September 2014, a month in our lives that I hope we will
never have to go through again. Even
now, writing this, I feel very emotional as I re-live the weeks, days and hours
leading up to the 18 September 2014.
Exactly how Janet and myself were feeling as the day drew closer was
summed up brilliantly by Melanie Reid in her article in The Times on 16
September “My grandfather, a crofter, would think this is madness”, where she
talks about
the changes felt in her local community as September approached,
the feeling of being “wretched, scared and absolutely powerless” as those of us
who were “emotionally British” contemplated “divorce from the UK”. Everything we had worked for during our lives
houses, pensions, jobs and savings as honest citizens of the UK seemed no
longer secure particularly when what was being offered was jam tomorrow. “Political fantasy” summed up pretty well
what many folk were thinking. A note in
my diary on the 13th said “feeling a bit off colour” perhaps after
watching the Last Night of the Proms and wondering if this would be the last
time this would be a national event with live links to Wales, Scotland,
Northern Ireland and England. The “off
colour” entry continued to appear over the next few days not making the obvious
link that the 18th had something to do with
 |
| About 5am in the morning |
it. We both went down to vote quite early on the
18th and, very oddly for me, I completely ignored the “good morning”
welcome from the Yes representative at the door. I was feeling there was very little good in
the potential break-up of the UK. I
spent the rest of the day away from radio and TV in a bog I had helped to
restore for RSPB Scotland in the biggest of the UKs National Parks. The thousands of records I had collected over
the years were aimed at showing why Abernethy and other sites visited locally
were important to the UK and I was trying hard to see whether I would have the
same motivation if this was just for Scotland.
Scotland is brilliant, but brilliant and key to the
 |
| The saviour of sanity Mycena |
importance of the
UK. The link was highlighted very well
by the fact that I was in the bog following up a request from the Mycologist at
the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to look for something growing on a sedge that
was thought to be extinct. It wasn’t
found but a bonny wee red Mycena fungus found in deep, wet sphagnum moss kept
my mind occupied through the evening, arriving at a name at about the time the polls
closed at 10pm. We stayed up all night
getting to bed at 6.45am knowing that 55% of the people voting had opted for
Scotland to remain part of the UK. No
running up and down the street waving flags, no champagne, just hugs and a huge
sense of relief. The following day Janet
put our money back in the bank!
Quite a lot of September was spent checking for species of
interest on two important areas for biodiversity but both threatened by housing
developments. The local one in School
Wood, Nethybridge has featured before in this blog and you get the feeling that
the folk behind the application keep re-applying in the hope of wearing down
the locals who have made the effort to object on more than one occasion. The second one is also a long-
 |
Sarcodon sqamosus the size
of dinner plates |
running affair
based on a very important grassland in Carrbridge with the development also
requiring several hectares of woodland to be felled. The reason for getting involved in both is to
try and get long-lasting protection for both sites but also to highlight the
inadequacies of the folk employed by the developers to undertake the
biodiversity surveys. These surveys do
seem to be written trying to show why the development should go ahead rather
than just report on what is there and the importance of any species found. Carrbridge was the most urgent and the local
conservation group
 |
Not quite so big Sarcodon glaucopus
now known as Sarcodon scabrosus sensu str. |
(Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group - BSCG) had
asked for help in recording species and for help with identifying some of the
fungi found. The woodland, mainly Scots
pine of planted origin, was re-checked for tooth fungi, several of which had
been found prior to an earlier application.
