As I type, the big Strathspey upheaval has started –
dualling the A9 road between Perth and Inverness, with the first section right
on our doorstep just south of Aviemore.
Of course, some sections have already been upgraded to four lanes but
this project will link all of them together.
Ahead of the work starting, lots of miles were walked (I have to assume)
by surveyors to carry out a rapid survey of habitats called a Phase 1 Habitat
Survey, trying to identify areas of importance for biodiversity along all the
section to be worked on over the project’s ten year life. Having a little knowledge of biodiversity
rich sites locally, Hayley from the Cairngorms National Park asked if I would
look at the maps created by the Phase 1 surveyors, and add anything of
importance that I was aware of in areas to be converted from woodland and
farmland to tarmac. It sounds simple but
what arrived were a couple of hundred maps accompanied by pages of ‘target
notes’ giving basic information on areas that ‘might’ be important for
biodiversity. In between testing my
brain for things I might have seen in the construction corridor and checking my
MapMate database I
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| Aspen with catkins |
eventually managed to get something back to Hayley just
before the comments deadline. Phew! The Park and Scottish Government have not
been too good in looking after our biodiverse rich areas to date so whether
anything will come of my efforts (and others asked to similarly help) only time
will tell. As a minimum, areas
highlighted as important need to be surveyed properly, by experts, and wherever
possible adjust the route a little to minimise losses. It’s okay saying that “we will replant with
birches, aspens etc” but it isn’t possible to replace hundreds of years of
natural development with new trees. The
Phase 1 Survey surveyors were also of varying reporting standards which was a
little surprising considering the importance of some habitats along the
route. Target notes for the section up
to Dalwhinnie were quite good and identified important stands of trees and
fields where there was waxcap fungi potential.
However, for the section through Strathspey target notes mention things
like “dead hedgehog found” and overall were less than informative about where
additional survey work might be needed.
On the 3rd July, 7-10 days later than normal, the
lesser butterfly orchid (LBO) survey got underway at the nationally important
Flowerfield site by the B970. As
mentioned in the last blog, the count was delayed because the cool summer
weather had slowed down the growth of the orchids as well as cold winds and a
slight frost (15 June) causing some plants to brown off or keel over. With fellow counter Andy fully employed on
other survey work it was going to be a lone effort this year which eventually took two and a half days to complete, with another few hours dedicated to the
additional count of the
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| Lots of field gentians also present in orchid field |
small white orchids.
The count is undertaken using cane-marked transects and with a
hand-tally counter to convert eye contacts into numbers. Day one covered the less populated section of
the field and produced 266 flowering spikes.
Day two saw the bulk of the open field section counted and the back and
forth walks found 1095 flowering spikes and, with the sun shining, there were
butterfly distractions of the best kind.
The first ringlets were on the wing along with regular encounters with
meadow browns. Common blues were seen
but not before being upstaged by their rarer cousin the northern brown argus,
several of which were seen in immaculate condition as though only just
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| Mating northern brown argus butterflies |
emerged. I was even lucky enough to find
a pair mating which brought orchid counting to a halt as I dashed, carefully,
back to grab my ‘real’ camera so that I could get a decent record of this rare
encounter. In sunny conditions the wee
Panasonic compact which was carried throughout the count, can’t seem to cope with
light and shade too well. Small
pearl-bordered and dark green fritillaries
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| Northern brown argus upper wings |
were seen as were several small
heaths adding greatly to the importance of this field not just for its flowers. Considering neither green-veined white or
small tortoiseshell were seen, it makes you wonder what the final tally would
be if the field was counted for the whole summer. The last half day was spent counting the
higher sections of the field and this area brought in another 306 LBOs giving a
final tally of 1667 flowering spikes, making this an average year for the
number of plants.
