After keeping a list of bird species seen in the house
garden for about 15 years were are pleased to announce a new species – common
gull! Usually, when bits of brown bread
or left-over rice are thrown out in the garden the local rooks, jackdaws and,
in summer, black-headed gulls dive in to pinch it all. But, on the 2nd, I happened to be
looking out of the window just in time to see a gull, with a completely white
head drop in to grab whatever we had put out and it was only as it departed
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| Juvenile great spotted woodpecker on the new Firwood garden 'stump' feature |
that I shouted to Janet that we had just had a visit from a common gull. Go back a decade and there were just a few
localised breeding colonies, mostly comprising just a few pairs, but over
recent years there seems to be about as many common gulls as black-headed gulls
visiting local fields at ploughing-time, showing how numbers have
increased. At the same time, the number
of black-heads has declined quite markedly and the evening roost of up to 4,000
birds on Loch Garten in the spring, is no more.
Many small colonies on local farmland pools or wee lochs has also
declined perhaps leaving an opening for the common gulls?
Early in July one survey was giving way to another. Having wandered over some of the Abernethy
sites cleared of lodgepole pines, checking stumps for the appropriately named
stump lichen (Cladonia botrytes), I was reaching the end of the easier access
sites and getting close to a hoped for total of 50 locations. In the May blog finding quite a few stumps
with the lichen in one localised area was the highlight and it was completing
the stump checking in an adjacent area that was to be my final area before
other survey work took priority. Despite
this area looking none too suitable, stumps
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| The natural Cladonia botrytes site a dead Scots pine tree |
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| A good population of Cladonia botrytes |
once again started to provide more
records though the last outing produced a blank. Pedalling back home thinking I was finished
staring at stumps for a while, I was tempted to visit an area of similar
fellings close to the track. It would
only take a few minutes! Many of the 25
stumps looked suitable but didn’t support any stump lichens and as I circled
round to make my way back to my bike I passed a long-dead fallen Scots pine
supporting quite a good covering of the other Cladonia lichens that occupy this
type of deadwood habitat. As I have been
checking stumps at other locations I have been also checking this sort of
habitat – just in case- and at one location previously, the lichen was found on
a decaying section of lodgepole pine trunk.
However, this was a Scots pine, a fallen tree, providing a natural
‘lump’ of deadwood compared to the man-created tree stumps and my day was
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| One happy man! |
well
and truly made when I found a group of podetia belonging to Cladonia
botrytes! As far as I can find out this
is the first time the lichen has been found on a naturally occurring piece of
deadwood in the UK a fitting end to this period of stump checking. And the total so far? Of the 2500 stumps checked so far (stumps not
counted for the first six outings so probably more than 3000) the lichen has
been found on 45 of them giving a strike rate of one in every 50 stumps
checked. 50 by the end of the year? Watch this space.
The new survey mentioned above is the 2016 BSBI/Cairngorm
National Park plant survey, targeting the under-recorded OS map squares
comprising the Park. This is the third
year of involvement and the great thing about these surveys is wandering
through areas that normally wouldn’t be visited and for me, finding other
‘things’ along the way. My commitment
covers 5 OS tetrads (2 x 2 kilometre squares) stretching from Laggan in the
south to four others more local to home.
The first one of these was visited on the 6th July, a little
later than my start date last year but a good time with most plants
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| Remembering about willowherbs with 4-lobed stigmas (flower centre) |
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| And willowherbs with club-shaped stigmas |
in full
flower. This first site was by the B9007
road near Carrbridge in what looks like a fairly boring piece of moorland but I
knew from an earlier visit to check on a group of aspens that there was more to
this location than was obvious from the road.
The first thing was to get my brain back into gear with all the plant
names and straight away I was puzzling over the willowherbs and forget-me-nots
and getting used to hairy stems (pubescent) or not (glabrous) and if hairs were
present whether glandular or not.
