Visits to some local woods regarding the ‘help the aspen’
project continued with a major discovery in the hazel world. Checking some work one of the farm owners was
due to undertake, led to a wander along a small wooded burn which turned up
something pretty amazing, the oldest hazel trees I have
 |
| Just one of the ancient hazels |
seen in this area. So not only is the quote in the last blog
about this area having “Scotland’s largest aspen dominated woodland” important
but, add the ancient hazels to the mix of aspen/hazel woodland, and we really
do have something quite special on our doorstep. However, as you will read later, this doesn’t
stop the wood being vulnerable to exploitation/damage so all we can do is work
with the owners, impress on them the importance of what they have, and keep our
fingers crossed for the future.
Pursuit of new locations for fungus growing on yellow star
of Bethlehem plants (Gagea lutea) continued, and when I heard of a new location
for the plant on the side of Loch Ness at Drumnadrochit I headed north. A notice on the A82 as I left Inverness
warned of ‘slow moving lorries today’ as chunks of wind turbines made their way
to a new site and, sure enough, I caught up with one of these about 5 miles before
my destination. The 90 degree turn in
the centre of Drumnadrochit, complete with traffic bollards was a test, but
with the back-end of the trailer having rear-wheel steering the convoy
continued its journey down Loch Ness-side.
My destination was
Urquhart Woods, a small 23 ha ancient semi natural woodland
reserve owned by the Woodland Trust and with two small rivers running through
it, is classed as one of the best examples of a surviving ancient wet woodland
in Europe. The path I followed made its way
through lots of mature ash and alder trees and looking down I was initially
thrown into thinking the leaves I was seeing belonged to the Gagea plant. Wrong!
Having not yet been to check the other yellow star of Bethlehem sites in
 |
| Yellow star of Bethlehem leaves top, bluebell bottom |
the Morayshire area to re-familiarise myself with the plant, I was mistaking
the very similar leaves of the not yet flowering bluebells for the other plant. Lesson one, bluebell leaves have one obvious
vein on the underside of their leaves whilst the Gagea has three. This is quite an important feature because at
many Gagea sites there are often lots of leaves but few flowers and, with
little real information about the size of the current population, I was
checking lots of plants as I walked.
Eventually I came upon a set of leaves by the path that looked right
and, if there had been flowers, the flower-less stems showed they had either
been picked or eaten. The fungus though
wasn’t present. I widened my search from
this first group of about a dozen plants into the woods away from the path and
despite lots of searching I only found one more plant, complete with flower but
no
 |
| Bluebell leaves with Uromyces muscari fungus |
fungus. This isn’t unusual and from
the dozen or so Gagea sites I’ve visited in Morayshire, only one had the Vankya
ornithogali fungus present. However, I
wasn’t too disappointed because the wood had lots of other interesting things
to see. The woodland floor had the
bright red scarlet elf cap fungus (Sarcoscypha coccinea), an indicator of lying
deadwood and bluebell leaves had their own distinct bluebell rust fungus (Uromyces
muscari). Primrose flowers were just
appearing and there were lots of moschatel (townhall clock) in flower complete
with the rust fungus Puccinia adoxae.
After this visit, I received photos of the yellow star of Bethlehem in
flower in this wood and thinking that I had missed another population I made a
second trip to check out the plants. I
didn’t mind making another visit because the trees looked like they had some
impressive lichen populations and it would be useful to check out a few of
these. The same sign warned of slow
moving vehicles on the
 |
| Parmeliella triptophylla. The small 'blobs' are apothecia something not commonly found with this lichen |
day of my journey but thankfully they were avoided. Entering the wood there were lots of willow
warblers singing and a couple of blackcaps along with swallows overhead. I was also carrying with me a print of the
photo showing the flowering plants and details of where several of the plants
had been seen, though most of these comprised just a single plant. The grid reference for the photo location was
different to any I had taken on my earlier visit so using the ‘Go-to’ facility
on my GPS I started to count down the metres as I approached the location. It was getting very close to where I had been
previously but nothing was found at the exact grid ref so I wandered back to
where I had
 |
| Fertile Fuscopannaria ignoblis top and spores x1000 (oil) below |
seen the dozen or so plants on my first visit. Once there I checked features on the ground
and close by in the photo and found I was staring at the same plants from my
first visit. In the few days between the
photo having been taken and my first visit, all the plants had lost their flowers,
but there was no doubt that they were one and the same! So, time for a bit of staring at tree trunks
and they didn’t disappoint. Being a
woodland influenced by a more westerly climate there were many trees with the
leafy lungwort lichen (Lobaria pulmonaria) and quite a bit of its close
relative L. scrobiculata. A fertile, crustose
type lichen though had me a bit stumped, something similar to one I see a lot
of in our area Parmeliella triptophylla, but it wasn’t quite right so photos
taken along with a small sample to check once home. A wonderful name though started to enter my
head - Fuscopannaria ignobilis, a lichen I had only seen a couple of times
before and something quite rare
 |
| Ground elder leaves top, Aegopodium podograria fungus close up middle and spores x1000 (oil) bottom |
in my home area. As more trees were visited more of the
un-named lichen kept appearing making me doubt that I had the right name. A large patch of ground-elder (Aegopodium podograria) leaves caught
my eye particularly when some were covered in orange spots, something I’d not
seen before and on a few of the other trees a small green growth had me
wondering about lichen or fungus so more photos and a small sample to look at
once home. The orange spots turned out
to be Puccinia aegopodii, a fungus with few records in our area and the green
growths were found in Frank Dobson’s lichen book and turned out to be Normandina
pulchella first found in the same wood in 1974 by notable lichenologist Francis
Rose. An excellent wood and worthy of
another visit in the future.
