Winter didn’t really loosen its grip until well into May and one morning saw snow falling in the garden, flattening flowers and ensuring the bird feeders continued to be well used. There was even sleet and hail as late as the 23rd making it difficult to decide when to walk the weekly butterfly transects. The first lawn
mowing eventually took place and when we thought the worst of the night frosts had passed, tatties were planted along with a few rows of leeks. A cuckoo was heard from the house on the first of May but swifts didn’t arrive until mid-month and even then they must have been struggling to find easy food. Perhaps the strangest bird records for this part of the world were several sightings of cranes, a single near Carrbridge, followed by another dropping into the dragonfly viewing pool by the Loch Garten road, surprising folk
looking for dragonflies, but, saving the best until last, 3 birds were found feeding in the sedge-beds on the moor side of Loch Mallachie, a place we have always said would be an ideal place for the birds to breed. Annoyingly, I missed them all despite being close to the Mallachie birds whilst walking the butterfly transect. There has been evidence all through the month of black grouse activity on the wetter bits of Tulloch Moor. The first “flowers” to appear in this area are of cotton grass: yellow pollen covered flower heads appearing from March onwards before the more obvious white cottony seed heads from June. Black grouse feed
heavily on the young flower heads, leaving grey-coloured pellets on the bogs comprising the less digestible parts of the flowers. Another event, obvious on the moor and in areas of open woodland with good heather cover, is “browning” of the heather which has taken place during the early part of the year. Everywhere, we see heather, completely brown and presumably dead, killed off probably by a combination of cold easterly and northerly winds combined with a period of little rain. On Tulloch Moor cowberry and bearberry have also been affected and, in places, it looks like sections of some juniper bushes have suffered the same fate. With the flowers of heather, bearberry and cowberry providing food and sustenance for a wide range of insects the knock-on effect could be concerning.
The month has seen an unusually high number of pine martens sightings, possibly the same adult and probably with a newly born youngster to look after close by. Initially it was around 8pm the first visit occurred, the squirrel peanut feeders providing an easy source of food. Then we would see it at 6pm, 8am
and during the afternoon. One visit was made whilst I was chatting to one of our neighbours; we both saw the marten walking between garage and chalet on its way to the feeders. Dropping everything and with a swift cheerio, I dashed in and grabbed the camera and carefully made my way down the passage between the two buildings until I was able to ease my camera into a suitable gap in the trellis every time the pine
marten put its head in the feeder. Despite the noise of the cameras mirror clunking up and down the marten continued to feed eventually jumping down from the fence and heading off into the woods. With patience most chalet guests were also able to see the marten, the animal being bold enough to allow the chalet door to be opened for the guests to get an even better photo opportunity. Brilliant! A visit to the garage in Grantown is always welcome (apart from the bill) as it allows for a recording visit in the general area whilst the car is being looked at, and, with the MOT about to run out on the 1st May, I deposited the car with Mike and started to work my way back through the aspens, hazels and birches by the River Spey towards Nethybridge. The first thing to turn up was a puss moth larval case on an aspen and whilst giving a leaning
willow a thorough lichen search, a blackbirds nest with 5 eggs was found, ensuring a rapid departure to allow the bird back to incubate. More of the aspen twig fungus
Encoelia fasicularis was found as was a strange bit of “management” - ring-barking a few aspens to within an inch or so of their lives. This experiment I gather, is to try and stress the aspens into producing flowers, something the aspens rarely do, in the hope that more seed would be produced. Aspen trees are either male or female and because they flower very rarely, there is little chance of trees of either sex being in flower in the same year or close enough to one another to ensure cross-fertilisation and hence they rarely produce seed. Most aspen stands locally
reproduce from root suckers and whilst this is very successful providing grazing pressures are low, it does mean that most trees are clones of themselves which could be a problem should growing conditions change or infectious diseases appear. The ring-barking that I saw involved a section of bark, about an inch wide, removed in a spiral around the trunk of the tree, but ensuring the start and end of the bark removal didn’t meet otherwise the tree would die. The management does look very damaging and will probably weaken the tree in years to come, but I will be interested to know how successful the trial has been and whether fertile seed was produced.
