A “galling” month with a house move thrown in

Welcome to our 100th diary entry.

The brain and new microscope were tested at the start of October. Ex-work colleague Andy, had arranged a fungus identification course at Abernethy and I had been kindly invited along. This wasn’t to be a “bums in the air” event, wandering the forest looking for species but a course specifically aimed at learning the more technical aspects of fungus identification with bums firmly fixed on seats. Explanation of the technical nomenclature, the use of species ID keys to get you from what you hold in your hand to (mainly) a positive identification, and the skills required to present the right bit of the fungus, on a glass slide, so that the microscopic bits of the fungus can be checked were the aims of the course. Expert Liz from Deeside was the course leader and my admiration of her rose immensely as with great patience and huge knowledge of all things fungal she lead us through the technically demanding aspects of the kingdom of our greatest group of

natural recyclers. To assist the learning process several fungi had been collected locally. Slowly we learnt how to remove a whole gill from under the cap of the fungus and then slice it into tiny slivers before placing the tiniest of the slivers on a glass slide, adding a drop of water before squashing under a cover slip ready to present to the microscope. This allowed access to the world of cystidia and basidia (2-pronged "growths on right of photo left) and whether the latter were 2 or 4 spored – key to many identifications. Tiny thin “scalps” were also removed from the skin of the fungus caps ,testing our skills with those old fashioned razor-blades, again allowing access to the inner make up of the fungus. Spores were found and measured, again a key requirement when determining the species you are working with. At the end of the two days I was working hard to try and retain many names and features of species we had worked with, just a dozen or so from the many hundreds out there in the wild. All I need now for Christmas is one or possibly more of the technical identification guides, the ones that take you well beyond the popular guides produced by Collins et al. Good as many of these guides are for getting you towards the right family and allowing identification of the commoner species, they are unable to provide the more technical information you need to check with what you are seeing via the microscope. Slowly forward! Many thanks to Liz for a well run course.

In February 2011 I said “never again”, but as the October school holidays arrived, and with grandson Finlay covered in chicken-pox, we were all involved in packing stuff into boxes and moving the contents of one house across the River Spey to another. Ruth was on the move again having found the tiny cottage at Balavil her “perfect place” but just too small with two upwardly mobile boys. So, over two days beds, boxes, freezers, chairs and settees were loaded into a transit van and car trailer and driven round the roads to Insh, overlooking the RSPB Insh Marshes Reserve. The new house is warm, dry and has superb views but so far

has lacked the brilliant displays of leafy tree lichens found across the river, though a few good things have been found nearby and will no doubt feature in future editions of the diary. One last find at Balavil was made when we moved an old armchair which had been stored outside open to the elements. As we lifted the chair, poking from the bare ground underneath was a strange stem-less, pale brown fungus in the shape of a floppy edged cup. I knew it was a member of the Peziza family (Peziza means a mushroom without a stalk) an Ascomycete fungus with no gills. Time to test out the microscope and with plenty of spores, dropped by the fungus onto a glass slide (right), I worked my way through Peziza Key available from the Web (http://www.fieldmycology.net/GBCHKLST/key.asp?KeyID=8 ) arriving at Peziza repanda the Palamino Cup, found, according to the Key, on soil or rotten textiles! Right on both accounts. And with that last find we waved bye-bye to Balavil.

Hard on the heels of the house move came a visit from the grandchildren as Ruth took off to Edinburgh for a couple of days. After a morning emptying the toy cupboards of their contents it was time for an afternoon outing to “Eagle Alley” or Strathdearn where the River Findhorn flows from the Monadhliath Mountains

towards Tomatin. As we got out of the car and were donning wellies Archie said “What’s that?” All around there were rutting stags and Archie had picked up on the sound and was possibly a little worried. We all had a go at being roaring stags but failed to attract any hinds. A distant stag with his harem appeared on the skyline and after much pointing everyone could just about make them out. The massive tumble of rocks by the road, all brilliant for lichens, proved a challenge and eventually we all managed to get on top of one of them. Grandad produced a small football and there was great fun kicking it back and forth as we wandered along the road though we came close to loosing it when one good hoof saw the ball trickle down the bank and into the River Findhorn. Grandad to the rescue and a great save was made before the ball headed off towards the Moray Firth! About 25 years ago we did the same walk when our daughters were about the same age as the grandchildren on this outing and they had a favourite alder tree right by the road which had a hollow centre but with a convenient hole at road level. Dropping stones into the hole was great fun as they emerged

a few seconds later out from the roots. The remains of this tree still survive but the hole has long gone. Checking an adjacent tree with what looked like a hollow centre produced a tin with a message that this was a Geo-cache site (not sure if this is their website http://www.geocaching.com/ )and in the tin were various wee items. We signed to say we had been and returned the tin to its hole. Not sure why folk need to deposit these things all over the countryside (there are thousands) to enjoy a day out, but each to his own I suppose. Just time for a family photo before making our way back to the car when, as usual, Janet shouted “eagle”, and sure enough one glided quietly overhead, heading down river, no doubt towards it evening roost site. The kestrels on the crag above us didn’t react to the eagle passing overhead though I am sure the ravens we saw earlier in the afternoon wouldn’t have been so benign. On the drive back down the glen we caught up with the herd of feral goats half-way up a hill on the opposite side of the river. The aspect of this brilliant area though is under threat from neighbouring estates as you will read later in the diary.