Early in April I was about to empty our kitchen compost
bucket into the big garden compost bin when I suddenly remembered about someone
in Orkney finding an unusual fly, in huge numbers, in their bin last year. So, carefully I lifted the lid off and quite
a few small spiders started charging around to try and find cover but there
were also lots of small black flies running around the inside of
 |
| Black compost fly (Scatopse notata) and wing details |
the lid and
down the inside of the bin. Was this the
‘compost fly’? Knowing very little about
the world of flies I had to catch a few to check under the microscope where I
could see the distinctive white marks on the both sides of the thorax. At a higher magnification I was also able to
check for the distinctive veins in the wing confirming that this was indeed the
black compost fly, Scatopse notata, and just the 10th UK record but
going off my experience a fly that is probably under-recorded. Please check your compost bins and see if you
can add to the list!
Another very strange but amazing thing happened to yours
truly this month – I was presented with an award! A little while ago I was emailed to ask if I
would be happy to receive an award for volunteering from the people I used to
work for, the RSPB! This was their Gold
Award and was in recognition of 40 years of volunteering covering the period
from when Janet and myself arrived at
Loch Garten in 1976 through to
present. Wow, quite an honour and
covering probably the ‘extra’ work undertaken when out with beetle expert John
Owen and fungus expert Peter Orton and also picking up on the many years of
involvement in the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme since its inception in 1976
and the recent work on tooth fungi, green shield-moss and other important
Abernethy Forest species. Tea and cakes
also accompanied the presentation of the award so a big thank you to all
concerned.
The frosty nights mid-month saw a big increase in the number
of birds visiting the garden feeders, particularly siskins. Generally dry but cool weather was probably
slowing down the natural opening of the Scots pine cones and the release of
their seeds calling a halt to sorting out nesting territories in
 |
| A grumpy sparrowhawk top but happier with breakfast below! |
the
surrounding woodland. Chaffinches,
greenfinches, goldfinches and members of the tit family ensured the feeders
were regularly empty by 10am and with so many birds around the garden/feeders
our local sparrowhawk was also a regular visitor on the look-out for an early
breakfast. Two captures in about half an
hour one morning was pretty amazing, testing out the ability of the x30 zoom on
the wee Panasonic camera to the full as I tried to photograph it on its
plucking post. Two bramblings were also
regular until mid-April and it was interesting watching a pair of bullfinches
tucking in to last year’s seeds on the garden honeysuckle. We also had a first for the feeders, at least
two redpolls,
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| Redpoll on seed feeder |
targeting the sunflower hearts.
A fall of snow between 24th and 26th of April also
delayed the arrival of some of our summer visitors the biggest dump of four
inches falling on the 25th.
Despite the weather there was one resident I wasn’t too keen to see – my
first tick though mine was a couple of weeks after Janet’s first
blood-sucker. On the days when the sun
did appear wood ants became very active with, initially, huge gatherings of
ants on the top of their nests. Checking
one of the nests
 |
| Wood ants and queen |
whilst taking a photo I noticed several much larger ants
wandering about and these were confirmed as queens. Checking another nest led to the finding of a
couple of capsules of the brown shield-moss
 |
| Brown shield-moss on wood ant nest top and UK record details below |
(Buxbaumia aphylla), a ‘substrate’
that seems to be utilised quite regularly by the moss. Checking the new NBN Atlas for this moss is
quite interesting. This new site allows
the records/data to be interrogated easier than the old NBN and when all the
records came up I did a bit of analysis and the table below was produced. Linked to my searches for the green
shield-moss have been quite a few finds of the green shield-moss which,
currently, is probably rarer than its ‘protected’ cousin. It would appear that all the records since
2007 are mine!
