Happy New Year.
Snow, snow, go away come again another day! From about the 10th January
onwards we seemed to have some snow fall on most days, about 8” being the most
in a single overnight fall. Regularly, on some days, 1-2” would fall then stop,
followed by another 1-2”, building up to about a foot of snow
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| a daily pastime |
in areas not
cleared. An outing to a couple of oak
trees in Tulloch on 28th proved interesting with wind and snow
showers combining to create impressive blizzard conditions. Not the best conditions for my outings
searching for “stuff” so by 31st cabin fever was setting in. However, we did get out, and a few items of
interest were found.
Prior to the snow, site visits to check for presence or absence
of aspens progressed but with the first three outings finding few aspens,
several dead pines, the odd ash tree and an ancient alder. Two local outings though proved quite
valuable for other things. A visit to
Tulloch where a slightly sandy, mossy bank by the track tempted me over, as a
possible shield moss or lichen site. No
shield mosses
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| Peltigera malacea |
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| NBN map sowing distribution of Peltigera malacea |
On the day before the snows arrived Janet was having her
ex-school mates around for lunch so I planned an outing to one of the ground
truthing sites way down at Newtonmore. The sites to be checked comprising a few
around the village and two a couple of miles up the River Calder. As mentioned before in an earlier blog, the
aspen ground truthing work arose from the huge interest shown in this tree and its
dependant wildlife at the first Aspen Conference held in May 2001 and a need to
know fairly accurately, the distribution of aspens or aspen stands throughout
Strathspey. This conference initiated
the setting up of the Highland Aspen Group (HAG) and via this group the mapping
project developed. During 2007 and 2008,
an aerial photographic survey was conducted
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| Aspen ground-truthing map |
over 600km2, covering
the core area for aspens in Strathspey (Advie to Newtonmore), the flights
taking place in late May when most trees apart from aspens are in full
leaf. This enabled bare trees or groups
of bare trees to be identified from the photos.
A presentation on this work was given at the second Aspen Conference
held in October 2008 and, following on from the aerial photography the images
were painstakingly checked and the “bare tree” locations transferred accurately
to OS maps. However, “bare trees” can
also comprise dead trees, late leafing rowans and most ash trees (rare locally)
which also only come into leaf, in most years, in late May. Hence the need to ground truth
what is where. And so it was off to Newtonmore with Map 11
to see what I could find. The ones
around the village were either close to wooded gardens or on the edge of fields
with the result being aspens 2 and ash 1.
The locations near the River Calder seemed best to be accessed from the
A86 Loch Laggan road, following a track through the Newtonmore Riding Centre. Parking my car by the road I loaded up and
made my way up the track, aware, as I passed the riding centre car park, that
there was a film crew on site – perhaps something for tonight’s Scottish
news. Walking by the river I came across
a few ancient oaks and an ancient rowan, the rowan providing the first good
find of the day: flaky freckle pelt lichen (Peltigera britannica), a sign of
things to come. The riverbank also
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| Textured lungwort (Peltigera scrobiculata) |
had a
small population of shining cranesbill (Geranium lucidum), identifiable without
flowers by its distinctive leaves. Lots
of old hazels started to appear along with the occasional ancient goat willow
(Salix caprea), each adding a few more lichens to the list including lungwort
(Lobaria pulmonaria) and the textured lungwort (L. scrobiculata). Right on location the first ancient aspen was
found – sadly having been felled by the gales a couple of nights earlier, and
there were three more by the river, all corresponding with the two red polygons
on my map. It took about an hour to
check over
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| The wind-felled aspen |
all the trees for mosses and lichens, collating their records was
one of the main reasons for getting involved in the mapping project. There were occasional ravens overhead and in
one part of the birch woodland there were 3 feral goats. Despite there being deer droppings everywhere
I only saw a couple during my wander. It
was about 3pm as I headed back toward my car but it was already getting
slightly dark, and as I passed by the riding school car park I was surprised to
see the camera crew were still on site.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and Janet and myself were watching the
Sunday edition of Countryfile on BBC with the presenters doing various things
linked to Burns Night which was being celebrated that night (25 January). One session, filmed at the Pass of
Killiecrankie, covered the Battle of Killiecrankie, the major event in the
first of the Jacobite uprisings, which was fought nearby on 27 July 1689. The interview ended with a discussion about
how folk got about all those years ago and horses were mentioned. As my least favourite bit of Countryfile saw the
cameras heading off to Adam’s farm I did the washing up, sitting down just in
time to see Ellie Harrison hopping onto a horse to go for a ride, linking
nicely to the discussion about travel a little earlier at
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| "Janet, that's my car!" |
Killiecrankie. The penny had not yet dropped! Five minutes later the single horse was
exchanged for a pair of horses and carriage, expertly driven by Ruaridh
Cameron, one of the family members running the Newtonmore Riding Centre. The penny was dropping and I said to Janet
that this filming might have been linked to the camera crew I saw on site on
the 9th January. Ellie than swapped the
two horse carriage for the four horse version and as Ruaridh and a very worried
Ellie galloped off around the horse driving course I spotted it – “Janet, that’s
my car!” And, just to be sure, Ruaridh
took the horses on another circuit, and there it was again my wee blue car parked
in the background. It would have been
nice to have grabbed a quick photo of the Countryfile team at work, but that
might have distracted me from the more important task of recording aspens and
the species they support. I was so
impressed by the lichens I had found on my recording visit that I made plans
for another visit once the snow had started to melt, but this was unlikely to
happen before early February.