Problem species, provided they were plentiful, required a specimen to be
collected and popped into a polybag for that evening/next day’s homework. The amazing gully I dropped down into,
complete with waterfall, took a couple of hours to work my way through with all
plants recorded as progress was made. As
the GPS told me that I was entering a new 100 metre OS square
(JJ100345 to say JJ100346),
the recording started all over again and by late afternoon fourteen 100m
squares had been visited giving me over 550 records comprising 147 different
species. Recording is the enjoyable bit,
spending time entering the records into Mapmate is the more laborious bit, but
all worthwhile in developing a picture of what is important and its location. Ten species of sedge were recorded with the
highlight being a group of flea sedges (Carex pulicaris) complete with the black
fungus (Anthracoidea pulicaris) growing on their fruits (utricles). This was something found last year and was
the third UK record so nice to add another location. I had seen on the map that there were a
couple of small lochans higher up on the moor and these were visited in case they
supported something interesting plus providing a list of plants possibly not
seen elsewhere during the day. The
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| Marchantia polymorpha liverwort |
first
lochan was quite unusual in that it didn’t have water flowing in our out, its
water-level being determined by the surrounding water-table. Whether because of this I’m not sure but the
whole shore was covered with a green leafy liverwort appropriately named common
liverwort (Marchantia polymorpha subsp. ruderalis) many with umbrella like female
reproductive organs present. A very
stunted plant had me puzzled so a photo was sent to expert Ian who confirmed my
suspicion that this was mare's-tail (Hippuris vulgaris), usually found growing
in the water. An annoyed common gull
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| Mating six-spot burnet moths |
circled overhead but I didn’t find any evidence of breeding but a female teal,
feigning injury as it flapped across the water, was followed in the sedges by a
group of youngsters. Time to leave them
in peace. Back at the car I was
pleasantly surprised to see mating six-spot burnet moths on the road verge close to bird’s-foot
trefoil, another inland site for this once coastal species.
The BSBI recording outing to just above Aviemore a few days
later held an unusual surprise. A timber
stacking area by the main track held a few good plants including several spikes
of heath cudweed (Gnaphalium sylvaticum).
This area is mainly Scots pine woodland, some planted and some natural
so if I was to keep recording within the pines the list of plants would be
monotonous
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| Valerian leaf with fungus Uromyces valerianae |
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| Uromyces valerianae spores x1000 oil |
and few in number so heading for rock outcrops or wee burns added a
great deal of diversity. Following one
burn lots of leaves but without flowers turned out to be valerian (Valeriana
officinalis) many covered with the fungus Uromyces valerianae and as I passed
them, any sedge heads were quickly checked for Anthracoidea fungi. The long, bendy spikes of green-ribbed sedge
(Carex binervis) were regularly encountered and one flower-head caught my
attention because the utricles on one head looked swollen and possibly the
start of the fungus developing. This is
one sedge I’ve yet to find with the fungus so possibly quite important. One for the microscope so the spike and head
were collected to be checked once home.
The microscope confirmed that a few of the utricles were swollen so to
check if there was a fungus inside, one was poked with the point of my very sharp
tweezers but instead of a black spore mass appearing a bit of liquid oozed out
and with it something I was sure was moving!
Sure enough, the longer I watched the ‘something’ turned out to be an
insect
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| Larva of Wachtliella caricis (yellow) on utricle of green-ribbed sedge (to be confirmed 100%) |
larva so out came the book on plant galls to see if anything was known
from the sedge. Sure enough, the book
told me that a small Diptera fly lays eggs in the sedge fruits from the family
with the amazing name of Wachtliella.
However, there are very few UK records and very little is known about
the species so the specimen, with intact inflated fruits was sent off to the UK
expert in this particular group. The
initial email reply after receiving the specimens contained a few words that
confirmed the lack of knowledge about this group – “I am always pleased to
receive queries on Cecidomyiidae [Diptera family] but cannot guarantee
satisfactory answers!” and “Much of the descriptive work was done in the late
19th century and there has been little subsequent research, partly because of
the difficulties of working with sedges……… I am willing to examine specimens of
galls with larvae (dead or alive) but cannot promise positive identification.” Not sure why I keep finding things that need
more work doing on them and this would appear to be another one but, for now, Wachtliella
caricis will have to be the name we will be working with, and if anything
develops in the future at least all the information about location, host plant
etc is there for the record to be modified if needed.
Mid-month the older grandsons came over for a night and
quite a few things of note occurred.
Archie had scored a few times in the garage door goals and Finlay was
getting pretty good at being a goalkeeper.