The table below gives
details of all the years since the systematic counts began, though 2008 was a
walk over count rather than a caned, transect count. Once the lesser butterfly orchids had been
counted it was time to set up the canes for the small white orchids and as I
installed canes to indicate
the extreme outer edges of the distribution of the plants
it was pretty apparent that the population is expanding towards the fence and
road. Compared to the distribution of
the LBOs the small whites occupy quite a small area making it difficult to walk
up and down the transects without actually walking on the plants. After a couple of hours the job was complete
and the clicker showed that 1010 plants were present, the second best count to
date. Not bad when Jane and Jeremy the
owners of the
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| Orchid count transect markers |
field can remember when there were less than a dozen plants
twenty years ago. A small red waxcap was
also found which turned out to be Hygrocybe cantharellus another addition to
this amazing site. The following day the
two LBO sites in Tulloch were visited and counted producing 14 and 30 flowering
spikes respectively, the latter site counted under an umbrella as the heavens
opened with a torrential downpour.
The BSBI co-ordinated plant survey of under-recorded areas
within the Cairngorms National Park continues again this year with my personal
commitment being another 5 tetrads (2 x 2 km OS squares) from locations close
to home down to an area near Laggan. The
first outing last month took in one of the local sites which saw me visiting
one of my old limestone quarry sites checked for lichens a couple of years ago
and following a small burn to the top of Baddoch Hill at just over 500m
high. This was a useful tetrad to start
with as I tried to get my brain in gear remembering the names
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| Shade horsetail Equisetum pratense |
of the plants
encountered along the route. With quite
a bit of moorland this limited the plant species many of which I was quite
familiar with. As I dropped into the
burn there was a nice patch of intermediate wintergreen (Pyrola major) but a
horsetail growing by the burn had me a bit confused, as the horsetails often
do, so a sample thankfully, was taken home for checking. After checking the books it turned out to be
shade horsetail (Equisetum pratense) quite a rare plant locally. On a couple of occasions I had a close
encounter with a short-eared owl in the same area where a family staying in the
chalet had seen one a couple of weeks earlier, so hopefully this was one of a breeding
pair, not a common bird in Strathspey. The
next botanical outing took me to the Spey Dam area just west of
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| Perched osprey |
Laggan (NN5693)
where my recording tetrad comprised a nice mix of habitats close to Glenshero
Lodge. I dropped down from the track to
record the plants close to the edge of Loch Crunachdan where I was greeted by
around 200 greylag geese, suggesting to me that our local feral population is
getting a little out of control. Along
the loch shore the loss of vegetation wasn’t down to the local deer population
but to geese grazing making it difficult to know which sedge was which because of
the lack of flowering stems. Something detached
and floating in the water looked like mare’s tail
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| Mare's tails sample |
(Hippuris vulgaris), but a
bit had to go home to confirm it because there were no emergent flower spikes
popping out of the water. Close by I
suddenly heard a very familiar call, a displaying/alarming osprey which
eventually perched in a tree at the far end of the loch. Leaving the loch I headed uphill into an ancient
bit of mainly birch woodland and the first real surprise plant of the day was
wood cranesbill (Geranium sylvaticum), growing in quantity, with a nice mix of
other plants. An ancient goat willow (of
which there were very few) produced the lungwort lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria)
and
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| Canada geese, recent arrivals to compete with the grey lags! |
in many places I encountered stands of pale sedge (Carex pallescens) and
good populations of oak and beech fern on the steep rocky outcrops amongst the
trees. In all not a bad outing with a
reasonable list of plants. To cover the
tetrad fully a second visit was made later in the month this time following the
River Spey up to the edge of the moorland then back through the most boring
piece of conifer plantation, mostly flooded, to the road and back to the car. Highlights of the outing were house martins,
swifts and swallows associated with Sherramore house next to the Spey.
Another survey was also completed this month, the BTO house
martin survey covering a local, randomly selected one-kilometre square east of
Grantown on Spey. Mike, the one of the
estate keepers was very helpful and the two visits went off without a
hitch. In the end the house and workshop
produced 5 occupied nests and with a maximum count of 7 birds at any one time
in the
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| One of the 5 house martin nests |
hour long, second visit when young appeared to be being fed. One of the nests was a semi-detached affair
with two nests sitting side by side under one of the house eaves. The same day as the house martin survey (14
July) we had another unforgettable experience when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft
made its fly-past of Pluto after a remarkable flight which started life way
back on January 19, 2006. This amazing
feat will provide huge amounts of information about a planet (now re-classified
as a dwarf planet) so far from the Earth that very little was known about
it. The spacecraft’s first surprise was
the heart-shaped area now known unofficially as Tombaugh Reggio and is made up,
in part of carbon monoxide ice and a central area, lacking meteorite impact
craters suggesting that, on a geological timescale it is quite young, if you
can really class 100 million years ‘quite young’! So, watch this space as much more is learnt
about this tiny planet, about a fifth the diameter of the Earth, thanks to NASA’s
efforts.