A heavy fall of snow occurred on the 14th at the
time of a deep depression passing over Scotland. For several days prior to this the early
morning shipping forecast gave out “warnings of gales in all areas” and on a
few days “winds of storm force 12”. We
did have gales, and in some woods more
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| The low barometer reading |
trees came down but on the 15th
I did get quite worried when a saw the needle on the house barometer had almost
reached the same deep depression level as that reached in December 2013 (slave
needle had been left at the 2013 mark) when the 1000-2000 trees were blown over
in Abernethy Forest. Thankfully, this
was a fast moving area of low pressure, and by the next day high pressure was
moving in and a few nights later, with clear skies, the temperature dropped to
-9.50C, and all returned to cold and calm followed a few nights
later by a temperature of -11.80C, the lowest of the winter so far. Red squirrel tracks were a regular feature in
the fresh snow and on a couple of occasions they were joined by a single pine
marten track, though we didn’t think the marten was a
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| Pine marten (left) and red squirrel tracks |
regular visitor. On a morning with bright sun and no snow we
decided to get out of the house and headed for Findhorn, having lunch in the
“Universal Hall” café before stretching our legs around the Findhorn Foundation
grounds. On the way to the lunch spot we
saw plenty of snow on Dava Moor, the high point between Grantown and Forres but
as we drove through the Altyre Estates woodland we ran out of any sign of snow
and there was even green grass at Findhorn.
A different world. With a heavy
frost developing by early afternoon we decided to head home by taking the B9007
from Logie (to Carrbridge), turning off to follow the single-track road to
Lochindorb. Thankfully someone had ploughed
the road clear of snow – just – but with lots of evidence of deep snow drifts
in many places. We had just got on to
the single-track road when was saw our first group of red grouse, feeding in an
area where wind had blown the snow clear of the heather. A quick stop for a photo,
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| Group of red grouse in snow |
something that was
to be repeated several times before we reached the loch. However, photographing a dark coloured bird
against a white background in bright sunshine didn’t give the best results,
though the longer distance shot of a group of about 30 birds worked out
better. When we got to the loch it was
frozen solid but looking stunning in the late afternoon sun. Bobbly ice and snow,
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| Lochindorb sunset |
the ruin of the castle
and the sun and clouds as a back-drop there were lots of stops to take
photos. The single ancient ash tree was
aglow and it was photographed several times as the sun lit it up to varying
degrees. Amazingly, apart from a lady
stopping to ask if there were any black grouse about,
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| The Lochindorb ash tree |
we had the place to
ourselves, not leaving until the sun finally found the clouds, the pink glow
disappeared and the camera was finally turned off. Two different worlds. As we left, a couple of ravens looked like
they were heading to a nearby roost and as we drove towards the A939 Dava Moor
to Grantown road there were more red grouse, some looking like they were
gathering together to settle down in the snow for the night.