Have you seen them? Robin’s pin cushions on wild roses, oak apples, knopper galls and spangle galls on oak trees and those bright green pea-sized balls on the undersides of willow leaves. Having spent a little of last autumn looking for a few selected galls, mainly on oak trees, I have spent quite a lot of time this autumn adding to my knowledge and expanding my searches to look for specific galls whilst at the same time finding

others by accident. Little did I realise that there is a whole new world out there comprising mites, sawflies and gall wasps. The last diary gave a small insight into what was found during September but with membership of the British Plant Gall Society paid and the purchase of the AIDGAP (Aids to Identification in Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants) assisted book British Plant Galls made, I have been taking home an increasing number of lumps and bumps found on plants and mainly tree leaves for identification. Once you actually start looking you suddenly realise how many wee insects rely on plants to provide a home for some part of their breeding cycle. On one small willow (probably Salix cinerea or close hybrid – yet another world!) there were galls like corsages on the tips of new stems, in leaf buds, in stems and in associationd with leaves! The genus Salix (all willows) supports more galls than any other in Britain although an individual oak will support more than

an individual willow. The book uses quite good keys to lead you to the right species but even here, at the last step to identification there are words of caution that the insect species is poorly understood/recorded and that it might be that species or the gall insect will need to be bred out to confirm ID. So, arriving home with several potential galls I started merrily cutting into them to see what was inside and it was only after finding several were still occupied and I ended up cutting the occupant in half, that a more cautious approach was developed. In most cases this involved opening the gall a little like cutting to peal an orange, scoring round the outside of the gall before carefully prising apart the two halves. And what a lot of surprises then followed. One, on broom pods, revealed a sort of black fungal sack, left behind after the occupant had departed. On some

willow leaves the empty gall was full of “frass”, the chewed up inner of the gall after passing through the gall larva (ie poo). On some of these galls an obvious exit hole was visible but the inside of the gall had to be checked to see if the frass was present (one species) or not (another). My first encounter with life in a gall came via a striped pea gall on an oak leaf. After parting the two halves of the gall I realised that something was moving in one half and as I watched, an adult gall wasp emerged (above left and right). This is a common gall and, because confirmation of the exact species inside a gall is still very important the wasp was kept and sent to the gall insect ID man for checking. On this occasion the wee wasp was true to its gall and was confirmed as Cynips longiventris. One of the pea-sized willow leaf galls also had live contents, the right sort of larva to be producing the frass, but to be sure it was a sawfly and not a caterpillar I had to see enough of the larva to

be able to count its number of legs. Both have 3 pairs of legs just behind the head but in a sawfly there are 6 or more pairs of prolegs whereas caterpillars have 5 or less. The prolegs are the larger stubby legs just over half-way along the larva’s body (see photo of Caterpillar © André Karwath - right). I could see 6 so the resident sawfly seemed to be correct so the gall was put back together and the gall returned to the wild. The last live gall content was found right at the end of the month and again involved a willow host. Having followed the identification key, the book told me that the larva inside, if present, should be a caterpillar, and sure enough, when I opened the gall there was a pale green caterpillar present (above left). Amazing. The book named the larva as belonging to the micro-moth Cydia servillana, a moth not yet recorded from Scotland (see NBN map right), but, having contacted three prominent moth experts, there may be some doubt about the caterpillar matching up to the name. Whilst making these contacts the gall had been

put back together (a circle of blu-tac no less!) and the gall placed in a cool room. About a week later I was fairly certain that the caterpillar would be dead but, amazingly, it had turned into a chrysalis, so the next test will be to see if it is possible to get the moth to emerge so that it can be properly identified. A second, unopened gall is also with the first one, so hopefully one will survive. Watch this space.

A trip to Aviemore on 22nd was a new experience – the start of a two week long public inquiry into the first of seven wind farm proposals on high moorland right on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park. This first one was looking into the planning application for one between Aviemore and Kingussie, to the west of the main A9 route north. The site, Allt Duine, within the Monadhliath Mountains and on the boundary of three estates, is for 31 turbine with a maximum height to blade tip of 125 metres. Details of the site can be seen at http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/306982/rwe-innogy/sites/wind-onshore/united-kingdom/in-development/location/ and click on the right-hand map. This site is operated by the developer RWE and provides details of their application. The application was opposed by Highland Council, the Cairngorms National Park Authority along with several outdoor/landscape charities. Sadly Scottish Natural Heritage and RSPB didn’t object despite the high natural history value of the site, which includes a couple of adjacent eagle territories. All the details of the sites importance and the objectors can be found at http://www.savemonadhliathmountains.com/farmfacts.htm . See Chris Townsend's © photo of the site below.  If this inquiry allows the development to go ahead, there are several other applications already in the pipeline for more wind farms within the

