As the last blog period ended we were already on our way to
North Uist for our annual holiday and for the first time we decided to take the
more northerly route to Skye forsaking the Loch Ness/Glen Moriston scenery for
whatever the Inverness/Garve/Strathcarran route had to offer. Away from Loch Ness there was the promise of
much less traffic, though there was a section of single-track road to negotiate
between Stathcarran and Kyle. Passing
through Garve brought back memories of a couple of nights spent camping there by
Janet and myself, en route to an interview in Ullapool for a job on Isle
Martin. The journey from the Isle of Rum,
where we lived at
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| Isle Martin & Ullapool |
the time, involved a ferry run from the island to Kyle of
Lochalsh, a train journey to Garve and then a hitched lift to
Ullapool. The then owner of the island
had arranged a lift between Ullapool by car and boat to the island. The interview went well before the reverse
trip was made back to Rum, staying once again for the night in Garve. The outcome of this trip had life-changing implications. I was offered the job of estate worker/warden
of Isle Martin and we had to think long and hard about whether the 400 acre island,
a couple of miles from Ullapool, would be big enough to satisfy our long-term
needs and in the end we turned down the opportunity to move. I then applied for a job with the RSPB at
Loch Garten – and thereby hangs a tale!
Interestingly, Isle Martin became an RSPB reserve for a number of years
and my only return visit to the island was to help RSPB staff complete the
removal of their equipment from the island as the ownership was passed on to a
local trust.
Back to our holiday. We
set off with plenty of time to spare with the ferry not due to leave Uig on
Skye until 5pm. As we drove I spotted
something that looked familiar through a gap in the roadside trees, possibly an
osprey’s nest. We turned round and found
a suitable pull-off spot
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| Osprey nest on power pylon |
and I carefully crept back along the road towards the
gap in the trees. As I walked I heard a
well know sound, the tchup, tchup of an alarming osprey! The nest was on the top of an electricity
pylon and, being close to the road, the bird was used to seeing cars and possibly
people close by and though uttering alarm calls, the adult bird remained on the
nest but kept a close eye on whether I was getting too close. In my hand I also had something that was
going to be tested out for the first time – a new compact camera, the Panasonic
DMC-TZ60, as proved to be a
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| The new camera |
pretty good bit of kit by daughter Laura. Macro close up to x30 zoom, and from a
distance the adult osprey was happy with (no alarm calls) I wound up the zoom
and pressed the button a couple of times before leaving the osprey in peace. What a brilliant use of an intrusive metal
structure in the remote countryside. Not
satisfied with me spotting the osprey nest, a few miles further along the road
Janet spotted another osprey fishing in one of the roadside lochs. Yet another link to our stay in Garve all
those years ago, from a couple of dozen breeding ospreys
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| Greater butterfly orchid |
in Britain when we
moved to Loch Garten in 1976, the birds are now well established in Scotland and
with birds also breeding in the Lake District and in Wales. What a brilliant start to our holiday. With good progress made we stopped for lunch
in Plockton before pushing on to Uig to make yet another visit to the thyme
broomrape site to see if, by visiting the site a month earlier than in the
past, it would be in full bloom. On the
way, a white orchid popping in the roadside vegetation warranted a closer look
and this paid dividends: the divergent pollinia
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| Thyme broomrape |
within the flowers confirming
that we had found a greater butterfly orchid.
A check of rock outcrops on our way to the broomrape site found a new
location for the plant and at the regular site 17 flower spikes were found. Unbelievably, even this early in the season,
most of the flowers were past their best, perhaps the long days of sunny
weather and lack of rain had something to do with it.