Through part of January I was involved in an interesting bit
of reading. Dr Ron Summers, Principal
Conservation Scientist with RSPB in North Scotland has spent many hours putting
together the draft outline of a book about the Abernethy NNR, covering many of
the years when I was employed there. For
probably the first ten years of my time at Loch Garten (to grow in size to
become the nationally important Abernethy NNR) I undertook surveys that I
thought would be beneficial to the reserve, the
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| Old photo of forestry ploughing in Abernethy Reserve ca. 1986 when owned by forestry company © Chris Gommersall |
results being included in the
reserves annual reports. However, as the
RSPB became bigger both in membership and land ownership, survey work had to be
“robust” and monitoring of population increases or declines of birds, plants
and insects needed to be done so that “confidence limits” could be applied to the
final figures. Experienced scientist
started to guide how wardens did their surveys and, in many big projects,
employed other people dedicated to surveying and collecting data. Ron came in to oversee and be involved in these
scientific studies of habitats and key bird species within Abernethy with
ultimate objectives of guiding major management decisions within the
reserve. I don’t think we got too many
things wrong prior to the helping scientific hand as some of the early
management decisions show (Scots pine plantations re-structuring, bog woodland
restoration and common bird censusing) with the bird survey still being the
only long-term study of birds in Scots pine woodland. The efforts in this direction eventually
produced a joint paper titled “Numbers of breeding birds in old Scots Pine wood
at Abernethy Forest, Badenoch & Strathspey, from 1977 to
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| Same area today (now repaired) as ploughed area last photo - compare dead trees though central one was alive in first photo |
1988, S. Taylor
& R. W. Summers in Scottish Birds 30: 302-311. So, it was with great interest that I said
“yes” when Ron asked me if I would like to read and comment on the second draft
of his book covering the history and ecology of Abernethy. Having seen the time and effort dedicated to
collecting, sorting and compiling information by Ron, I’m glad this isn’t
something I’d tried to tackle. And,
despite having been involved with Abernethy since 1976, there were lots of bits
of historical information that I had never picked up on. At some point in the future I will try and
produce a couple more repeat photos of scenes within the forest, found by Ron,
from many years ago. Well done Ron.
The landscape scale destruction carried on a pace during
January at the Granish go-kart site and across the road on the caravan
site. Local conservationists are
starting to realise that there are a huge number of surveys taking place AFTER
planning permission has been given.
Archaeology, mainly on the go-kart site, where the last building
associated with a small settlement on the site has gone. Was there an
archaeologist on site when the bulldozers moved in as requested…who knows? A tree
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| The caravan site creation |
survey was undertaken on the caravan
site, again, after planning permission had been given, detailing which trees
were to be removed which was completely different to that presented with the
planning application. Not only that, but
hours had to be spent trying to work out exactly which trees would go with many
not shown in red on the site survey map.
We are certainly well into the tick-box era, survey done, report
received, on you go. No bat roost
survey, no tree lichen survey, and in typical forester fashion, an aspen with
canker must be dangerous and will need felling or surgery! Wrong,
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| Sclerophora pallida pinhead lichen with paint! |
and a typical response from someone
who knows little about aspens. The
forestry consultant also carried out the ecological enhancement survey (a bit
like the botanist undertaking the fungi survey for another planning application
site in Carrbridge) and managed to get the rare Cairngorm Nature bee wrong (Andrena
cineraria instead of Andrena marginata), an ancient willow became an elm and we
find that badgers live in dens! The
worrying bit is that no one at the Cairngorms National Park seem to see these
errors, and the bee is one of the species they have a management plan to help. Help?
The location within the caravan site where the bee had been photographed
and potentially breeds has
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| X marks the spot! |
already been removed by the JCB. The contractors on the caravan site aren’t
allowed to work weekends to give a local household a noise break so that is the
time to visit to see what is happening.
Checking the trees to be felled, I found one was a small aspen close to
the road and on the route of a proposed new footpath. It had been given the “canker” death-sentence
and when I had a quick look at the dark bark close to the canker I found a
decent population of Sclerophida pallida pinhead lichens many neatly coloured
blue with the painted cross to indicate tree to be felled. This lichen is Nationally Scarce and a UK
Biodiversity Action Plan priority species and when the Park were
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| The go-kart track creation |
informed I was
told the developer had kindly allowed the tree to remain! However, this bit of email correspondence
made the Park suddenly realise that they had failed (yet again) to ensure the
developer had carried out a pre-construction ecological check, so work was halted
until once again someone somewhere put a tick in a box. I was also unsure that the title Ecological
Enhancement Report was correct when a site with rare plants, insects, lichens,
visiting badgers and possibly wildcat was going to be destroyed, what is there left
to “enhance”? Enough.
That’s it for another month - enjoy the read
Stewart and Janet
British Lichen Gallery – photo of earlier Peltigera
malacea/Peltigera didactyla find. The
grey, spotty lichen is P. didactyla and the bright green leaves P. malacea
Second Aspen Conference
http://www.scottishaspen.org.uk/uploads/attachments/HAGlow.09.pdf
(possibly no photos)
Highland Aspen Group
Newtonmore Riding Centre
Dr.
R. W. Summers
Scottish Birds Common Bird Census paper
Cairngorms Nature (see page 17 for species)
NBN
Highland Biological Recording Group
and how to join HBRG
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| Road-side ice spectacle during the freeze |
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| January wind-blown pine |
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| Whooper swan on River Spey |
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| Garden sparrowhawk |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