Several were found, the most amazing being the good numbers of the
dinner plate sized Sarcodons, both S. squamosus and S. glaucopus now S. scabrosus sensu str., many
associated with the areas of old badger diggings. As the month progressed the focus turned to
the natural grassland (fields that have never been ploughed or fertilised an
increasingly rare habitat in the UK) to see which waxcap fungi were emerging,
the main indicators of the quality of the grassland supporting them. Waxcaps featured in last month’s blog but the
big problem is not the finding, of which 6 species were found, it’s the
identifying. One or two are very obvious
but the red and yellow species need microscope work as do
 |
| Clavulinopsis corniculata - Meadow coral |
the darker coloured
species. An hour in the field lead to
two nights work with the microscope and the realisation that more experience is
needed with gill edges and cap trauma to be really happy that the ID is
100%. The field also produced both
yellow and white “spindles”, Clavulinopsis helvola and Clavaria fragilis, yellow meadow coral and
the oddly named and multi-coloured parrot waxcap – Hygrocybe psittacina. A group of grey coloured round “stones” turned
out to be one of the brown
 |
| Parrot waxcap - Hygrocybe psittacina |
puffball, (Bovista nigrescens) the one you tend to
find later in the year, the “ball” having detached itself from the ground and
often to be found blowing around in the wind shedding its spores as it
goes. None of these species featured in
the developer’s survey possibly not too surprising when a botanist undertook
the survey rather than an experienced mycologist. Perhaps the most amazing bit of the fungi
survey report was that a fungus found was 90% a Hydnellum but only 70% sure it
was ferrunginium! In my recording world
a species either is what you see or it’s not, no if’s or but’s. If the surveyor had been correct, it would
have been the first ever record of a Hydnellum growing from
 |
| The stone-like puffball Bovista nigrescens |
a tree root. Thankfully Charles Darwin didn’t have this
problem! A second visit to School Wood
produced a few nice surprises. Several
sites were found for the green shield moss with one root-plate of a blown
Norway spruce having a population of 48 “new” capsules from this growing season,
all well developed and the highest count of whole capsules found to date at a
single site. It is unlikely they will
all survive to maturity (May 2015) once the predator (still unknown) of
capsules finds them. One to follow up in
the coming months. Close checking of
mossy roots and fallen trees lead to the finding of a population of small black
balls on the tips of one of the common woodland mosses Mnium hornum. Photos were taken and a small section of moss
with balls taken home to check. It
 |
| Didymium minus on moss |
was
obviously a fungus so the first thing to do was cut a ball in half and squash
it under glass to check under the microscope.
The outer shell was so hard that the extremely thin glass cover-slip
broke before it was possible to squash it, but with a bit more care a squash
was achieved and lots of round, brown spores were seen. I had a suspicion that what I had found was a
young slime mould and without the UK’s slime mould expert living not too far
away, I probably wouldn’t have bothered taking the sample. Photos were emailed to expert Bruce and back
came the name Didymium minus, with few records on the fungal database, probably
reflecting more on the lack of folk like me, bum in the air, poking around the
bases of spruces! With expert mycologist
Liz incredibly busy I made a trip over to Deeside to undertake a count of the
number of fruiting bodies of the spruce tooth (Bankera violascens) at one of
only two known UK sites. The other site
featured in the August blog and my
 |
| Didymium minus spores x1000 |
notebook lists 85 fruiting bodies seen in
that wood but a full survey would have shown there to be well over 100. The Deeside site is on Forestry Commission
land and during the last thinning of the trees, the sitka spruces close to the
track where the fungus grows were left un-thinned to ensure the habitat
remained suitable for it. A walk along
both sides of the track produced 50 fruiting bodies, many of which were quite
small possibly reflecting the dryish summer.
Lunch by the River Dee showed just how high the river had been during
the big rainfall of the night of 10-11 August.
Standing on the shore the debris stuck in the trees overhead showed this
big river had been 2-3 metres higher than normal.
The pine martens have been a regular feature in the garden
this month, one visiting the squirrel feeder at one-o-clock in the afternoon,
but mostly in the evening. Daughter
Laura passed through mid-month to leave her cat with us for a few days and
around the same time Janet put an additional plate
of currants out on the
garden decking, viewable through our glass doors. Laura’s marten luck held, and as we all sat
chatting at about 8pm her cat was very interested in something on the decking –
a visiting marten! As everyone watched
the cat watching the marten I grabbed the camera to try and get an unusual
photo of cat and marten. At the same
time our own cat joined the watchers and with a bit of difficulty I fired off a
few shots of cats and marten though house lights and outside darkness
 |
| Pine marten via the wee Lumix camera |
produced
a photo but not of the best quality. We
are fairly certain that one or two martens are currently visiting every
evening/night much to the delight of our chalet guests. An outing with members of the BSBI to record
plants in and along the shore of Lochindorb on Dava Moor on 14th
provided two viewings of a fishing osprey, long after the Loch Garten birds had
departed. The aim of the outing was to
check if plants recorded previously, up to two decades ago, were still present
in or on the shore of the loch.
