The number of dead buzzards and
kites continues to increase with the totals now at 14 red kites and 6 buzzards;
the reward for information now stands at £26,000 reflecting the horror of the
event and the public support in trying to apprehend the killer. The protest rally mentioned in the last blog
was held on the 12 April in Inverness, with the walk starting at the Highland
Council offices making its way through the main shopping area to a rally in the
pedestrian area next to
 |
On the way, Inverness Town House
in the background |
M&S. About
50 folk were on the walk, including two members of Friends of Red Kites – North
of England (Tim Watson and June Atkinson), who had travelled to Inverness from
Gateshead to show solidarity with those in the Black Isle Raptor Protest. Around 200 attended the rally. Jess from RSPB’s Highland Office had put a
lot of thought into how the message about bird of prey persecution could be highlighted
and the idea of “ghost birds” was formed.
Life sized birds were cut from plywood and painted white, 14 red kite
ghosts and 5 (correct at the time) ghost buzzards. These replicated the white bikes that have
become a feature on some of our roads where cyclists have been killed. Short presentations were given by Peter
Mayhew (RSPB), Alan Bantick (SWT), Sir John Lister Kaye (Vice President RSPB
Scotland) and Councillor Carolyn Caddick, Highland Council’s red kite
champion. Following
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| Councillor Carolyn Caddick |
the presentations
the “ghost birds” were placed on the ground, each bird being given a chalk
outline to indicate a murder scene before many of those attending the protest
left their signatures or messages on the birds before departing for home. To date (late May) no one has been charged
over the killings despite much searching of the area where the birds were found
and at least one farm has being searched.
As all this was ongoing the first sea eagle to be hatched and fledged in
the east of Scotland in 200 years went missing on the North Glenbuchat Estate
in Strathdon, the last location registered by its satellite tracking
device. “Not guilty mi-lord” shout the
estate owners and staff and “it’s just a coincidence” that a golden eagle was
found poisoned in the same area in 2011.
However, read on and make you own conclusions. The piece that follows was produced by Raptor
Persecution Scotland:
“North Glenbuchat Estate has
been at the centre of a series of wildlife crime investigations over a number
of years. These have included the prosecution and conviction of the then head
gamekeeper (in 2006) for poisoning offences; the discovery of a poisoned golden
eagle in 2011
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| Marking out the crime scene |
(killed by Carbofuran – no prosecution); the discovery of a
poisoned buzzard in 2011 (killed by Carbofuran – no prosecution); the discovery
of a poisoned bait in 2011 (no prosecution), and the discovery of a dead
short-eared owl in 2011, that had been shot and stuffed under a rock (no
prosecution).” So, if you are planning a
holiday in the Strath Don area and happen to visit the North Glenbuchat Estate which
was bought by the Marquess of Milford Haven in 2008 – take great care. Better still, go for a walk on the estate
with as many friends as you can find on the “Glorious 12th” because
this estate is owned and managed with the sole purpose of farming red grouse. Sorry, rant over.
Early in April I received a
phone call to say that an injured crossbill had been found near Carrbridge and
could I have a look at it to see if there was a possibility of it being
returned to full health. The day before
I had been asked if I could identify a lichen found by Gus under a bridge
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| Male crossbill |
over
the A9 where the road crosses the River Nairn.
It was one of two species of Peltigera so the only way to be sure which
one was to visit the site and with Carrbridge being over halfway to the bridge
I thought I could sort the two problems in the one trip. The bridge site didn’t disappoint and the
tiny patch of lichen turned out to be Peltigera leucophlebia a species which I
found has the wonderful common name of Ruffled Freckled Pelt! The rocks above the river on the other side
of the old road bridge, now below the A9, also looked interesting and after a
bit of a scramble down to them I was amazed to find a huge population of the
same lichen but this time I could see the leafy lobes had fertile bits
(apothecia) a feature classed as rare in Britain. On the rocks, just above the river level, was
another local lichen, Dermatocarpon luridum, a species I had also found on
rocks near
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| Fertile Peltigera leucophlebia |
Logie on the River Findhorn whilst out with Janet a few days
earlier. As I made my way back up to the
old bridge I noticed an odd looking metal plaque fixed to the bridge parapet and
the letters OS and BM caught my eye. I
had seen the upward pointing arrow carved into rocks before but this was the
first time I had seen a “wall bracket” complete with an identification number, so
time for a photograph. BM stands for
bench mark and the symbols carved into rocks and metal brackets like this one
date back to a time around the 1930s when the Ordnance Survey people set about accurately
mapping the UK. Many years before (late
1700s), triangulation (Trig) points or pillars became established to allow the size
and the shape of the UK to be determined and despite the early measuring
relying on rods and chains and the use of trigonometry a very accurate picture
was developed. The later 1930s work
established a very accurate set of triangulation pillars, mostly on the highest
bits of ground (you will probably have seen these concrete pillars on tops of
the hills you visit) to which
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| Old road bridge over River Nairn |
a theodolite measuring device could be attached. By this method heights of hills could be
measured very accurately as could the distance between them but to allow a
series of height contours to be developed from the tops of the hills down to
sea level, a series of bench marks were installed. These “marks”, numbering over 750,000, were
scratched into walls and rocks and at some sites metal plaques like the one in
front of me were installed. Using the
trig points and the bench marks the National Grid was developed and the
excellent OS Maps that we have today were born.