The ferry trip from Uig to Lochmaddy was uneventful with the
usual gannets, puffins and guillemots and the occasional great skua. A couple of large mammals were seen but not for
long enough to be identified though minke whale was the consensus for one of
them. Our stay this year was on Grimsay
with amazing views across to Eaval, a very prominent “hill” from the
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| The view of Eaval from holiday accommodation |
ferry and
surrounding countryside despite only being 350m high. Sunny weather greeted us and on our first outing
we re-visited the Paibeil area of North Uist where a short circuit covered
loch, marsh and agricultural lands, having popped into the Kallin shell-food
shop along the way for some fresh crab for our “posh” butties. Masses of colourful flowers, big blue sky
with developing cumulus cloud, butterflies and bees everywhere – it was good to
be back! The
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| Lesser water plantain |
track by the loch produced
our first puzzle of the trip – lesser water plantain (Alisma ranunculoides),
and we had lots of meadow brown butterflies and large red damselflies rising
from the track-side vegetation. The
swans on the loch all appeared to be mutes but eventually in the distance four
whooper swans could be seen. As the
track re-joined the road our first corn bunting was singing on the overhead
wires and as we wandered back towards the car at least five corncrakes were
heard calling. Not a bad start but with
Eaval disappearing under a layer
of cloud late in the evening a weather change
was in the making. 4am the gales started
and by 9am we also had heavy rain. By lunch-time we were back to sun and cloud,
just time to visit the beach and dunes near Benbecula airport. A small group of food-carrying arctic terns
indicated chick feeding was taking place somewhere nearby and while checking
out a mating pair of six-spot burnet moths in the sand dunes I noticed several
black weevils on the stems and flowers of
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| The black marram beetle |
sea rocket (Cakile maritime). On our first visit to the Uists many years
ago I was asked by our beetle friend John Owen, to look for a rare weevil found
on this plant so began to wonder if this might be it. Photos taken, I was able to forward them to
expert Richard to advise, but was informed by return that what I had found was
a common weevil called Otiorhynchus atroapterus the black marram weevil, but
was given ten out of ten for remembering to look! I took the opportunity to do a bit of
botanising close to the holiday flat in the evening, carrying on a little
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| Bar-tailed godwits |
with
the BSBI commitment made back at home.
During the night the rain returned with a vengeance and, trying to make
the most of a break in the rain the following day, we ventured up to Berneray
but ended up with our only wet walk of the holiday as the rain returned just as
we left the car. A summer plumaged bar-tailed
godwit, with others already in winter garb though was a nice find.
One area we always like to visit is the southern island of
Eriskay and as the weather improved we headed south on the next sunny day. We had lunch looking across to Barra from the
Pollachar Inn road and the usual wander with sandwich in hand lead me to a
large spiky sedge growing from a roadside ditch. It reminded me of a giant star sedge (Carex
echinata) but the size of all the plants told me that this was something
different so photos and sample taken to check once back at the flat. The sedge turned out to be the false fox
sedge (Carex otrubae)
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| Carex otrubae - false fox sedge |
something I thought would be new to this part of the
world but no, there turned out to be 73 records from the Uists and 3 of them
from almost the same grid reference.
Obviously the Pollachar Inn is a popular spot with botanists! We enjoyed our walk along the incredibly
shell-rich beach and after debating the name of a plant growing in a wee runnel
of water by the path running up to the road with a passing couple (it turned
out to be gypsywort or Lycopus europaeus) we made our way up to the path
through the dunes taking us back to the car.
This
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| Pyramidal orchid and 6-spot guest |
path is also the one that takes you through the area where the
pyramidal orchids grow and when I saw the first ones by the path I couldn’t
help myself from wandering back and forth counting all the plants on either
side of the path. The counts started off
quite normally with 1, 20, 10, 82, 237, in each count area, but as we got nearer
to the road Janet said there were lots of them in the grasslands either side of
the road where the site counts ended with 115, 86, 420 and 530! The minimum total count was 2034 flowering
spikes a huge increase on our count in 2012 of 770. A return visit later in the week to Berneray
saw us wander through the dunes to the beach and managing to re-find the two
pyramidal orchid sites from 2010 with 27 and 12 flowering spikes compared to 13
and 2 on the last visit. Amazingly, the
last plant record to go into my notebook as we waited for the ferry back to
Skye was a single spike of the same orchid growing right by the pedestrian path
running along the side of the car parking lanes, and possibly the first time
the plant had been seen in North Uist (BSBI database).