Amazingly, the day was very calm which was just as well, many of the
plants were being looked for by paddling along the edge of the loch peering
down into the water. This loch is quite
unusual in that along the shores we were visiting, the loch is quite shallow,
often for many metres from the shore, though visitors to the loch must have wondered
why up to a dozen
 |
| The Lochindorb searchers |
folk were “paddling”, well out from the shore, and peering
down into the clear waters. Having spent
very little time studying aquatic plants it was quite useful having expert Ian
as leader and very quickly plants like shoreweed (Littorella uniflora), alternate
water-milfoil (Myriophyllum alterniflorum) and the rarer plants like quillwort
(Isoetes lacustris) and water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna) were found as washed
up specimens on the loch shore. In all
about 150 plant species were recorded, re-finding several species that hadn’t
been seen at the loch for quite a while.
Phil, who had travelled up from the Lake District for the outing, also
gave us a useful tip for identifying
 |
| The striped ladybird Myzia oblongoguttata |
the three short-leaved aquatics many of
which are only found as parts of plants on the shore-line. Shoreweed leaves when cut have a solid core, water
lobelia has two tubes/holes visible on the cut sections and quillwort has four
holes, a very useful guide when externally the leaves of the three species look
very similar. The latter is also a spore
bearing plant closely related to the clubmoss family. A visit to a wee burn flowing into the loch
produced a single ladybird perched on a sedge which turned out to be the
striped ladybird (Myzia oblongoguttata).
A good day out and I just hope the names of the new plants “stick” so as
to help with visits to other local water-bodies.
Early in September an email from Martyn at Kew brought some
interesting news – “Good news about your little smut haul from 2013!” This followed quite a bit of sedge checking,
just a year earlier, when I had been finding the black fungal balls of
Anthracoidea fungi. At the time of the
collections the carrot had been dangled that not a lot was known about this
group of fungi and that
 |
| Anthracoidea inclusa on bottle sedge |
any collections would be welcome and some might
possibly be new to the UK! With generous
financial support from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Kew has embarked on the
Lost & Found Fungi Project following up on species of fungi with only one
or few recent records. Are these fungi
genuinely rare or simply rarely recorded?
This funding allowed my collection to be checked and the correct name
given to the fungus associated with each sedge.
Amazingly, the smut found on one of the commonest sedges locally and
nationally, bottle sedge (Carex rostrata), was the first known British record of
Anthracoidea inclusa! A less common
sedge, slender sedge (Carex lasiocarpa) also
 |
| Anthracoidea lasiocarpae on slender sedge |
produced a first, Anthracoidea
lasiocarpae. Brilliant. Both collections were made from the extensive
sedge beds associated with Insh Marshes and they produced the perfect outcome
to a nice wee project. The next carrot
though has been dangled which might not be too easy to find. A small fungus of the family Puccinia has
been recorded once on the leaves of the slender sedge and is now thought to be
extinct. Sedge beds have been visited
but with the big flood on the 10/11 August many of the sedges are covered in
mud and debris and though collections were made these will have to be held over
until further searches can be made in August 2015.
After involvement going back to 1977, I walked my last Loch
Garten butterfly transect on the 23rd before hanging up my net, in
what has been quite a good year, though it didn’t feel that way as each
 |
| Butterflies and anything else on last transect |
walk was
completed. Just two walks were missed,
the first two in April due to weather. For
many of the walks just 3 or 4 species are seen with the last two having just 1
species per week. The biggest counts
occurred during late July and early August (max 264 on 5 August) and the
highest number of species on a single walk was 9 on 22 July. Speckled wood was a new species for the
transect and green-veined whites were the most regularly recorded species with
585 individual contacts. The table below
summarises the 2014 season.