The bonny wee flower moschatel (
Adoxa moschatellina) has featured a little this month with a new site being found during a visit to the Tulloch aspens. In this particular stand some of the biggest aspens in the area occur and a few of the trees have shed, in the last couple of years, some huge limbs. More of the aspen
twig fungus was found (close to the site of the original first find) and on the younger branches and twigs of one of the fallen limbs the crustose lichen
Lecanora populicola was found in abundance. Knowing this lichen was present I made a search for its parasite the lichen
Candelariella superdistans, the UK BAP Priority species which appeared previously in the March 2013 diary. I first found a few tiny yellow apothecia on the
Lecanora, then a few more, and more, and more, a huge population (above right) on several branches and the biggest population I have yet encountered and probably the size of the population
linked directly to the great age of the aspen from which the limb had fallen. Under the fallen limb I found a few leaves of what I was sure was moschatel, though, growing with lots of wood anemone with very similar leaves, I wasn’t 100% certain. A wider search produced a few flowers, saving lots of head scratching. This turned out to be a completely new site for the plant and quite a way from the nearest, known population. A few days later ex work colleague Andy emailed to say that he had also found a new site for the flower on the bank of the River Spey in Morayshire and that he had noted that many of the leaves were covered in black “dots”. Last year I had made an unsuccessful search for a rust fungus only found on moschatel –
Puccinia adoxae – Moschatel Rust, so there had to be a good chance that this was what I had been looking for. So, armed with a reasonable description of the location, I visited the site the next day and after a
bit of wandering back and forth as you usually do on plant searches, I spotted the first group of “townhall clock” flowers, so named because the square flower-head has flowers on all four sides of the square along with more on the top. All over the leaves and some stems and even some flowers where lots of black dots of the rust fungus, all I needed to do now was check the spores under the microscope to be sure that I had the right thing. Back home, a light tap of one of the leaves deposited lots of spores onto the glass slide and sure enough the spores (above right) turned out to be brown, angular and definitely belonging to the Moschatel Rust. Thanks Andy. To encourage folk to go and have a look at any moschatel patches they might know about I sent details of my record to the Highland Biological Recording Group which produced an interesting result, see 19 May entry and 2 May entry (should be 20 May) on the HBRG website given below.
An outing on the 16th brought back memories of a desperate dash up the A9 some 30+ years ago. With the weather getting a little better I made the first of 3 visits to my woodcock survey site, the same location as had been used ten years previously and mentioned in the last diary. Sunset time for this first visit was stated as 9.30pm, so the count would start at 9.15 and end at 10.30, so I left the house at 7.30 to ensure I was on site well ahead of the start time. The walk in was pleasant enough but with a lump of cloud starting to cover the distant Cairngorms. As I approached the Sluggan Bridge I noticed lots of activity, and tent and loos were being installed for an event that would be passing through at the weekend. The last thing I thought I would encounter was lots of other people en-route to my recording location. Once in place I put on the extra layers of waterproofs to keep warm and up above in the woodland a couple of ravens were calling,
something unusual in this part of the world in May as there are very few records of these birds breeding locally. The evening chorus of bird song was excellent and I tried to keep a note of which was the last bird to be heard singing as darkness fell – a robin. I had been recording for 15 minutes when the first roding woodcock sailed overhead calling, with probably the same bird going round again 2 minutes later. The last bird was heard roding at 10.30 just as I was packing up to go and all told there were 15 records of birds seen or heard during the recording period. All the records were of single birds so this could have been the same bird circling its territory for the whole of the period I was on site. The BTO ask that all contacts are listed and it will be up to them to do the analysis of what the 15 contacts mean. A tawny owl called for the last half an hour and a bat, assume pipistrelle, regularly flew along the track where I was standing. Despite the increasing darkness the half hour walk back to the car was achieved without incident. In the car a brilliant bit of World Music was playing on the radio and as I made my way under the A9 as I entered Carrbridge, I remembered the 1am charge up the same road some 32 years earlier as I drove a very noisy Janet along with a two year old daughter to Raigmore. After watching TV and taking a late evening bath, Janet decided that baby number two was on its way so we all piled into the car and headed north at great speed with young Laura wondering why mum seemed so distressed. Just after Tomatin I noticed a car parked by the road in a very suspicious location, knowing there was a peregrine site nearby, but as Janet gave out another almighty howl, I knew that now would not be a good time to stop and investigate! On arrival at Raigmore (warned of our arrival by phone before setting off) a couple of nurses were ready to wheel Janet away to the words of “oh my God” as they realised baby Ruth was on her way out. A few days later I heard that a peregrine nest close to the A9 had been robbed! I drove home from my survey at a more leisurely pace to a bit more brilliant World Music and thoughts of all that had happened during the last 32 years.
The second woodcock survey visit about 10 days later wasn’t without it own surprises either. Sunset on this occasion was at 9.45pm so counting would commence at 9.30 and end at 10.45. Once again there was a bit of activity at Sluggan Bridge, a tractor was parked and a barbeque seemed to be underway a little way up river by a big tent. Tonight the Cairngorms were lit by the setting sun and there was going to be a clear sky for my return and I was trying to remember whether this was full moon night. No ravens on this visit but both robin and song thrush were still singing at the end of my recording period. Again, the first woodcocks appeared 15 minutes into the count period with two birds roding and chasing. 10 contacts were recorded with 2 birds seen or heard on 3 occasions. As I made my way back along the forest track I was getting an occasional hint that there was a moon appearing over the horizon but it wasn’t until I had descended down
through a bit of dense plantation that I could see that a full moon was just above the hills opposite. Thoughts of a photo of moon, bridge and possibly the river started to form in my mind as I hurried down the track to see if the moon would be in the right place – above the bridge. Bingo, bridge and moon were perfectly in line, time for a few photos, despite the darkness. The barbeque up river was still on the go despite the clock creeping toward 11.30pm. Close to the bridge I tried a few long-exposure shots of moon and bridge but eventually thought a bit of flash wouldn’t go amiss, just to try and get a bit of light onto the stonework of the bridge. By now it was quite dark so I tried to shield the flash from the folk at the barbeque and after a few shots packed up my gear to head off home. As I approached the bridge I realised that a couple of people were just ahead of me and also heading for the bridge, so I made my Leki poles make a bit more noise so that they were aware that I was just behind them. The man and lady stopped by the tractor as this was to be their transport home and as I approach, the man said hello and commented on the “bonny” night. I then realised who was speaking (Frank, the sporting manager for the estate) and I replied that I didn’t expect to see him out there at that time of night! Amazing what you see when you go counting woodcock!