Today we have sat-navs and hand held global positioning system (GPS)
devices and probably hardly ever think about the work that went into producing
the maps we now take so much for granted.
Back home I wondered what would happen if I typed OS BM G4249 into
Google and was pretty astounded when a table appeared and by working down the
list of entries, found that G4249 was listed as “Daviot” and that there was
another on the wall of the nearby church also in Daviot. Amazing.
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| Bench Mark |
On the way home I picked up the male crossbill which despite showing
some improvement with overnight food and water died the following day due to a
deep wound under a wing. Work is still
being carried out on crossbill genetics so the bird was popped into the freezer
for researcher Ron Summers to collect at a later date in order to see exactly
which crossbill we were dealing with.
The bird was a small-billed crossbill but I await details from Ron as to
exactly which species had been found.
The 8th and 9th
of April will be remembered as “pig’s ears” days! April is the time of year for the strange
looking morel fungi to pop up from the ground, and prior to the 8th
quite a few false morels (Gyromitra esculenta) had been seen along some tracks. However, on that day I was walking along the
track to Forest Lodge when I
 |
False morel -
Gyromitra esculenta |
noticed an odd, flat, circular fungus growing in a
patch of disturbed ground on the edge of the track. Stumped as to a name I took several photos
plus one fruiting body as a sample just in case spores needed to be checked. Once home the fungus guide lead me to
Gyromitra ancilis, the pig’s ear fungus, a fungus I had found just once
before. The next day saw me heading off
over the hills to NTS Mar Lodge Estate for a meet up with warden Shaila and ecologist
John. Shaila had arranged for a green
shield-moss search as a follow up to her visit to Abernethy the previous
month. On returning home Shaila had
found a few capsules in the woodlands close to Mar Lodge itself and it was in
this area she had arrange for the search to take place. The drive over was pleasant as always taking
in as it does the Lecht and the drive over the two high moorland areas with
their many red grouse as you descent to the Deeside road by Crathie Church. The drive up the track to Mar Lodge is also
very impressive with the pinky coloured
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| Pig's ear - Gyromitra ancilis |
stonework of the building looking
pristine on the approach. The last time
I was in the Lodge was way back in 2001 when RSPB and NTS had to work closely with
the RAF, Police and mountain rescue teams during the recovery phase following
the loss of two F15 US fighter aircraft on the plateau close to Ben
Macdui. A much pleasanter reason for the
gathering this time. In all 8 folk were
involved in the search, the first time such a concerted effort had taken place
to find the moss. We first visited the
log where Shaila had already found the moss just to allow everyone present to
see what it looked like and the sort of deadwood habitat it like to grow on,
though two-thirds of those present had been involved in searches in other woods
in the past. Then off we went and
literally within the first five minutes the shout went up “I’ve found some!” The woodland we
 |
| The successful green shield-moss search |
were searching is classed as
policy woodland, a mixture of mainly old conifers which originally would have
been the recreational woodland close to the Lodge itself. Amazingly, trees of a good age had, over the
years, fallen over, and many had been left where they had fallen, ideal green
shield-moss habitat – purely by accident.
As the morning search continued there were quite regular shout of “I’ve
found some” with those found on what appeared to be a well decayed Grand Fir
adding a new host tree species to the list.
The afternoon outing covered more policy type woodland, but with a good
number of native tree species also in the mix, and though not as
 |
| One of the green shield-moss finds |
productive as
the morning session, the finds kept mounting up. The end point of the afternoon session for me
was arriving at a known patch of twinflower (Linnaea borealis) to see if the
wee spotty fungus from 2013 was present on the leaves, being confirmed after a
few minutes searching. Fungus expert
Liz, who had been with us throughout the days search had recorded the
Metacoleroa dickii rust fungus on this patch of twinflower previously, so it
was nice to know it was still present.
On the way back to the Lodge the search of one last large, fallen
conifer, produced a nice surprise with a good number of fruiting bodies of the
pig’s ear fungus, growing in its more
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| The amazing Mar Lodge |
typical fallen deadwood habitat. With so few records of this fungus nationally
it was nice to have managed to record it two days running, provided a fitting
end to what had been an amazing day. A
couple of days later Shaila emailed to say that the total number of green
shield-moss capsules found on the day was 179, which far out-striped any
previous single days count. This brought
the total for the estate to 200 capsules when adding in Shaila’s earlier finds.
