November started with the now annual visit
to the National Trust for Scotland’s
Haddo Christmas Fair where Janet’s tweed crafts were on display for the public
to buy. Despite the gales and rain for
part of the weekend good numbers of folk turned up to see the various stalls
and crafts and Janet was reasonably pleased with the number of bags, scarves
and cards sold. Once again daughter
Laura and Douglas did us proud by providing accommodation and good food and
Laura using her ex-Next manager skills when
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| Beautiful kitchen |
helping out on the stall. Both had also been working hard to apply the
finishing touches to their new kitchen in time for the Haddo weekend and what a
brilliant space for cooking and dining they have created, something to be truly
proud of. While Janet was selling I was again
poking around in the estate woodlands, though the Saturday afternoon searches
had to be done under an umbrella meaning it was just too wet to photograph the
stinkhorn fungus (Phallus impudicus) and the bluing bracket fungus (Postia
caesia) on a couple of dead conifers.
The latter fungus is cursed by the timber industry because, as the name
implies, once present the timber under the bark is stained blue by growing
fungus and though the wood isn’t weakened the blue colour implies the opposite
and affects the saleability of the sawn timber.
Returning to Haddo on the Sunday morning the wind was up to gale force
and it was interesting to note that only one of
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| Janet's Haddo Stall |
the many wind turbines was
turning, but no doubt the owner was still being paid vast sums of money. Odd that we don’t get paid anything when the
sun doesn’t shine on our solar panels!
Let’s not go there! Wishing Laura
and Janet well for the day I headed off to an old bit of mixed woodland I had
spotted the day before just on the edge of the estate. Monster elms mixed with beech, spruce and
sycamores, though about half the elms were in the dying phase possibly as a
result of Dutch elm disease. The elms
were searched for the presence of the lichen Gyalecta ulmi a once regular
species found on shaded bases of old elms but now quite rare due to ravages of Dutch
elm disease. None was found but a fallen
sycamore branch was covered
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| Glistening inkcap fungus on sycamore branch |
with a mass of the orange coloured fruiting bodies
of the glistening inkcap (Copinellus micaceus) and the small, coral-pink
cushion-like fruiting bodies of the coral spot (Nectria cinnabarina) a regular
fungus of decaying branches. In a dark
crevice on one of the elms I noticed several pinhead lichens growing from a
very green, granular thallus (the body of the lichen containing the fungus and
algae) and not knowing which species it was a small sample of bark, with
lichen, was removed for checking. Once
home, a day later, I had a look at the pinhead under the microscope and was
amazed to find a couple of small flies wandering around on the lichen,
occasionally hiding in wee cracks but not making any effort to fly away –
interesting. Whilst at
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| The barkfly Ectopsocus petersi |
rest I was able
to obtain a few photos which I emailed to expert Stephen for advice and was
informed that they were a couple of barkflies belonging to the insect order
Psocoptera, an outdoor version of something called booklice which occur
indoors. From the photos Stephen offered
the name Ectopsocus petersi but couldn’t be 100% certain without actually
seeing one of them. Whilst checking the
name and lifestyle of barkflies amazingly I came across the National Barkfly
Recording Scheme and organiser Keith offered to look at one of the flies to
confirm identification and also to add the specimen to the collection. A few days later and the name was confirmed
as Ectopsocus petersi highlighting the brilliance of local recorder Stephen. The identity of the pinhead lichen is awaited
but looks like one of the Chaenotheca species possibly trichialis.
Once back from Haddo Janet set up the
Firwood Chalet as a mini-craft shop and for two weeks opened on a daily basis. A percentage of all sales was donated to the
local branch of the charity Macmillan Care. The same day I attended a liaison meeting between
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group (BSCG) and a couple of the Cairngorm
National Park staff regarding their Nature Action Plan and visited the newly
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| Nethy village walks |
created paths in woodland in the village to help provide ideas for
interpretation boards to be installed in a couple of places along the
paths. Ongoing visits were also made to
the proposed An Camus Mor “new town” of up to 1500 houses adjacent to Aviemore
to record species that might help with the legal challenge to try and stop the
development, currently going through the courts. A boost to funds for this appeal came from
Lush Cosmetics, the ethical and campaigning cosmetics company who donated £7000
to try and protect the Cairngorms
National Park from
housing developers (see link below). An
ongoing concern about
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| Puccinia caricina fungus on leaves of common sedge |
this development is the poor quality of some of the
environmental surveys giving conservationists the impression that this
development, which has the full backing of the SNP dominated Scottish Parliament,
will go ahead whatever is found on site.