Professor George Dickie also reappeared during the month. The experts at Kew were looking at my third ascomycete fungus found on twinflower leaves at the end of the last diary and eventually an email arrived to say the Puni had managed to find some “immature conidia” (fungal spores) and that there was no doubt that the fungus was a
Septoria (below) and after further work, concluded that it was
Septoria linnaeae. This find proved
even more intriguing than the
Sphaerulina leightonii covered in the last diary. The
Septoria isn’t listed in the Fungal Record Database of Britain and Ireland but was mentioned in a paper by W. B. Grove in 1935. Amazingly, the Kew team managed to trace the single British specimen of this fungus, the one Grove was referring to, in the Kew collection and the only information they could find about the specimen was that it was collected by George Dickie, before 1879, from
Linnaea borealis in Aberdeenshire. Phew! So my collections made from this one plant, twinflower, have produced 3 species of ascomycetes (fungi) that have rarely been recorded previously in the UK, obviously there is still a lot more to find out there.
Another anniversary occurred this month – Mount Everest was climbed 60 years ago, that is unless George Mallory and Andrew Irvine got there first! Whatever, on the 29 May 1953 we definitely know that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made it to the top, a great achievement. However, it is the story of
Mallory and Irvine that is the more amazing, climbing high on Everest with their hob-nailed boots and tweed clothing 29 years before the success of Hillary and Tenzing. After 3 expeditions to Everest Mallory deserved to make it and it was such a pity that when his frozen body was found in 1999 he wasn’t the man carrying the camera, the body of Irvine has never been found. The photograph Mallory carried of his wife, to leave on the summit, wasn’t on his body either – adding to the “did they make it” theory. Compared to the 1953 expedition, funding was tight for the 1924 attempt and as a fund raising initiative by John Noel, the official expedition photographer, members of the public paid to receive a postcard from Everest to help raise funds. As a youngster, I, like many of my friends, started to collect stamps, and with the help of mum and dad a stamp album was bought and stamps from various sources were collected. A friend of my dads father was also a keen collector of coins, eggs and stamps during the late 1800s and early 1900s and long after he had died I
would visit his son’s house with my dad to ogle at these great collections. Before it was illegal a few bird’s eggs were given to me with data cards from the 1890s along with a Roman coin found when houses were built close to a Roman fort somewhere in Lancashire and when he heard that I had a fledgling stamp collection he gave me one of those postcards from the 1924 Everest Expedition. There is little value in these postcards but to be privileged enough to be the owner of something linked to that famous but tragic expedition was immense.
After a partnership lasting several decades and having travelled many, many miles I said goodbye to my trusty old rucksack. Janet had done sterling work keeping the whole thing sewn together but with shoulder straps fraying beyond repair and the fastening clips suffering from old plastic brittleness the time had come to say cheerio. Like old boots how do you choose the right replacement? Most sacs nowadays seem to be all about how many straps you can attach to them so I was dreading making a choice. On a visit to Aviemore I
knew the deed had to be done so I visited all the shops to see what the options were in the 25 litre range. Zips, straps, air flow options I was loosing the will to progress but a green job in Black’s seemed close to what I needed and after my visit to Brighams failed to impress, I returned to Blacks to look again at the bright green job. A lid with a clip rather than a zip, a breast strap, a rain cover in its base, fairly comfortable to wear – sold to the man in need of a new hat – which I have yet to buy. I can’t get rid of two old friends in one go! In the field the Lowe Alpine Airzone 24 has done all that I could have asked and amazingly seems lighter on the shoulders despite carrying all the same gear. I just hope it is good at finding things!
That’s it for another month, sorry for the delay which will become obvious next month, enjoy the read. I am hoping to add a few extra "blogs" to cover details of some of the fungi along with their spores.
Stewart and Janet
A bit about the Everest stamp
http://www.mountainstamp.com/Nepal%20pages/Everest.html
Highland Biological Recording Group website
http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Latest.html
BTO Woodcock Survey
http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/woodcock-survey
Janet at her stall at the Spring Gathering in Nethy
Morchella elata found locally
The new Nethybridge pond
Photos © Stewart Taylor