An outing we made to Kingussie and Newtonmore led on to a
nice walk into Glen Banchor, the track running close to the River Calder. This area to the west of Newtonmore has lots
of evidence of farming practices from the 1700-1800s with several ruins still
visible in the landscape. Our outing
though was to wander just as far as a few more recent farm buildings one of
which was probably
 |
| Glen Banchor |
vacated just in the last 20-30 years. I’m getting quite bad at forgetting to take
my binoculars with me (more often it’s my hand-lens around my neck) and when
Janet saw what she thought was a bird of prey land in a tree about a hundred
metres away we debated about it probably being a buzzard. Out came the Panasonic camera and once I knew
roughly which part of the tree the bird had landed in I zoomed in to reveal –
it was a buzzard! We had coffee and
sandwiches at the first ruin where Janet lifted sheets of corrugated iron to
reveal voles living underneath. As we
approached the second building we had to cross a wooden bridge over the Allt
Fionndrigh and I just had to check the wooden posts and rails for any
stoneflies the posts having been nicely wetted from recent rain. A couple of the smaller, usual suspects were
present but then a bigger fly was found on one of the adjacent fence posts
which, to me, looked like the Northern February red that I had searched for
quite a bit in the last couple of months.
So, time to take a few photos as Janet wandered over to look at the
 |
| The old Ewbank carpet sweeper which brought back many memories |
buildings. The old farmhouse showed all
the evidence of modernisation over the years with open stonework, cemented over
stonework, roof height extension and modern chimney pots along with the
standard TV aerial. It then started to
rain so we sheltered in one of the outbuildings where Janet found something
that linked to my first job and apprenticeship after leaving school. In amongst the wood and wire was a very rusty
Ewbank carpet sweeper – the old push and pull type which, I gather has a modern
relative still in production today. So
there was me wiring the factory and overseeing all thing electrical as part of
the electrical team before moving into the drawing office where I remember working
on drawings for pressing out of the metal cover of the model in front of
us. Once the
 |
| Brachyptera putata top Brachyptera risi bottom, a bit more obvious when seen together! |
drawings were completed
they progressed to the tool room for the dies and punches to be made which then
ended up on the factory floor, where my dad maintained the huge presses that
did the work. What an amazing difference
between factory (now an Asda supermarket) and final resting place of just one
of the carpet sweepers! Once home I
checked the stonefly photos and realised it wasn’t the Northern February red (Brachyptera
putata) so had to check with Craig at Buglife who confirmed my thoughts and
supplied the name Brachyptera risi (February red), a fly with just a single
record nearby from the River Spey at Kingussie.
On the day of the 4 inches of snow we were up early and down
to the railway station in Aviemore to catch the 7.30am train to Edinburgh as
part of a birthday present to Janet from daughter Ruth. Quite different to sit back and watch the
scenery go by rather than concentrating on the car(s) in front. The
 |
| Aviemore station at 7.15am |
early start was to allow us time to have
the whole of the first day in Edinburgh, day one of three! First we found our ‘Hub’ accommodation 10
minutes from the station, to drop off our bags, before heading off towards
Holyrood and the Scottish Parliament. We
planned to spend quite a bit of the day seeing the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and
try to piece together where we went within the building for our meeting with
Her Majesty the Queen in July 2012, but along the way we thought we would pop
in to the Parliament to see what was on for the day. We forgot about security! Bags through
 |
| A sneaky photo from inside Holyrood Palace |
scanner, belt off and walk
through people scanner. I set the alarm
off so was drawn to one-side to empty pockets where my Swiss Army Knife had to
be left behind, to be collected later.
We find that MSP’s will arrive at 2pm for the day’s debates so we
quickly head over the road to visit Holyrood.