Monadhliath Mountains which is, currently, one of the largest area of “wild land” within the UK, more remote than the Cairngorms themselves and an area which should be managed for its natural history interests so badly neglected by the estate owners over the last couple of centuries. In the northern section of the Monadhliath’s the Dunmaglass 33 turbine “power station” is already under construction by RWE (type Dunmaglass into Google to see details) along with a similar sized completed development on the moors above Farr. The site we visited as a family as detailed earlier in this diary comprises one area where the estates owners Coignafearn Estate, have embarked on a course of actions aimed at restoring woodland along the River Findhorn strath whilst continuing to run the estate as an environmentally sensitive sporting estate. For this they are to be congratulated. Sadly, Alex Salmond and his majority Scottish devolved government have the final say on the Allt Duine application and if their track record is anything to go by they are likely to

rubber-stamp this application as they progress with the industrialisation of Scotland’s much cherished landscape. Under the Nationalist government wind turbine planning applications have soared to such a rate that, according to a Times article (21 Nov 2012), three have been made for every day that Alex Salmond has been first Minister! The same article shows that since 2007 there have been 5,528 applications for turbines in Scotland. Aberdeenshire alone has received 1,078 applications (see http://www.cawt.co.uk/index.php ). Applications to Fife, Aberdeenshire and Moray local authorities have risen to such a degree that they can’t cope, and have asked for a moratorium on further applications. There has to be a better way to treat Scotland’s countryside with an urgent need to plan where these huge industrial structures can be accommodated rather than the

free-for-all which pertains currently. The Allt Dunie wind farm, if built, would dominate the distant view of the photo shown in the dairy of 3 October 2010 and repeated here (right). At the inquiry, the sheer amount of paperwork already produced by the applicant (the pile above left was sent to all interested parties) is frightening and the money available to promote their proposals at the inquiry when compared to the charities opposing the plans is obscene. The stakes are high when you consider the “power station” will cost over £30 million to construct, enough to put the maximum of 16 solar panels on around 5,000 houses.

Driving over to Deeside via the Lecht I have often seen the car park and sign pointing to the Lecht Lead Mine a place I had never visited until a few weeks ago. I was hoping that the site would provide some areas of quarrying and possibly some spoil-heaps in the hope that a few unusual plants or lichens might be present

as were found in a nearby ex-lime quarry. About half a mile from the car park is a very impressive building and it was towards this building I headed. I have a habit of checking juniper bushes in passing, just in case the bright yellow lichen Vulpicida pinastri might be present and there, on almost the first bush I checked was the lichen presenting me with my first photo opportunity of the day. The building is pretty impressive (left) and obviously well looked after though all that remains of the once very busy ore sorting unit are the four outer walls topped by a new roof. A display inside (left) shows how the ore arrived in the top section of the building via a bridge from the adjacent hillside, and was worked on as it descended through the various floors. All the internal machinery was powered by a large external water-wheel. Outside, I scrambled up the side of the adjacent

spoil heap spotting several tiny fruiting bodies of the moor coral fungus (Clavaria argillacea). Sadly, most of the tops of the spoil heaps and their gently sloping sides are heavily visited by sheep and deer and over most of the area are quite disturbed. Just occasionally undisturbed areas were found and creeping out of some of these were runners of the stag’s horn clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) with a mixture of single,

double and triple headed spore cones. As I stopped for a bite to eat I noticed lots of flies “dancing” in the sunshine above the heather and suddenly remembered the request by the Highland Biological Recording Group to keep an eye open for two under-recorded Bibio flies (right)described as behaving in the way the flies in front of me were behaving. Parking my sandwich I whipped out a tube and managed to capture a couple and what I had in the tube seemed to resemble the description I could remember from the website, so the flies were retained for checking once home. Lunch over, I headed for the last and more distant spoil heaps where again more clubmoss was found along with its mountain cousin alpine clubmoss (Diphasium alpinum). A tiny clump of a more unusual looking lichen was also growing by the clubmoss and by its colour I knew it was something a 

 little unusual, and possibly normally found higher up on the mountains. Its name escaped me so lots of photos were taken to help with identification once I got home. More homework! As I reached the domed top of the spoil heap I was presented with an amazing sight of masses of the same lichen, so much growing that I didn’t feel guilty by removing a small sample for checking under the microscope if needed. Once home the fly was one of the ones to be looked for – Bibio lepidus, and the lichen was one I last encountered high up on Cairngorm Alectoria nigrescens (left), usually found above 700m. No doubt the conditions close to the Lecht ski-grounds were similar to higher elevations and the gravelly habitat with little competing vegetation was also very similar to the wind-swept summits.

That’s it for another month as we head towards the shortest day.

Stewart and Janet

Acorn - a bit scarce this year locally

Redwings and fieldfares in garden

Ash at Lochindorb but for how much longer?


Photos © Stewart Taylor unless shown otherwise in text