As I type, weeding the veg patch, packing up and saying
cheerio to Jackie and Colin in the chalet before heading south on holiday,
seems like an age away, particularly as on our return, daily visits to Raigmore
hospital took over. We had a few days
with Janet’s mum before heading over the ‘border’ into Yorkshire for our two
weeks holiday in Masham. My circular
morning walk from Janet’s mums flat took in the Asda supermarket grounds, Milnshaw
park, an ex-mill ‘lodge’ (small lake) and the
 |
| Mute swan family |
 |
| Common blue damselfly |
houses and gardens and amassed a
total of 23 bird species, all comprising the usual suspects. A longer afternoon walk saw us get as far as
the Leeds and Liverpool canal where the sun had tempted out lots of common blue
damselflies but the swan family was unlucky in that we didn’t have any food for
them, not that they looked in need of anything.
There was also lots of the gypsywort plant (Lycopus europaeus), a plant
which tested out our plant ID knowledge when we found a tiny population in
South Uist a few years ago. We departed
Accrington on a soggy day with fairly constant rain. Our route took us past the famous Ribblehead Viaduct
where a roadside outcrop of limestone pavement suggesting it was a good place
for lunch. Sandwiches in hand, I left
Janet in the car whilst I ventured out into the rain to say hello to the usual
limestone ferns such as hart’s tongue and wall rue, but brittle bladder fern
was new for the location. I was aware
that in the distance a diesel train was making its way along the line from
Ribblehead Station and on to the viaduct, heading north to Carlisle. As I got back to the car I was then aware of
a steam train following the same route
 |
| Ribblehead Viaduct minus steam train! |
and wondered if this would be a chance
to achieve a long-held hope, to photograph a steam train on the viaduct. There wasn’t time to dig out the ‘big’ camera
and telephoto lens so the wee Panasonic was my only hope as we drove the car a
little way back along the road to try and get a better view. Perfect.
To avoid the rain, we stayed in the car and as the train made its way
onto the viaduct I was all set up and ready.
However, I hadn’t allowed for the wind, and despite photographing the
train going all the way over the arches, all I could see was a cloud of steam
with a row of carriages
following on behind!
Just after Hawes we encountered our first groups of travellers making
their way to the Appleby Fair and a little further along the road we stopped at
a craft shop which also specialised in local Wensleydale cheeses, so, we just
had to buy one. Amazingly, that night we
heard that sadly, Peter Sallis had died so I had to pay homage to the part he
played in bringing Wallace and Gromit into our homes by having a piece of
Wensleydale cheese.
Our first outing of the holiday saw us visiting Ripon with
its famous cathedral. A nice photo of
the approach to the cathedral was spoiled by a huge number of vans parked right
in front of the main entrance, so on entry we expected to see lots of workmen
carrying out repairs. The lady guide
explained a little about the building and its history as we made our way in but
also apologised for the
 |
| Ripon Cathedral |
vans and cables everywhere because a film crew was on
site to film a parliamentary scene for the ITV series ‘Victoria’. As we were making our way around the building
there was a sudden bout of someone speaking and then lots of voices shouting
questions or advice – just like our modern-day parliament! Everything died down and my suggestion to
Janet that there would be a second ‘take’ of the scene proved correct when, a
few minutes later, the same sequence of voices went through their lines
again. More amazing was then seeing all
the cast making their way down from the film set to have their lunch all kitted
out in ancient clothes and many men adorned with fancy wigs! As we
 |
| Actors filming in cathedral |
carried on around the cathedral, a very
helpful guide pointed out unusual structural features high up in one of the
towers caused by the money running out during a major refurbishment a couple of
hundred years ago – nothing changes.
Outside, we were a bit puzzled by a plant in the grass in the cathedral
grounds which turned out to be creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans)
something we couldn’t remember seeing recently.
The next day dawned quite windy and this reduced the number of stalls at
Masham market so we pushed on with our walk along the River Ure towards
Fearby. I saw from the map that there
was a golf course en route but hadn’t bargained for it covering a huge amount
of the start of the walk, a bit too neat for plants and other items of
interest. A few golfers
 |
| Red-legged shieldbug (Pentatoma rufipes) |
 |
| Inside of oak apple (Biorhiza pallida) |
approached me as
I was staring at a fence post trying to identify a shieldbug with the usual query
‘what are you looking for’? Sadly, all I
could tell them was that I was looking at a shieldbug but wasn’t sure which one
because the insect wasn’t a full adult but was at a stage known as final instar
and I would need to consult the British Bugs website to arrive at the name
red-legged shieldbug (Pentatoma rufipes).