The amazing woodland, mostly planted by one man on the side
of Loch Aineort, also required another visit following “finding” the woodland
last year. The owner has been at it
again with several hundred metres of track being re-laid at the start of the
walk. Pale butterwort was a
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| Pale butterwort |
new find for
this area for us and it was nice to hear a couple of chaffinches singing, a
rare species on the islands. Wrens and
willow warblers were seen and heard and there was again evidence (broken egg
shells) that herons had attempted to nest in one of the small conifer
plantations. Janet suggested we explore
one of the tracks heading up the hill-side to where we could see a tempting seat
just where the track turned to follow the hillside contour and off we set. The seat provided a wonderful view-point out
over the sea loch and to the hills on the
opposite side and we watched a small
yacht making its way carefully out to the open sea via the narrow sea-loch
entrance. We also scanned the hills in
vain for any signs of eagles with both golden and white-tailed known to be in
the area. As we made our way back down
to the lower path something on the leaf of a young aspen tree caught my eye,
quite a large caterpillar with a very distinctive “head” and rear-end
protrusions leading me to think about it being the
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| Puss moth caterpillar on aspen |
larval stage of the puss
moth. A second one was also found on
another aspen leaf, quite an amazing find of a species I find at home mainly as
vacated cocoons. Janet managed to name a
plant growing by the owner’s hand-built pier as common skullcap (Scutellaria
galericulata) the larger relative of the single lesser skullcap (Scutellaria
minor) plant we found nearby the year before.
On the way back to the car we passed the huge rock table and seat
installed to mark the 2000 millennium and as we sipped our coffee I spotted a
few gulls getting annoyed with something quite a way off by the shore. A very brief view of an otter was seen as it
disappeared into the rocks. At about the
same time more gulls were heading off in a fairly aggressive way over the sea
and I was just in time to see an adult white-tailed sea eagle glide and perch
on the opposite side of the loch being joined by a second bird a few minutes
later.
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| Yes, the pale dot in the centre is a sea eagle |
All that could be seen of the
birds were their very pale heads as the rest of their bodies blended in with
the surrounding vegetation. I took my
binoculars off them for a minute or so to point out to Janet where they were
and by the time I checked again with my binoculars, they were gone. I scanned back to where the otter had been
and there were the two eagles being aggressively harassed, as the otter had
been, by several gulls. Perhaps there was
something dead on the shore causing both the otter and eagles to visit to
feed. The new Panasonic camera was
tested to its limit to see if at x30 zoom anything could be seen of the birds,
their pale heads being just about visible but only by knowing that was what I
was photographing.
On our outing to Berneray we were also in for a
surprise. As you drive off the causeway
linking the island to North Uist, you pass the ferry terminal which links
Berneray to the Island of Harris and Lewis.
There, in the vehicle queues were several police-type vehicles and
police
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| The BBC live action camera van |
motorbikes – the accompaniment for the wellbeing of the Commonwealth
Games baton relay which, the day before, had had its official day in the
Uists. The folk accompanying the baton
had stayed overnight in Lochmaddy but early in the morning the baton and a few
lucky folk took off in a helicopter to allow the baton to visit St. Kilda,
flying back in time to meet up with the ferry
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| Smile! |
with police contingent arriving
in Harris. Being just about lunch-time
there were boxes of sandwiches, cakes and fruit being passed around the support
staff and as the ferry departure time drew close all the folk assembled for
group photos. From the little we saw at
the ferry terminal one begins to wonder what the cost of the baton relay going
round the whole of the commonwealth has been, the packed lunch alone would have
probably covered the cost of our two week holiday. The last day of our island holiday was spent
wandering right round the
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| Arctic tern at 6-o-clock! |
RSPBs Balranald Reserve. Along the way we heard only our third and
fourth corn buntings of the holiday as the Uist population continues to decline
at an alarming rate and close to the car park was the regular corncrake. A dead seal on the beach at Traigh Iar was
attracting the interest of the ravens and big gulls and just off shore a crèche
of eiders was feeding and resting on the rocks.