Entry fee paid (it was free the first time) and with Janet equipped with
a handset to provide
 |
| 2017 top and 2012 bottom! |
information as we wander, off we go. Amazing wall-hangings, huge paintings and
lots to see but on our whole journey through the building the only place we
truly recognised from the first visit was the Great Gallery, one of the most
famous rooms in the Palace. This is the
largest room in the Palace and is where Scottish residents who are awarded an
honour in either the New Year’s Honours List or The Queen's Birthday Honours
List receive their award at an Investiture ceremony. Exiting the maze of rooms we wandered around
the Abbey and gardens, headed to the tearoom to grab a quick cuppa
 |
| An empty parliament top and debate time bottom before my camera was banned! |
before
heading back to go through the security procedure once again before taking our
seats in the Parliament to listen to the afternoon debates. On the way up the stairs to the public
gallery we came across a George Wyllie sculpture (Ruth’s husband, Lewis’s
grandad) another amazing piece of art.
Slowly, after 2pm the MSP’s arrived and by about 2.30 most were in their
seats and the main debate got underway.
People came and went from the public gallery throughout our stay,
including quite a few groups of school children. An interesting day and time to retreat to the
Hub to unpack and relax for the evening.
Day two saw us walk up to Princes Street to hop on to a bus
to go to the Royal Yacht Britannia at Leith.
Whether you are a royalist or not this is an attraction well worth
visiting, there’s lots to see, a lot to hear about (via the handsets) and the Royal
Deck Tea Room is also well worth a visit – yummy! The most confusing bit of the visit is
finding your way through the Ocean Terminal
 |
| Male eider |
shopping and dining complex, it is
huge, and, if you have the time there’s probably lots to see and do. From the top deck, we had excellent views of
male and female eiders and out across the Firth of Forth to the Fife
coast. The visit to the Royal Yacht was
good but so was our next adventure.
Before our trip, Janet had found that quite a nice walk links the yacht
with the outskirts of the centre of Edinburgh called the Leith Walk and that
this would be a nice way to make our way back to our digs, probably catching a
bus for the last bit of the journey. The
weather was perfect so, once we managed to find the start of the walk (signed
then not signed), we were on our way.
Our first stop was to watch a pair of swans doing a good imitation of
Swan Lake, with both birds pirouetting round and round, and us waiting to see a
mating and then the amazing paddle across the water. It didn’t happen
 |
| Oxford ragwort |
so we crossed the bridge and
got on to the footpath proper. The first
thing was saw that we didn’t expect was big populations of few-flowered leek,
and a ragwort, the name of which kept troubling us turned out to be oxford
ragwort (Senecio squalidus) and it was important to get the right name because
a few flowers had Puccinia lagenophorea fungus on stems and leaves. Eventually the path took us to Canonmills where,
worryingly, we saw a couple of plants of giant hogweed showing just how
widespread this alien is spreading. We
then had the choice of trying to find a bus or just continue along the roads
that headed for Waverly Station. We
chose the latter and seemed to slog our way up a long hill before dropping down
to the station and back to our digs.
Our last day saw us
visiting the famous Edinburgh galleries, National Gallery first then a short bus
journey to the Gallery of Modern Art, the former having some pretty amazing
paintings on its walls.
 |
| Rev. Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Sir Henry Raeburn |
 |
| Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer |
Again, we
decided to walk back and should have diverted a little to have a proper look at
Dean Village, a World Heritage Site.
However, we missed the best way in and could only view the houses from
the road we were walking along…next time.
We crossed Princes Street and followed a road round the back of
Edinburgh Castle before climbing several flights of steps to reach the castle
esplanade where everyone around us were stood with backs to the castle whilst
they took their ‘selfies’. It was then
back to The Hub for a cup of tea and to pick up our bags before hopping onto
the train back to Aviemore at the end of an amazing few days.
Trying to work out what might be feasible in getting some
new aspen trees growing at a couple of the sites we have been working on
involved me making a trip to Elgin to chat over any farm grant implication for
any works that might be carried out.
Along the way this trip allowed me to pop in to check out the best
flowering population of yellow star of Bethlehem in this area, but as before,
there were plenty of flowers but no leaf fungus. A couple of distilleries were visited along
the way to see if there were any black buildings (whisky fungus) and two more
were added to the list. After the
 |
| Common star of Bethlehem and Puccinia liliacearum fungus |
positive meeting with David at SAC Consulting (part of Scotland’s Rural College
group) I headed off to see Ian who had emailed to say that the leaves of a
patch of common star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum subsp. campestre)
near his house had a fungus growing on its leaves (Puccinia liliacearum). This plant is classed as an “alien neophyte”,
an introduced plant that escaped into the wild after the year 1500, so its
arrival in Britain was probably as a garden plant. This group of leaves (no flowers and like the
other star of Bethlehem it’s a shy flowerer) had heavy infestations
 |
| Yellow star of Bethlehem and Vankya ornithogali fungus |
of the
fungus so no searching around was needed, just a few photos and a sample for
Kew. Whilst in this area is seemed
sensible to go and check the yellow star of Bethlehem that had displayed the
fungus over the last two years and though there were less leaves and stems
infected, it was there once again. Phew,
enough visits to Bethlehem sites for one year.