2014
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Species
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
Small White
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
Green-veined White
|
221
|
151
|
113
|
125
|
307
|
585
|
Orange-tip
|
15
|
8
|
20
|
17
|
7
|
20
|
Green Hairstreak
|
20
|
18
|
33
|
6
|
2
|
10
|
Northern Brown Argus
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
Common Blue
|
6
|
5
|
3
|
2
|
3
|
8
|
Red Admiral
|
5
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
4
|
Painted Lady
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
Small Tortoiseshell
|
15
|
11
|
17
|
14
|
29
|
16
|
Peacock
|
5
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
0
|
2
|
Small Pearl-bordered
Frit
|
28
|
22
|
22
|
5
|
9
|
9
|
Dark Green Fritillary
|
20
|
7
|
5
|
4
|
5
|
7
|
Speckled Wood
|
|
|
|
|
|
1
|
Scotch Argus
|
136
|
442
|
299
|
759
|
420
|
515
|
Meadow Brown
|
12
|
4
|
2
|
2
|
1
|
6
|
Ringlet
|
115
|
231
|
105
|
108
|
83
|
284
|
Small Heath
|
11
|
20
|
15
|
20
|
21
|
96
|
Large Heath
|
2
|
4
|
2
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
Total butterflies
|
613
|
925
|
638
|
1066
|
887
|
1563
|
Number species recorded
|
15
|
14
|
14
|
14
|
11
|
14
|
Weeks walked (out of 26 max)
|
23
|
20
|
21
|
23
|
23
|
24
|
Having retained annual totals over the 38 years it is
interesting to see how the species recorded have changed with 2 species lost in
the 1980s (dingy skipper & pearl bordered fritillary) but with 3 new-comers
during the 2000s (peacock, speckled wood and ringlet). Clouded yellow appeared just once in 1992,
the year of the big invasion. Whilst the
table below shows what appeared when and how often, a little caution is needed
in that during the period 1990 to 2002 there were two years with few transects
walked, and three years with none at all.
It can be seen though from the table that 2014 was the best year to date
for contacts of green-veined white and ringlet and also for the highest number
of contacts made for all species. My own
involvement covered 20 years with the biggest benefit coming from all the other
species recorded for the Abernethy Reserve, in addition to the
butterflies. The last record locally for
the small dark yellow underwing moth (Anarta cordigera) came from the transect
 |
| Exobasidium sydowianum on bearberry leaves |
along with several shield bugs, a rare tooth fungus, several fungi including
just the 7th UK record for one on bearberry leaves (Arctostaphylos
uva-ursi) during this September and the occasional plant. Hopefully, RSPB will be able to find a
suitable person to keep the survey going despite the commitment of one walk a
week from 1 April to 26 September. It
has been great to have been a part of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme and
when you next hear about the ups and downs of our butterfly populations
nationally, it is this scheme which is providing the data. Currently there are over 1,000 sites being
monitored annually and since its inception in 1976 recorders have made about a
quarter of a million weekly visits at more than 1500 different sites, walking
over a third of a million miles and counting over 16 million butterflies.