Under freedom of information requests details of these surveys has now
been released to BSCG and on checking the bird data we find that the surveyor
recorded reed warbler (unheard of this far north) and makes a case for habitat
creation for kingfisher and grasshopper warbler in a
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| Puccinia caricina spores x1000 |
site currently dominated
by woodland! Sorry, I digress. During my site visit I recorded big-billed
crossbills (Scottish or parrott crossbill and absent from the survey) and the
tall delicate pipe club fungus (Macrotyyphula fistulosa). By a woodland pool I came across a fungus
growing on common sedge (Carex nigra) leaves which looks to be Puccinia
caricina var. paludosa, not recorded locally, but overall nothing too
spectacular was found. Visits will
continue to see what else is on site, particularly in the bird line. Whilst the local recorder was away on holiday
I also visited a local hen harrier roost site to see how many birds flew in for
the night, but nothing appeared despite watching the site until darkness made
viewing i
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| Too dark to see - checking hen harrier roost |
mpossible and the moon starting to appear over the hills. Quite a sad count really. In the past up to seven birds have been
recorded but dropping down to just one to three in recent years. The roosting birds have almost always been
“brown” birds either females or juveniles but whether breeders from the local
area or visiting wintering birds we just don’t know. If these are local birds, then the trend is
quite worrying.
An email from Andy at Abernethy NNR mid-month
required investigation. An RSPB staff
member had been driving along a road a couple of miles from the edge of the
reserve and had noticed many trees in one section of woodland near to
Nethybridge had brown tops and wondered whether one of the many diseases
threatening our native trees was in the forest.
The other option offered by Andy was it might be something to
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The 10 areas bought over 25 years to
create the RSPB Abernethy NNR |
do with
beetles, so time to go and have a look.
When this section of woodland was bought by RSPB in 1994 (pink area on map) it had previously
been managed as a commercially productive forest by a pension fund, with large
blocks of the woodland comprising closely planted and even aged trees. Whilst ideal for producing tall, straight
trees of good saleable quality, the biodiversity value of the woodland was
quite low; much of the woodland lacked any invertebrate rich ground vegetation,
and, with tiny crowns, the trees were lacking branch development and hence cone
production. After some initial survey
work a plan was put in
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| Scots pine shoots on ground |
place to irregularly thin the woodland to create
diversity in tree density and encourage plant growth. Because of the size of the woodland this had
to be done using modern, forestry machinery comprising timber harvesters and
forwarders to fell and extract the timber, but the harvester was also used to
create standing deadwood by lopping off the tops of some trees as it progressed
through the woodland. To monitor change
I undertook monthly bird surveys of the main woodland area being managed using
a fixed 100 metre grid to ensure that the birds were recorded at the same “points”
on each visit – hence the term “point counts”.
Visits were made in the early morning and at each point (50 of them)
birds were recorded for a period of
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| Pine shoot beetle hole in Scots pine shoot |
five minutes before moving on to the next
one. This survey continued for six years
but analysis revealed that this is probably too short a time period in the life
of a forest to see any major change. It
might take 10-15 years for the forest floor vegetation to respond significantly
and dead trees created by the harvester would also take a similar time to
provide suitable “soft” wood for birds to excavate nest sites, so recording
might be repeated every 10 or so years.
During the development of the management planning process another major
decision was taken, and a halt was called on any “extractive” management of the
timber resource; all future thinning would be by deadwood creation, pulling
over a few trees, ring-barking and high-topping to create standing
deadwood. Whilst being somewhat
artificial, this management would address one of the major
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| The pine shoot beetle Tomicus piniperda inside pine shoot |
problems with all
our “native/natural” woodlands, a lack of deadwood. And so, a couple of years ago, a timber
harvester was used to re-visit the previously thinned areas and work its way
through the trees creating deadwood (standing and lying) as it went. The creation of so much freshly dead timber
worked particularly well for one invertebrate – the large pine shoot beetle
(also known as the pine bark beetle), and as I wandered through the section of
woodland where the tops of the trees had been seen to be browning, I
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Pine shoot beetle galleries as found under bark on felled tree.
Some larvae still present (coloured white) |
could see
that I probably wouldn’t need to check the pine needles I had been collecting
under the microscope. All through the
managed area there were pine shoots (the very tips of the branches) lying on
the ground and in the central, woody portion of most shoots there was a tiny
hole. By carefully pulling the shoot apart I was able to find the answer to the
problem – Tomicus piniperda – the large pine shoot beetle, though at 4mm in
length, large it certainly wasn’t! The
creation of standing and lying deadwood had turned
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| Pine shoot beetle exit holes in pine bark |
the woodland into pine shoot
beetle paradise and in the year the trees had been managed, beetles had landed
on the fallen timber and immediately dug their way through the bark to lay
their eggs between bark and tree sap-wood.