In June 2007 I got involved with a tiny bee called Osmia
uncinata after having found it for the first time feeding on bird’s-foot
trefoil flowers the year before along track in parts of Abernethy Forest. In 2007 I was contracted to undertake a
survey of potentially suitable sites within Strathspey between Kingussie and
Alvie which involved finding good populations of the trefoil and spend time
waiting to see if this tiny bee visited the flowers for food. The survey was reasonably successful and the
bee
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| Aviemore Osmia uncinata nest site low down front, on right |
was found at 8 sites from the twenty-odd visited. In 2011 these 8 sites were used to trial
artificial nesting sites for the bee which is known to nest in holes, in trees,
created by the emerging adults of long-horn beetles. This trial was unsuccessful and none of the
nest boxes were used. Since 2011 I have
continued to check occasional patches of bird’s-foot trefoil by forest tracks
to see if the bee was in attendance.
What I had never seen throughout this period was a beetle hole used by
the bee as a nest site and, until this year possibly less than 5 had ever been
found. Local recorder Gus though had an
exceptional July and managed to find the bee visiting two nest sites, both in
dead Scots pines, one in Nethybridge and the second near Aviemore. The Aviemore site was quite unusual in that a
pine killed in a forest fire many years ago had fallen over leaving mostly the
thick bark remaining upright
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| Osmia bee at its nest hole with sealed nest to left (green colour) |
but with very little actual wood supporting it. The nest was completely within the remaining
bark. After a few days the Nethybridge
site seemed to have been deserted with the hole perhaps not being suitable or
the bee had been predated by whilst going about its business. However, the second site continued to be
occupied and eventually I received details of where it was and went to see it,
initially out of curiosity but once seen I realised there was the potential to
learn more about this part of the bee’s breeding cycle. My first visit was made on 24 July a few days
after Gus had seen the bee sealing its nest hole with chewed up plant material
but then realising that it had started to prepare a second hole less than a
couple of inches away. My first visit to
record the comings and goings of the bee ended when heavy rain started to fall,
a feature that was going to be very common as the recording project
progressed. By the end of July, 4
recording visits had been made on days when the weather forecast showed that
there was the potential of some sun but on many of these visits the cold
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| Osmia bee flying from hole - a rare event |
wet
weather that plagued this part of the UK in a supposed summer, intervened, and
little activity was seen. It was known
from the 2007 survey that for the bee to leave its breeding site to forage the
temperature had to reach about 180C.
The daily temperatures recorded at the local Strathspey Weather station
gave a high of 17.50C and a low of 13.10C between the 24th
and 31st July and the 11 hours of hole watching saw the bee make
flights totalling just 9 minutes and this was when trying to
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| Zebra jumping spider (Salticus scenicus) |
target the best sunny
days! As far as I know, data on the
foraging activity of Osmia uncinata has never been collected in the UK and
possibly in its wider European range so this, to me, was quite an important
opportunity but a wee project that would rely heavily on co-operation from the
weather. Watch this space. Whilst watching, my Casio watch was used to
record the time of activity but just
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| Top view of zebra jumping spider |
to the whole minute, and the thermometer
used for my butterfly transect work was set, in the shade, to allow the
temperature that triggered activity to be noted. It was also quite interesting to see all the
other activity taking place around the pine stump with regular lizards, beetles
of varying sizes – one with a determined predatory wood ant attached to a leg,
other tiny wasps also visiting beetle holes and regular visits from a zebra
jumping spider (Salticus scenicus).