Once again, I’m sad to report, that yet another important
Scots pine wood locally has been badly damaged by unsympathetic managers. Curr Wood near Dulnain Bridge was, until the
early 2000s, one of the best small woods locally for its population of
twinflower (Linnaea borealis). When the
local estate sold the wood in 2001 a heavy felling took place ensuring the
small population of capercaillie moved out and also putting some of the
twinflower patches under threat because of opening up the canopy. Whether it was because of this heavy thinning
or not the site became known as important for its population of pine hoverfly
(Blera fallax) a fly which depends on old trees some of which will have
heart-rot; the central heartwood of the tree decays softened by the rot fungus
Phaeolus schweinitzi, whilst from the outside the tree will look quite
healthy. I would have to assume that in
old Scots pine woodland there might be a very small population of the fly, the
adults somehow finding a way into the rotting centre of the standing tree via branches
falling off, the brackets created
 |
| Pine hoverfly (Blera fallax) top and a potential breeding site exposed by recent felling of old Scots pines. |
by the fungus growing on the bark etc, to lay
their eggs. The fly larvae live in the
soft, rotting wood before emerging as adults one to three years after
hatching. Sometimes these trees snap and
fall over partly as a result of the heart-rot fungus and in some instances the
rotting heart of the tree remains moist enough for the flies to breed. The earlier heavy felling in Curr Wood left
some stumps with these rot holes clearly visible and the hoverfly probably
reacted and the population increased making use of these easy access breeding
sites. Currently, Curr Wood is the only
known site in the UK to support the hoverfly.
However, successive fellings mean there are less of the old trees with
the potential rotting hearts and as the wood becomes more commercial in its
outlook, trees will not be
 |
| Trees up to 140 years of age were clearfelled in one area |
left to grow long enough to provide the breeding
sites whether natural or man created.
What happened on the 10th April 2017, under the forest
management of the Bell Ingram land managers was another heavy thinning of the
wood but, more damaging, an area of clearfell of just over 4ha. The clearfell is hugely damaging because this
wood is classed as a heritage wood which, up until recently, had been managed using
the shelter-wood system, a method which leaves a scatter of seed trees across
the managed site to enable seed to fall and for the wood to regenerate itself
naturally. This has happened across this
wood since it started life as a planted wood in the late 1700s. How were they allowed to do this work when a
felling licence is required and in that process bodies like the Cairngorms
National Park, RSPB and possible SNH, will be asked if they have any concerns
about the management planned? It is now
becoming apparent that the requests for comments never reached these
organisations and for some strange reason Forestry Commission Scotland didn’t
query why no responses had been received and just signed off the felling
licence. To my mind there is something fundamentally
wrong when a body like FCS doesn’t have notes in its files highlighting the
importance of the wood. Interestingly
Bell Ingram and the woods owner Billy Martin received the
 |
| Trees felled where twinflower grows |
prestigious Hunter
Blair Trophy at the annual Scotland's Finest Woods Awards in 2013 for “their
sympathetic management”. To put what has
happened into perspective, trees, that were up to 140 years of age, have now
been removed by a timber harvester and probably at the rate of one every five
minutes. Patches of twinflower have been
run over and trees felled from one patch and all to maximise the income
generated without too much worry about the damage being done to the heritage
and natural history importance of the site.
All very sad. I await with
interest the content of the Freedom of Information Requests I have currently
with FCS. Sadly, the damage is done.
The PSA prostate readings have again increased so summer
activities might be a little curtailed as I go to say hello to oionising
radiation over six of the busiest weeks of the summer. Body scan 29 May and the first radiotherapy
on the 19 June with the comforting news that I won’t be radioactive! Roll on mid-August.
Enjoy the read
Stewart and Janet
Urquhart Bay - Woodland Trust
Black compost fly
UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme
NBN Atlas
NBN Atlas Scotland (as above but just Scotland)
Ewbank history
Palace of Holyroodhouse
George Wyllie Foundation
Royal Yacht Britannia
Blera fallax the pine hoverfly
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate recording database
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
 |
| Grandson Archie's photo of the grand-folks |
 |
| Pine marten supper time |
 |
| Bent tail showing long-tailed tit nesting locally |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