However, when grandad was in goal a few more goals were scored but with
the ball also ending up on the roof and regularly disappearing in the gap
between garage and chalet. Retrieving
the ball from the latter I noticed a lot of leaves at the base of the birch
tree in the tub had been eaten
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| Birch sawfly (Cimbex femoratus) larvae |
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| Adult birch sawfly found later in the month near Carrbridge |
and on checking I could see a mass of birch
sawfly (Cimbex femoratus) larvae (nibbling away. I left them
undisturbed and let the boys see them before letting them see the odd behaviour
should you touch them – the larvae curl the tail end of the bodies over their
backs towards their heads probably as a defence mechanism, producing quite an
odd but amusing sight. Most sawfly
larvae seem to react in the same way so worth checking if you find any. Archie is really keen on spiders so next day
we headed off towards a part of Abernethy Forest where several bog pools have,
in the past, held good populations of the big raft or nursery-web spider
(Dolomedes fimbriatus). Whilst I
searched the bog Janet and the boys enjoyed picking lots of blaeberries in what
is an exceptional year for these woodland berries. Grandad though wasn’t having any luck and
failed to find even a hint of the spider realising a little later that the best
time for the nursery-webs is a few weeks later than our visit! I did
though find a very obliging large red damselfly
which allowed Archie to get a good close up view. Back at the house I noticed that a small fly was
landing regularly on my head and hands and anywhere close to where I was
sitting. After this had been happening
for over half an hour I decided it was time to try and catch it, initially
using a handy empty glass but after asking Janet to nip through to my rucksack,
one of my smaller plastic tubes, a bit handier if the fly was on my hands or
arms. Why did I have such an interest in
this wee, annoying fly? Over the last
couple of years the HBRG have been asking members to keep an eye open for it
and despite may folk seeing flies buzzing around their houses few are likely to
be the ‘true ‘house-fly (Musca domestica).
The HBRG website gives the following information “Ask most people if they
have seen a House-fly and they will tell you their kitchens are full of
them. Sadly or otherwise, the true
House-fly is very scarce in Britain these days, and very few flies in houses
are indeed House-flies. The NBN Gateway
map shows only six Scottish localities since 1990. Those in Highland were found in 2009 and 2010
in Inverness; and in 2015 from near Edderton, at Strathpeffer, and on
Raasay. Just south of our area, in 2011
a pair was
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| Wing venation of House-fly (Musca domestica) |
found on Lismore. One useful
clue is that House-flies, unlike other flies in houses, are a particular pest
at mealtimes, darting about your person and the food you are trying to
eat. If you meet a fly behaving like
that, even in a respectable home or hostelry, bottle it and send it in.” In other parts of the world the house-fly is
quite numerous but as our own homes becoming increasingly clean and sanitised
this is not so in Britain. In countries
where the fly is common they can cause problems and are capable of carrying
over 100 pathogens, such as those causing typhoid, cholera, salmonellosis,
bacillary dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax, ophthalmia, and parasitic worms. Some strains have even become immune to the
most common insecticides. However, my
attempts to catch the Firwood individual were failing quite badly and though being
able to sneak up on it with my tube when it landed on me, I wasn’t having any
luck and for a while it seemed to disappear.
A little later whilst sitting doing ‘stuff’ on my laptop, it was back
and, just as earlier, it became quite annoying.
Luckily next to my laptop I found one of the small, square plastic ‘food
saver’ tubs that I use for collecting
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| Top view of House-fly |
things like small fungi when out and
about and a few minutes later I had it.
Sadly, this meant the fly was heading for a cold ending in the freezer,
but if all the problems it could cause above are correct, then perhaps this was
the right place for it. A couple of
hours later box and fly were retrieved from the freezer and after letting it
thaw for a little while I popped it under the microscope to see if I could
match the colouring of the fly with those given on the Diptera.info website
below. The colouring on the top of the
fly looked correct as did the veins in the wing so, photos taken then, as
requested, I ‘bottled it and sent it in’.
A few days later Murdo informed me that I had won another virtual
lollipop and my fly was indeed a House-fly.
Brilliant.