Brother John started me off on a
botanising trip by sending through a photograph of a flower he had found whilst
on an outing in Lancashire. By a
footpath and in an area of hazel trees he had spotted a number of toothwort
flowers (Latheraea squamaria). This
plant is parasitic, dependent
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| Toothwort |
on a range of shrubs and trees for its existence,
particularly hazel, ash and elm, in John’s case it was growing with hazel. This was a plant I had never seen but had
been aware that it regularly appeared in an elm/hazel wood near Dingwall and
also thought it might possibly grow in a brilliant aspen/hazel/elm wood near
Grantown on Spey. There was only one
thing to do therefore and that was pay a visit to the Dingwall wood to see its
preferred habitat and then follow this up with a visit to my Grantown
wood. The Dingwall wood didn’t
disappoint, massive ancient elms and a good scattering of hazels, and on
leaving the road I was greeted by a big patch of ramsons (wild garlic - Allium
ursinum) a scarce plant in my local woods.
Bluebells were just pushing up their flower spikes and the presence of
woodruff and sanicle flowers indicated the soil had a reasonably high pH. A rust fungus growing on some sanicle leaves
turned out to be Puccinia saniculae something new to the Highland recording
area. A good start. The toothwort didn’t disappoint either,
though a recent frost might have been responsible for some of the flowers
looking a bit brown and past their best.
Overall there were quite a few good patches of
 |
| Good population of toothwort |
toothwort, particularly
at the top of a steep slope comprising most of the wood, just where a footpath
wound its way through the trees. Big
elms always tempt me to stop and check their bark for the rapidly declining Gyalecta
ulmi lichen but without luck on this occasion. Once again a couple of tiny
snails were encountered which expert Richard named as Balea heydeni, the
left-handed spirals of its shell helping with its identification. Would the Grantown wood provide the
 |
| Balea heydeni snail |
goods? Five days passed before I managed
to visit this wood and as I looked across at the elms and hazels the general
ground vegetation looked quite a bit different to the wood at Dingwall. There was lots of woodruff, the white flowers
of wood anemone and the yellows of celandine but the dominant plant was nettle,
which, thankfully at the time of my visit, was only a few inches tall. Wandering up and down the steep slope
frequent patches of townhall clock or moschatel (Adoxa moschatellina) flowers
were seen along with catkins on a couple of aspens (a rare event and covered
later in this blog) but the temptation to check the occasional elm for lichens
was too strong to resist – thankfully!
After a couple of hours of wandering the slope I was beginning to feel
the site was not quite right; the scale of the search might be better with a
few more folk. I stopped for a biscuit
and whilst munching checked the bark of one of the elms and there, once again,
were a couple of tiny snails! Sadly on
this occasion they were not able to be identified from the photos but likely to
be two reasonably common species. This
huge elm had lots of nooks and crannies
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| Moschatel and celandine |
and as I worked my way around the tree
one particular hole looked quite interesting.
Okay, so holes in trees might not appeal to everybody, but when I made
my trip to Inverfarigaig a couple of years ago I remembered from an earlier
survey report that a rare pinhead lichen had been found in just this sort of
place. As I peered into the hole I could
see that there were lots of pinhead present.
Over time I have seen quite a lot of pinheads usually in areas of decay
and in hollows but something about this one looked different, so very carefully
a small sample was extracted initially to photograph but then to pack carefully
into my tube to take home to look at under the microscope. I then managed to wiggle my camera into the
hole and with quite a bit of
 |
| The extracted sample of Chaenotheca gracilenta lichen |
difficulty with focus and section of lichen to
photograph, I fired away with fingers crossed.
I was reasonably happy that I knew what I had found and with growing
excitement headed for home. The photos
in Nordic Lichen Flora looked just about right but I was a bit lost when that
book and the Lichen Handbook said that the spore bearing asci appeared in
“chains” under the microscope. I could
make something like that out but just wasn’t sure what I was seeing. At about the same time lots of emails had
been doing the rounds about another pinhead lichen having just been found on
twigs of a balsam poplar in Wales and though there were few British
 |
| Chaenotheca gracilenta in elm hole |
records, it
had turned up on every balsam poplar checked.
In replying to the Welsh find I added photos of my elm lichen find along
with the microscope details asking if anyone could provide a name. A reply from Brian the following day said “You
have just added another gem to your portfolio! What you have is Chaenotheca gracilenta - the
5th Scottish record, and 7th British. Your observation of its asci in chains is
also spot on, and is a unique character for this species”. Phew, I had settled on the right name and I
must thank John for setting me off in its direction.