Perhaps the real highlight of the month though was a
botanical outing with recorder Ian to a damp field near Tomintoul. Ian organises these outings on a regular
basis through the summer to allow attendees to learn more about the plant
species they might encounter when botanising on their own. The site was known to have species like
broad-leaved cotton grass indicating a base-rich flush. At
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| Pocket plum galls (Taphrina pruni) |
the car park the evening started well with
nettle rust (Puccinia urtica) and pocket plum galls (Taphrina pruni) distorting
the blackthorn sloe berries via a fungus rather than an insect. I had never seen the cotton grass before and
was amazed to see the damp slope covered with the tell-tale white fluffy heads
of this rare plant locally. Then one of
the team shouted “grass of Parnassus” and though early in the season it was
possible to just see the single white flower-heads starting to form. I have become a bit notorious on these outing
for finding “those other things living on the plants” and as I
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| Puccinia caricina fungus on leaves of Grass of Parnassus |
started to see
more and more leaves of the grass of Parnassus I spotted something growing on
it leaves, a yellow rust fungus. This
plant is not that common locally so I got quite excited as to what the fungus
might be and how often it had been recorded previously. When I checked, the NBN Gateway map does show
quite a few locations for the plant during the period 2000 to 2015 so I began
to think this would be a common fungus.
But there was more to come. It
was also known that the flush was a location for the russet sedge (Carex
hostiana) a plant I had missed identifying from one
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| Carex hostiana (tawny sedge) with Anthracoidea hostianae fungus |
of my BSBI recording
tetrads the previous year, so I was quite keen to make my acquaintance to help
with future outings. Quite quickly Ian
was pointing out the sedge and, quite interestingly, a hybrid between russet
sedge and long-stalked yellow sedge (Carex lepidocarpa currently changed to C.
viridula subsp. brachyrrhyncha – phew!), fairly easily recognised by its pale
colour and soft flower-heads when squeezed due to the lack of seeds
(infertile). As I hunted around for a
nice set of examples to photograph I got even more excited when I found a
russet sedge flower-head covered in the black fungal Anthracoidea balls found
on other sedges over the last few years.
Could this be an
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| Carex hostiana centre, hybrid to left and Carex viridula subsp. brachyrrhyncha on right |
interesting find?
Only the experts at Kew could answer that question. Quaking grass was just starting to appear and
when someone found the first fragrant orchid it was Ian’s turn to get excited
because this orchid growing in a base-rich flush would probably be rare marsh
fragrant orchid (Gymnadenia densiflora).
Again, a query for the botanical expert at Kew to advise on. If it was to be the rarer orchid an even
rarer species was found – a completely white variant. Once home I got out the Micro-fungi on Land
Plants book by Ellis and Ellis and found that the fungus Puccinia caricina had
been recorded on the leaves of grass of Parnassus in the past and checking FRBDI
found that
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| Marsh fragrant orchid (Gymnadenia densiflora) |
there were less than 5 records of the fungus on this plant in the
last 50 years. This fungus can though be
found on other plant hosts, of which there are many records. A check of my other known sites for the plant
locally over the next few days found the fungus at all of them so once again we
are probably dealing with a much under-recorded species. Typing Anthracoidea on Carex hostiana into
Google led me to a website in Poland which gave a name of A. hostianae and
checking for this name on the FRDBI website I could find no records! Hmm, even more excitement which was confirmed
a few days later by Martyn at Kew, the fungus hadn’t been recorded in the UK
previously. Wow!
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| Orchid being measured! |
Specimens of both though would need to be
sent to Kew for confirmation but the confidence was high. The Kew plant expert replied to Ian
requesting more information about the orchid, so the next day I re-visited the
site armed with camera and tape measure to provide photos giving plant heights
and flower sizes which confirmed a few days later that Ian was correct and we
had found a new site for marsh fragrant orchid.
What a great way to end the month and with a big thank you to Ian for
organising these outings which, not for the first time, had added many additional
records of things associated with the plants we went to see.
Sorry for the delay, blame a wee bee and a trip to the
Western Isles for taking up the time. That’s it for another month, enjoy the
read
Stewart and Janet
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
A9 dualling works
Phase 1 Habitat Surveying
NASA Pluto fly-past
Strathspey Weather
For the Polish paper type the following into Google and hit
return
The calcareous mires in South-East Poland are home to two
rare Anthracoidea species
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
NBN
Highland Biological Recording Group
and how to join HBRG
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| Spectacular end to evening wader count |
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| Same evening - looking the other way Brilliant |
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| 3 boys, 3 dogs, 1 cat, several hens, a very supportive partner and a new degree. Well done Ruth. |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
