Firwood Cottage, Nethybridge: Thank you Scotland

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 13^th 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 18^th had something to do with

About 5am in the morning

it. We both went down to vote quite early on the 18^th 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 14^th 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 23^rdbefore 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 7^th 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

http://www.bscg.org.uk/

RBG Kew “Lost and Found” project

http://www.kew.org/discover/blogs/rarity-of-british-fungi

Esmée Fairburn Foundation, funder of Kew Project

http://esmeefairbairn.org.uk/

UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme

http://www.ukbms.org/

BSBI