The new generation of beetles then emerged through new holes in the bark
and then looked for a safe place to spend the winter months (in the pine
shoots) before looking once again for breeding sites (new deadwood) in the
spring. During windy winter days the
point where the beetle has entered the pine shoot becomes vulnerable to
snapping and hence many end up on the ground where they continue to live quite
happily until the next spring. There is
always a surge in the numbers of these beetles after any conifer thinning
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The pouched false morel fungus
Gyromitra infula |
work
so what has happened here isn’t unusual but perhaps the quantity of deadwood
created should be re-assessed before more thinning work is carried out. It looked like as many as a thousand beetles
per log could have been emerging during both of the last two springs meaning
tens of thousands of beetles on the lookout for homes for winter. A bonus, as often happens on these outings
was finding a couple of fruiting bodies of one of the late autumn/early winter pouched
false morels (Gyromitra infula) a third record for Abernethy and with only 53
records on the UK fungal records database.
A first flurry of snow on 19 November had
the garden birds demanding a bit more food so the first of the monster fat
cakes were produced and put out. A
chance glance out of the utility room window a day earlier spotted one of those
rare winter bird moments as I noticed a male blackcap feeding amongst some
spilt birdseed in front of the chalet. It disappeared before Janet saw it. I should have assembled the camera and
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| Look hard & there is a male blackcap on right of photo |
telephoto right away because a few minutes later Janet shouted say it was back,
this time in the cotoneaster hedge where it struggled to swallow a nice red
seed, food the blackbirds had been making use of a few days earlier. The blackcap then appeared on the trellis
right outside the window and my annoyance at not having put the camera and lens
together grew enormously. It stopped
long enough to devour a honeysuckle seed
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| Female bullfinch in rowan tree |
before returning to the cotoneaster hedge
where I just about managed to capture a photo with the standard lens
camera. And that was it, hopes of a
wintering blackcap diminished as there were no more sightings by the end of the
month. With the telephoto lens now in
place a few other birds posed for the camera, dunnocks in the flowerbox,
blackbird in the cotoneaster hedge and chaffinch in the snow on the trellis. A
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| Blackbird in rowan tree |
female bullfinch was snapped as it wandered around the rowan tree looking for
any remaining berries. As the snow eased
and the thoughts of frost loomed I dug up the last of the tatties, red roosters
and white maris pipers, quite a nice crop and something to think about planting
again next year. On my outing to the hen
harrier roost I noticed in passing, an old quarry by one of the tracks and,
knowing how good the occasional one has been for unusual species I thought a
return visit would be worthwhile. The
relatively mild weather of November ensured that quite a few fungi continued to
appear so I found it hard not to pop in and out of the
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| The waxcap Hygrocybe lacmus |
birches as I made my way
to the quarry. A few more fruiting
bodies of the pipe club fungus were found and a rake around in the fallen
leaves managed to turn up its close but diminutive relative the slender club
(Macrotyphula juncea). There was even a
fly agaric still fully resplendent with red cap and white dots. The old quarry produced a couple of Peltigera
lichens and as I wandered back and forth a small bluish fungus caught my
eye. First appearances made me think of a
waxcap, but so late and not in grassland?
The
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| Hygrocybe lacmus about 65mm high & cap 25mm diameter |
camera was set up and a few in situ photos were taken and when I
found there were about six fruiting bodies I took one home to check the spores. Under the microscope the spores were easily
found and the brilliant book The Genus Hygrocybe by David Boertmann, lead me to
either Hygrocybe russocoriacea or H. lacmus settling eventually (with a little
help from expert Liz) for H. lacmus (Schumach.) P.D. Orton & Watling, an
amazing little waxcap with a bluish grey cap and spores in the range 7x6µ. Once again the name of Peter D. Orton
appeared linking the man who did so much recording work at Abernethy was also
the first to describe this particular fungus.
Brilliant.
November ended with the Highland Biological
Recording Groups AGM with yours truly added to the committee. Laura popped over for the day as Janet and
myself looked after the two older grandchildren for a couple of nights allowing
Ruth, Lewis and Harry a long weekend in Edinburgh. We even did the school and playgroup run on
the Monday getting home mid-afternoon to a welcome cup of tea followed by
something a little stronger!
25 years ago, as I type, was a day we will
never forget. On the 21 December 1988 I
said cheerio to my assistant warden Richard as he headed off south to be with
family and friends over Christmas. Just
after 7pm the radio and TV channels were interrupted to inform us of the
horrors just unleashed on the tiny village
of Lockerbie and
surrounding countryside. Thankfully
Richard had passed the village a few hours earlier and unlike those caught up in
the terrorist atrocity was able to spend the festive season with his
family.
As I have been typing this, supposedly in
winter and on the shortest day, a small black dot between my fingers has turned
out to be A TICK! Do these wee blighters
not have a few months off each year?
Enjoy the read and best wishes for the festive period and 2014.
Stewart and Janet
Fungal Record Database of Britain & Ireland
Lush Cosmetics article
National Barkfly Recording Scheme
Waxcaps
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| Pine cone & friends |
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| A misty morning at Loch Mallachie |
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| Bristle haircap moss Polytricum piliferum |
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| The slender club Macrotyphula juncea |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