Around the top of the headland artic terns were constant companions as
they dive-bombed the two of us as we walked along, no doubt worried that we
were getting close to
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| Dunlins bathing |
their fledged youngsters.
A freshwater pool had 40-50 dunlins bathing and drinking along with a
few gulls and just above us in the machair were 20-30 cows and calves with
accompanying bull and starling flock.
Strange marks carved into a large rock spotted by Janet turned out to be
a bench-mark the location of which is probably the number •20 (height above
sea-level) shown on the current OS map of the site (grid ref NF69355 70990). As we made our way back along the edge of the
sandy bay towards the car park a couple of sand martins circled overhead, rare
birds in the Uists, and as we watched, one of the birds flew in towards the
hard sand “cliff” which, on closer inspection, had the start of a nesting
hole. Whether a hole being dug in the
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| Red-breasted merganser family |
middle of July would ever be used I’m not too sure but I let warden Jamie know,
just in case. The final evening was
spent having a last look at a couple of small lochs just along the road from
our accommodation. Growing from a rock
outcrop on one of them a strange seed-head could be seen which, on closer
inspection turned out to belong to a bluebell plant, surviving in the only
location out of reach of the grazing sheep, of which there were loads. Another plant
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| Water lobellia at sunset |
that I didn’t know occurred on
the islands. A couple of families of
red-breasted mergansers were seen heading off to roost and on one of the lochs,
where the sheep access had been restricted, several massive clumps of fertile
royal fern could be spied on the opposite shore. Time to test out the x30 zoom on the camera
again. As the sun began to set I was
wandering
close to the edge of one of the lochs and the wee waves caused by the
gentle breeze created an amazing sight as they washed through a group of water
lobelia flowers protruding from the surface of the water. If that wasn’t good enough to bring our
holiday to a close the red sky and setting sun as I walked back along the road
provided the perfect end.
Once back home it didn’t take long to get back into the
“normal” routine with paper and bag of peanuts delivered to Rita just down the
road before getting the chalet ready for our next visitors. With everything ship-shape I drove over to
thank Richard for keeping an eye on the birds and feeders before heading off to
see how the bog orchids found in 2013 were
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| Bog orchid group |
performing this year. With tiny flower spikes growing from several
of the sphagnum hummocks and even smaller non-flowering bulbils in similar
locations, great care was needed as I checked the site. About 160 plants were counted compared to
just less than 100 a year ago – excellent.
Next day Janet’s tweedcraft goods were loaded into the car and set up at
one of the Open Garden sites a percentage of her takings going towards the
Castle Roy Trust maintenance fund. This
ancient structure, by the B970 when leaving Nethybridge for Grantown, is
currently undergoing major repairs, and all takings from the wider Open Garden
event were also going towards the fund.
Another group to check on on our return was the status of the
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Janet's Tweedcraft stall & Julie's plants
© Julie Pritchard |
tooth
fungi, especially with a group visit organised for late in August. Worryingly, seeing two of the less common
species up and looking good at the end of June (rather than mid-August!) I was
interested to see if many more fruiting bodies had appeared in this earlier
than normal growing season. The visit to
the forest track not far from the house produced 64 fruiting bodies of 5
species, the rarest species being Hydnellum caeruleum (3 fruiting bodies) and
Sarcodon glaucopus (x3), with little chance of either species being
recognisable if even still present by the end of August. A case of keeping all fingers crossed. With good weather developing mid-week the
local butterfly transect was walked with ringlet and green-veined white the
main
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| Speckled wood distribution to 1990 (NBN) |
species and with the sun still shining the next day I popped over to near
Grantown to walk the BTO/Butterfly Conservation transect. The route is the same as that walked for the
BTO bird
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Speckled wood distribution 2000 to 2014 (NBN) showing
southern spread from Moray coast |
survey during April and May.