The other news a few days later
wasn’t so good. Having a bath one night
my right arm-pit felt a bit tender and on checking in the mirror I could see
quite a bit of redness – perhaps I had developed a sweat rash so a bit of cream
was applied. With little improvement
over the next few
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| Female aspen catkins |
days and with a red ring making itself very obvious I began
to think seriously about a tick bite, though I couldn’t remember pulling one
out from this area. Janet said there was
a tiny black speck in the centre but couldn’t really see anything that
resembled a tick. The doctor couldn’t
see a tick either but did confirm, once again, that the dreaded Lyme Disease
was back and a two week course of tablets was supplied. Back home I got Janet to use my hand lens to
re-check the tiny black dot and sure enough, probably one of the tiniest ticks
ever to sink its fang’s into my flesh was the black dot and had passed on the
disease. Not sure if linked to the mild
winter but there have been plenty of tick encounters already this year, some of
which have been picked up as I wander the local area ground-truthing aspen
distribution maps for John Parrott of Coille Alba as part of
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| Female seed producing aspen catkin |
the Highland Aspen
project. The project this year has added
significance that by systematically checking the stands of trees the aspens
could also be checked for catkins/flowering.
Taking on this type of survey work always has additional benefits in the
recording world by taking you to areas you might never visit. The maps allocated to me covered an area
either side of the River Spey between Grantown on Spey and Advie and the first
wood visited provided records of a few plants, a couple of lichens and a
brilliant sand martin colony in an impressively high, stream eroded sand-bank. The next one, close to the Spey, produced
some huge aspens mixed in with a stand of ancient oaks and a yaffling green
woodpecker, my third this year. The
stands detailed on the maps were derived from aerial photography flights of
several years ago, flown just at the time the birches were just coming into
leaf allowing the bare crowns of the aspens (the last tree to produce its
leaves locally) to be visible on the photos.
Identification is almost 100% correct were you have a large stand of
aspens, but where half a dozen are hidden away up a small burn then you have to
 |
| Bombus monticola |
physically check because the trees could be ash, late flowering alder and even,
as I have found from some maps, dead Scots pines and birches. The next site to check involved knocking on
the doors at the Tormore Distillery so that I could park in their carpark and
then follow the very precious crystal clear waters of the burn supplying the
distillery with its most vital ingredient up the hill to where the map showed
there might be aspen trees. What a place. Fairly boring at the start but an amazing
wooded gully the further up the burn I walked, eventually finding five very
mature aspens growing from a rocky crag, the loose rock looking like it would
fall away if touched! A few more good
plants and aspen/birch lichens and visiting a moss covered rock outcrop with a
constant trickle of water I came across one of the bonniest wee fungi seen so
far this year. It was very small with a
mix of a dark stem and bright orange cap, and it was growing from a tiny twig,
hanging from the moss, and with a constant trickle of water running over
it. Checking the books and internet once
home identified it as Vibrissea truncorum, probably a new fungus for
 |
| Vibrissea truncorum in wet moss |
Morayshire
and about the 100th record of it to be added to the Fungal Record
Database. The second site to be checked
involved exiting the gully and wandering across moorland to check if there were
trees hidden away in an area of conifer plantation. The blaeberry dominated bit of moor was
buzzing with the blaeberry bumblebee (Bombus monticola) and quite a few green
hairstreak butterflies, but there the excitement ended as the wander through
the plantation failed to find any aspens, the map interpretation having picked
up on a group of rowans and birches.
 |
| Mossy waterfall |
The
last site for the day involved visiting the strange detour the Speyside Way
takes (access along the old railway line being opposed by one of the
landowners) to the south of the A95 at Dalvey.
This scatter of old trees occur in an area of quite old birch woodland,
a site worthy of another visit in the future.
The woodland is grazed by cattle and it was the passage of their hooves
that provided the last find of the day, the wee cup fungus Dumontinia tuberosa,
found last year near Loch Ericht, a fungus growing from the underground corms
of the wood anemone flowers. An angry
buzzard wasn’t happy by me disturbing it from its incubation duties so time for
a quick exit. Keeping a check on my
local aspens is progressing well with a good chance a Taphrina fungus linked to
flowering aspen my re-appear after an absence of 13 years. Watch this space.
That’s it for another month, sorry about the delay but enjoy the read.
Stewart and Janet
Raptor Persecution Scotland
Ordnance Survey Bench Marks
Fungal Records Database of the
British Isles
Highland Biological Recording
Group
and how to join HBRG
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| Phaeocalicium populneum pinhead on balsam poplar |
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| The ancient Chaenotheca gracilenta elm |
 |
| Long-tailed tit with nest material |
 |
| Bearberry in flower |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