1977
to 2014
|
|
|
|
|
|
Species
|
max
count
|
year
|
years
recorded
|
first
|
last
|
Dingy
Skipper
|
28
|
1978
|
8
|
|
1987
|
Clouded
yellow
|
1
|
1992
|
1
|
|
|
Large
White
|
26
|
2006
|
13
|
|
|
Small
White
|
4
|
2006
|
10
|
|
|
Green-veined
White
|
585
|
2014
|
35
|
|
|
Orange-tip
|
22
|
1977
|
32
|
|
|
Green
Hairstreak
|
33
|
2011
|
32
|
|
|
Small
Copper
|
23
|
1989
|
17
|
|
|
Northern
Brown Argus
|
13
|
2006
|
4
|
|
|
Common
Blue
|
150
|
1984
|
31
|
|
|
Red
Admiral
|
65
|
2004
|
18
|
|
|
Painted
Lady
|
28
|
2006
|
6
|
|
|
Small
Tortoiseshell
|
99
|
2004
|
35
|
|
|
Peacock
|
22
|
2006
|
10
|
2004
|
|
Small
Pearl-bordered Fritillary
|
118
|
1978
|
28
|
|
|
Pearl-bordered
Fritillary
|
11
|
1984
|
10
|
|
1989
|
Dark
Green Fritillary
|
26
|
2006
|
22
|
|
|
Speckled
Wood
|
1
|
2014
|
1
|
2014
|
|
Scotch
Argus
|
759
|
2012
|
34
|
|
|
Meadow
Brown
|
54
|
2006
|
33
|
|
|
Ringlet
|
284
|
2014
|
10
|
2005
|
|
Small
Heath
|
109
|
1978
|
32
|
|
|
Large
Heath
|
20
|
1984
|
28
|
|
|
Maximum
count in a single year
|
1563
|
2014
|
|
|
|
Transect
started 1977
|
Total
possible years 38
|
Total
years walks completed 35
|
During September swallows and house martins were gathering
in preparation for heading south. Whilst
visiting daughter Ruth near Aviemore I had been seeing increasing numbers of
swallows on the fences and overhead wires and as the family parties met up I
was amazed one day to see what looked like over 100 birds flying round her
house and occasionally landing in a nearby half-dead
 |
| Ruth's swallows |
tree. I quickly grabbed the wee Panasonic camera
and waited to see if they would land again, which they did briefly. I think the photo shows up to 90 birds in or
around the tree. Despite waiting for
them to repeat the tree visit they scattered and landed in various places. The possibility of a lot of these birds
having bred or hatched on the estate where Ruth lives is quite feasible with so
many older buildings and barns around the place with open windows and doors
allowing easy access to lots of nesting sites.
With many fields having been harvested there were additional feeding
opportunities for
other birds and the local rooks and jackdaws have been
wandering the fields in big numbers. A
visit to Cawdor saw cereal harvesting in action with the crop being deposited
into the drying areas attached to the local distillery and with the sun shining
no doubt the combine would have been working late into the evening. A little worrying though was the quantity of
fertiliser sitting in the
 |
| Heath cudweed seed heads |
adjacent farm-yard ready for the ploughing and sowing
of next year’s crop – 140 one tonne bags of the stuff, probably indicating why
the plants of rest harrow and field speedwell were only found on the field
margins. Heath cudweed (Gnaphalium
sylvaticum) plants featured again this month though not in record numbers as in
July. A visit to an ex-garden cum
nursery near Boat of Garten to check
 |
| Ouch! |
for plants and lichens lead me to the
first group of plants, mostly producing their fluffy seeds, with just over 100
plants in the group. The old car park
produced another 200 and the other tracks and visitor areas a few hundred more
adding up to 660 plants in all, a not insignificant count. Old tracks and car parks are ideal for this
plant and if the site remains as it is, the population should grow a little
before other plants take over. Whilst
lying down taking photos I was aware of lots of mosquitoes buzzing around with
the occasional one penetrating my skin for a pre-breeding snack. I’m not sure whether it’s me or the mozzies
bites not being as itchy/inflamed as usual, but despite lots of bites
during
the summer, few have created the itchy lump that would normally appear. Feeling a bit sadistic I got the camera ready
and held out my hand waiting for the next mozzie to land and, with fly in focus
I waited for the bite, the proboscis to go red and for the body to fill with MY
blood. As usual the mosquitoes back leg
was in the air as its body filled with blood and I managed to get my photos. To see how much blood I’d lost I gently
squashed the fly and the back of my hand looked like it had suffered quite a
bit of trauma, and yet again no itchy lump developed!
Enough. That’s it for
another month
Enjoy the read from a very
relieved
Stewart and Janet
Badenoch & Strathspey
Conservation Group
RBG Kew “Lost and Found” project
Esmée Fairburn Foundation, funder
of Kew Project
UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme
BSBI
Highland Biological Recording
Group
and how to join HBRG
 |
| One of 30 turnstones flicking stones at Findhorn Bay |
 |
| Findhorn Bay |
 |
| Pinkfeet arriving mid-month |
 |
| Couldn't resist one of Harry -"up and running" |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
