when it’s at risk
that you start to appreciate its importance. One of the rarer aspen lichens has been found along with a very rare solitary bee and, as the oak and aspen leaf galls are starting to appear there may be a couple of firsts for this part of the world (one being
Eriophyes diversipunctatus right). A couple of weeks ago the headlines in the local paper stated that the go ahead had been given to a planning application to create a “new” nature reserve close to the middle of Aviemore when ironically ancient oaks could be felled along with some aspens and some brilliant flower-rich areas destroyed by a development a few hundred metres away. I have less and less faith that the National Park Authority have a clue about nature conservation priorities in this area and it will be interesting to see which way the jump when they consider the implications of this planning application. In my mind it remains the Cairngorms National –anything goes – Tourism and Housing Authority, fit the Park bit in anywhere you can.
Late in the month the Harley Davison “Thunder in the Glens” rally once again descended on Aviemore with the usual “ride out” taking place on the Saturday. The noise of bikes gathering in Aviemore on the Friday evening could be heard as distant “thunder” when I visited Loch Garten, and with the press reporting up to 3,000 bikes for this year’s event the boost to the local economy by this event must by huge. The ride out this year was going to follow the route used in 2011 when I took grandson Finlay to see the bikes, but got the route close to Grantown completely wrong, so was too late to see the spectacle of the bikes passing
Lochindorb. The loch is famous for it castle on a wee island in the middle of the loch which was once occupied by the Wolf of Badenoch, an evil local titled character who terrorised the area during the late thirteen hundreds (see
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/s/alexanderstewartbuchan.html ). The ruins of Elgin Cathedral and Pluscarden Abbey remain today as monuments to his cruel and murderous ways. I digress. So, with plenty of time to spare, I arrived at the loch in time to work out a decent vantage point for photographs and to point out a fishing osprey to a group of picnicking locals who had travelled to the loch to watch the Harley spectacle in an old Macbraynes bus. For a good twenty minutes before the bikes arrived you could hear their distant rumble and once they did arrive, complete with police escorts, it took three-quarters of an hour for them all to pass. Quite a spectacle but a bit of a waste of energy by what looks like a group of aging Rockers! As the crowds departed I had time to check out the small conifer plantation by the loch before heading home.
Holidays in Lancashire and time checking galls on tree leaves before they fall has delayed this production so sorry we are a bit late but do enjoy the read
Stewart & Janet
Janet and grandsons on Strathspey Railway
Common hawker dragonfly emerging
Common hawker dragonfly emerging an hour later
Fresh alder tongue fungi (Taphrina aldi)
Photos © Stewart Taylor except crossbill © Dick Manning