This covers an outward leg of one kilometre of mainly conifer
plantation, a cross-country leg of about 800 metres with no recording before
walking the return one kilometre back almost to the start point. Whilst the conifer plantation might be good
for the commoner bird species there are usually few butterflies to be seen
along the 4-5 metre wide forestry ride.
So I was in for a big surprise when a speckled wood flew down the ride
towards me before heading off through the trees no doubt in search of a nice
flowery patch on which to feed. This is
still quite a rare butterfly in our part of the world. Each one kilometre leg is split into five
recording sections of 200m (same as the bird survey) and thankfully, for the
last 200m of the first leg the plantation is exited and a nice boggy area with
a reasonable mix of flowering plants comprises most of the section. Green-veined whites, ringlets and small
pearl-bordered fritillaries were seen as the sun continued to shine keeping the
temperature about right for good butterfly activity. The non-recording cross-country section
covers an open area of plantation Scots pine woodland along with more forest
bog, the pines having been thinned about two years ago. There can be a bit of fun working a way
through some of the brash left behind from
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| Dolichomitus imperator ichneumon fly in action |
the thinning but on this occasion
the brash provided the perfect habitat for the next find of the day – a three
inch long ichneumon fly. This fly has
featured before in the blog but on this occasion the fly was most obliging and
let me get in quite close as it probed the log with its inch and a half long egg-laying
ovipositor, seeking out the beetle larvae host in which to lay its eggs. This amazing fly is Dolichomitus imperator,
an important parasitoid of other insects.
Quite often, the mated female fly wanders pieces of deadwood touching
the wood with her antennae as she searches for the scent of the beetle larva
developing inside the log. The fly’s
legs pick up on the vibrations made by the wood-boring larva and once located
the sheaths protecting the ovipositor (sort of drill) part and the fly pushes
it onto the deadwood until it enters the beetle larva. Once the ovipositor has entered the host,
eggs are injected into the host’s body cavity where eventually they will hatch
whereupon the ichneumon larvae will devour the beetle larva before emerging as
adults to start the whole process over again.
Sadly, the new Panasonic didn’t perform as well as I had hoped, the
bright sun cancelling out the use of the camera
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| Dark green fritillary on thistle flowers Garten butterfly transect |
screen and the viewfinder
option, which is pretty poor for this sort of close up work, let me down a
bit. Perhaps I was a bit too ambitious
in actually trying to video the fly at work, stopping occasionally to take
still photos, one of which thankfully came out okay. To see a video of the ichneumon fly in action
click on the youtube link below.
Somewhat delayed I pushed on to reach the other one kilometre road
section of the transect, small tortoiseshell being the only new species to add
to the list. Once home the data from the
days transect was entered on-line to the Butterfly Conservation database adding
a little more information on the current status of our UK butterflies. Later that day the chalet guests had two pine
martens visiting the peanut feeders.
Amazingly a single speckled wood butterfly turned up on the Loch Garten
butterfly transect a few days later, a new species for the site and only the
second ever record for the Abernethy Reserve.