An odd query arrived from Will at the National Park about
something he had seen high up in the Cairngorms. Whilst visiting Loch Avon during survey work
he had seen a huge yellow tide-mark around the loch and, being a little worried
about the source, he picked some up and took it home in his lunch-box. He asked if this might have been pollen from
the big population of junipers along one side of the loch and I had to admit
that I couldn’t be sure. Would I like to
see the contents of his lunch-box which, since his return from the mountains
had lived in his freezer. So I popped in
to see what he had found and to take a small bit home to look at under the
microscope. Sure enough once viewed
there was some kind of pollen there and checking what juniper pollen looked
like via the
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| Scots pine pollen grains with 'air bladders' |
internet I was able to rule this plant out as the source. However, in helping RSPB Research man Ron out
with his book, I had done a little checking of pollen and what I was seeing
looked very similar – Scots pine pollen!
This was a little odd because there are no pines by the loch, the
nearest lone trees being about five miles away and true woodland about six
miles away. I checked the weather around
the time that Will had found the pollen and could confirm that it had been
strong at times and blowing from a north/north east direction, and just at the
time that the pollen would have been falling from the pines. It’s not unusual to see yellow tide-marks on
the shore of Loch Garten but this was the first time I’d heard about it being
seen on this high altitude loch. Will
had also queried whether pollen deposits like this would be beneficial to the
loch and with a little help from Ron we found that this
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| Tide-mark on shore of Loch Avon © Will Boyd Wallis |
topic is starting to be
researched. The first thing I found out
is that the circular shapes making up the pollen grains are air bladders
allowing the pollen to travel, wind assisted, over large distances. Having been high above Glenmore forest
several years ago after a calm dry spell I was amazed to see that as the wind
strengthened the pollen from the Scots pines was being lifted by what looked
like mini-whirlwinds high into the sky.
So it looked very feasible that this is what had happened between the Abernethy
Forest pines and Loch Avon. Research has
shown that there is a beneficial effect by these pollen deposits. Pollen introduces high amounts of
bio-available terrestrial organic matter and nutrients into surface waters
within a short time and that pollen plays an important ecological role in
nutrient cycling of temperate lakes but requires further work to be undertaken in
‘aquatic ecology’ to determine just how beneficial.
Early in the month I was told about a remarkable orchid
population near Newtonmore. These were
greater butterfly-orchids (Platanthera chlorantha) and there were estimated to
be upwards of 10,000, possibly as many as 20,000 so on a day when I had to pick
up Archie and Finlay from school just 5 miles away, I set off early allowing a
site visit before driving back to Kincraig for 3pm. I was not
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| Greater butterfly orchid meadow |
disappointed and the orchids were
indeed present in jaw-dropping numbers. Thankfully
I was not counting these orchids as I had been at the Flowerfield site just a
few days earlier. When encountering
lesser and greater butterfly-orchids size is not the main determining factor,
many of the lesser butterfly orchids at the count size were big enough in
height to fool the unwary. What you need
to check are the two ‘pollinia’ inside the flowers, growing parallel in lesser butterfly
and divergent downwards in greater.
Looking across the thousands of orchids though at this site there
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| Greater butterfly orchid 'divergent pollinia' inner part of flower |
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| Lesser butterfly orchid 'straight pollinia' |
was
little doubt that they were of the greater variety and such was the scale that
it was difficult to get the camera to do justice to what the eyes were actually
seeing. As I approached the end of the
meadow I spotted something a little unusual towards the back of the greater
butterfly’s, a very tall pink/purple-coloured orchid which had me guessing as
to species. It looked like a
heath-spotted orchid but was far too tall to be that species so time for a
photo to send to the experts. Local
plant expert Andy suggested it was a hybrid possibly between heath
spotted-orchid and northern marsh-orchid but I would need better photos to send
to the orchid expert at Kew. So, a
second visit was made and more photos were taken but whilst there I also
photographed other orchids that might be
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| Hybrid orchid Dactylorhiza x formosa |
the two parents of my plant. These were processed and sent off to Kew and
a few days later an email arrived saying that the photos were great but that I
had photographed the wrong parts of the plant!
I had repeated the types of photos taken of the marsh fragrant-orchid a
year earlier where petal sizes were critical but for this plant it was the
shape and size of the ‘spur’ growing from the back of the flowers. Doh! You live and learn but, my expert did actually
have enough pictorial information to confirm that Andy was right, this was a
hybrid between the two orchids and is known as Dactylorhiza x formosa. There were also a few old records from the
same general area.