The main undertaking for the rest of July has been the
continuation of the BSBI plant survey of under-recorded tetrads within the
Cairngorms National Park. Quite often
two to three visits have been needed to cover the survey area reasonably well
and it has been a good way of visiting areas I’ve never been to before. Quite a bit of rockrose has been found in the
Kingussie/Newtonmore area which was a pleasant surprise, as was the appearance
of a
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| Unexpected find high up in the moors |
timber haulage wagon high up in the moors above Newtonmore, removing
felled logs from the woodland that was my turn-around location for that
day. Thankfully, the ground flora of the
woodland being clear-felled (mainly lodgepole pine with Scots pine) indicated a
wood of recent plantation origin rather than a plantation on an ancient
woodland site, yet another clear-fell possibly prompted by fungal disease
starting to appear nationally in lodgepole pine plantations. On the way back down the hill three trees on
the edge of a recently created turnip field were a pleasant surprise, an
ancient elm, ancient ash and mid-aged rowan, and worthy of
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| Splachnum ampullaceum moss |
another visit when
plant recording isn’t the priority. Find
of this particular day was an unusual moss which I had only ever seen once
before – Splachnum ampullaceum - cruet collar-moss. For once the brain was working well and I
managed to remember most of the scientific name along with the fact that it was
a moss which grows on herbivore dung deposited in damp, boggy sites, a perfect
description of the habitat I was in.
With dozens of pages of plant records accumulating all I need to do now
is get all the records onto the MapMate database, not quite as pleasant a
pastime as wandering the sites finding them!
A follow up email linked to the Ancient Tree Forum visit
mentioned in the last blog lead to what might possibly be the find of the year,
the “find” only being possible with help from others. A couple of follow up emails circulated after
the ATF visit with one mentioning one team had found a peacock moth during
their survey. This moth was featured
last month and, being a bit uncommon locally, I followed up the email by asking
for an approximate location so the record could be forwarded to the moth atlas
people. The couple who recorded the moth
then sent me a second email asking if I knew who should be contacted locally
regarding rare plants and in
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| The first group of heath cudweed flowers |
the exchange of emails that followed I was made
aware of a large number of flowering spikes of heath cudweed (Gnaphalium
sylvaticum) growing in a field near Carrbridge, the initial estimate was
“probably over 1000”. Wow, the largest
population I’d heard of locally probably comprised a few hundred, and enquiries
via local BSBI recorders informed me that the highest UK count on the national
database was 1300! Late one afternoon,
after a meeting about the loss of wader fields locally, I thought I had just
enough time to nip over to try and find the field and plants and, armed with my
hand-tally counter, undertake a reasonably accurate count of the thousand or so
flowers. I thought I was in the right
field but it didn’t look right, heath cudweed plants are usually found on
fairly bare ground and this usually means tracks and track verges, and this field
was fairly lush with a good mix of plants and grasses. Before I knew it I was almost walking on the
first group of plants, all growing from within the established grasses! I could though see lots of flowering spikes,
this must be the right field. Out came
the hand-tally counter and over the next forty-five minutes the counter never
stopped counting. Rough
transects were
walked across the field until I eventually ran out of flowering spikes and only
then did I dare look at the total on the counter. 6137! I had just counted over six thousand
flowering spikes of a nationally declining plant – heath cudweed, and this had
to be a minimum count because of the lack of a formally laid-out grid. Enquiries informed me that this is the
highest count ever (via reported records) of this plant and further enquiries
by the lady finder informed me that the field used to be a storage area for
logs for the local sawmill. Despite the
field not looking ideal currently for the plant in the not too distant past the
stacking of logs would have left the field in ideal bare conditions for the
Gnaphalium to thrive, which it certainly did.
Currently, I gather the field is lightly grazed by horses, so if the
same grazing regime continues, the plant should have a positive future, that is
until the more dominant grasses and tall plant eventually take over the site.
That’s it for another month,
enjoy the read.
Stewart and Janet
BSBI
Castle Roy
More about Castle Roy and
Nethybridge
Dolichomitus imperator -
ichneumon fly (4 minute video)
BTO/Butterfly Conservation wider
countryside butterfly survey
Highland Biological Recording
Group
and how to join HBRG
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| Mute swan family South Uist |
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| Keeled garlic from last blog now in full flower - beautiful |
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| "Banksy" Taylor and Sympetrum dragonfly |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