The second Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey was completed
and with the sun shining for a change, green-veined white (1 contact), common
blue (1), meadow brown (2), ringlet (28) and small pear-bordered fritillary (1)
were seen. Large heath butterflies have
also been a feature of some of the BSBI survey sites. Two coralroot orchid sites were visited and
plants counted and the choke fungus
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| Large heath butterfly - hiding |
on grass stems has been found at several
sites but all so far being Epichloë baconii on Agrostis grass species. A bit of path repair in the garden found a
New Zealand flatworm (Arthurdendyus triangulates) under one of the paving slabs
– not good news for the native worms. Scottish
Natural Heritage Information and Advisory Note Number 7, gives the following
information: “4.3 Prey. The New Zealand flatworm feeds by wrapping
its body around its prey and secreting digestive juices onto it. The liquefied prey is then ingested through
the mouth tube that extends from the middle of the underside. When not in use, the tube is drawn back into
the body of the flatworm. Studies on
captive New Zealand flatworms have shown that they can consume several
earthworms in
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| New Zealand flat worm (Arthurdendyus triangulates) |
a week. Part of the reason
for the large impact of the flatworm on the earthworm population may be that
the flatworms can follow their prey through their burrows in the soil. By contrast, other earthworm predators such
as birds are largely limited to the soil surface, and those such as moles which
attack worms underground are restricted to large burrows.” The BSBI survey has also taken me to places
where other good records have been made.
Near Carrbridge a population of pill sedge (Carex pilulifera) had the Anthracoidea
caricis fungus on its fruits. Because of
confusion in the past with the correct fungus name/sedge relationship I can’t
be sure how often this fungus has been recorded – not too many times I
think. On my way to one of the survey
sites west of Carrbridge,
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| Anthracoidea scirpi on deergrass |
several tooth fungi were found with one, Sarcodon
glaucopus (green-foot tooth), being found for the first time west of the A9
road. This outing also found a good
population of bog orchids (50+) at a new site and on a botanically boring area
of bog a highlight was Anthracoidea scirpi growing on the flower-heads of
deergrass (the hybrid Trichophorum x foersteri), just my second site and about
the 10th UK site. In the
Kinveachy Forest above Aviemore an enormous wood ant nest checked for any
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| Rose chaffer (Protaetia metallica) and ants |
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| Slow-worm |
green
shield-moss capsules instead produced a large metallic green beetle – Protaetia
metallica. The
beetle was totally surrounded
by wood ants so I wasn’t sure whether the female beetle had deposited eggs in
the ant nest or not. The larvae of the
beetle live as guests in the wood ant nests and occasionally when I’ve found
nests dug open by deer or badgers, these beetle larva about the size of your
little finger have been present. The
same day produced a slow-worm (Anguis fragilis) warming itself by the track and
happily staying put whilst having its photo taken, the first I’ve seen for
quite a while.
I can’t sign off without mentioning the weather. The day of the butterfly count the
temperature reached 250C but the weather-folk were warning of a
massive break-down with lightning, thunder and heavy rain. At 3.30am on the 20th the thunder started
with some very impressive sessions of lightning, lighting up the bedroom
especially when we had a flash and bang right overhead. The rain
was impressively heavy bouncing off
the road with mini-rivers along the verges.
I debated about getting up to see if I could photo events but with the
rain falling so heavily it would have been difficult to get shots with the
window down. Eventually everything
settled down and it was back off to bed.
However, it wasn’t over and at 10am the whole storm was repeated with
again a big flash and bang overhead with once again rivers running down the
road outside the house.
Quite a month, enjoy the read.
Stewart and Janet
Lichen Podetia definition (please ignore the adverts!)
Glandular hairs photo
House fly information
Diptera.info website – House-fly
BTO/Butterfly Conservation - Wider Countryside Butterfly
Survey
NBN Gateway
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG)
and how to join HBRG
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| Common blue butterfly |
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| GreyHeron River Nairn |
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| Bog orchid |
Photos © Stewart Taylor.
Loch Avon photo © Will Boyd Wallis