No doubt I might have been the topic of conversation in the 19th
hole! Marsh tit was the bird highlight
of the walk as was a fresh oak apple gall (Biorhiza pallida) dislodged from a roadside
oak by the strong wind. These large
round galls are home to several tiny gall wasp larvae which will emerge as
adult wasps later in the summer.
The 8th June 2017 – polling day. Thankfully, Janet had signed us up for postal
votes and these had been filled in and posted before we headed south. The town hall in the square at Masham was
very busy with folk casting their votes and, with several having arrived by
bus, there was quite a few of
 |
| Swallow feeding young in bus shelter |
them at the bus stop waiting for the bus
home. I had been aware of a pair of
swallows circling the bus stop, and was fairly sure they would be nesting
inside, and this was confirmed a few minutes later, when, despite there being
people waiting inside and outside the shelter, one of the birds swooped over
their heads to feed their young. With so
many people at the bus shelter we decided not to investigate the nest situation
but made a note to have a look once the bus had been. This was the day we had decided to spend at
Jervaux Abbey just up the road, tempted by the reward of a cuppa and sticky bun
in the café once the ruins had been visited.
The pictures in the brochure looked like there were areas of wildflower
meadows or uncut big lawns, but times have changed since the photos were
 |
| Neat grasslands Jervaux Abbey |
 |
| Probably Common spotted orchid |
taken
and all around the site most of these areas now sported short ‘hair-cuts’. Why? One
small area of flower-rich ‘meadow’ was an area of what looked like a small
raise flowerbed, and in the centre we could see one of the heath-spotted
orchids just coming into flower, possibly common spotted (Dactylorhiza fuchsia),
but no orchids were listed in the dedicated Abbey plant list which was a bit
poorly written and contained some basic ID errors. In the same ‘meadow’ there was also flower
spikes of hoary plantain (Plantago media) something I’d not seen before. Hart’s tongue fern was growing from many
walls but finding a couple of populations of brittle bladder fern appeared to
be new to the list. Making our way back
to the car and café we were disappointed to find the café had closed early so
our treat of chunks of Victoria sponge and cups of tea were scuppered.
Going off what looked like an interesting limey area on the
map we ventured to an area near Carperby a couple of days later and in a
circular walk found an ancient lime-kiln and lots of limestone outcrops. This area is close to the army’s training
range and the first surprise of the day was almost being buzzed by a couple of
low flying jets. Not to be outdone, a
couple of Chinooks
 |
| Rockrose and salad burnet |
then flew by, returning later in the day and the final slow
and low fly-past was by a couple of RAF C130 Hercules, allowed to fly as low as
250 feet from the ground. The rocks
produced more brittle bladder fern and the steeply sloping ground had lots of
spring sedge and many hectares of rockrose a plant not listed on the BSBI
database from that area. We also made an
outing to see the local breeding avocets at the Nosterfield Reserve but owing
to very dry weather and low water table, we
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| Nosterfield avocet |
 |
| Bee orchid (a bit wet) |
could only find a single breeding
pair. The highlight though was the bee
orchid which we found in four different areas, a mega plant tick for both of
us, and a plant not seen for many decades.
A small blue plant had us stumped – blue fleabane (Erigeron acer), but
for sheer size and colour the musk thistle (Carduus nutans) claimed the prize
for most showiest, and a plant we’d not knowingly seen before. Throw in a few common twayblade orchids and
despite the rain, not a bad day.
The middle Sunday of our holiday was something completely
different and when Janet said it involved 21 open gardens in a small village
called Coxwold, I wasn’t too sure.
However, to see so many flower-filled gardens, hiding behind quite
normal looking houses, was quite a surprise, and I
 |
| Tea and cake in the rain in one of the brilliant gardens |
had to take my hat off to
the owners for putting on such an amazing display. We both agreed a terraced garden about
halfway round was the winner, but all were stunning. Tea and cake in the village hall was also
pretty good and, just to ensure there was something recorded in the diary, the
lime gall (Contarinia tiliarum) was seen on several trees. On the way to Coxwold we popped in to check
out the Burton Leonard Lime Quarry Reserve run by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust
and realised this was a place worthy of a visit on another day.
Swaledale, over the moors from Askrigg is a place we had
often talked about visiting, being an area visited several times to stay in
Youth Hostels when out with the local CTC club many years ago. The village of Muker was the initial aim but
we decided our afternoon walk would be a little further along the Dale starting
in Gunnerside. The OS map shows this
whole area criss-crossed with footpaths, old
 |
| Swaledale |
mine workings and those amazing
field barns but with just a couple of hours available we decided to wander
along the side of Gunnerside Gill. This
would be an amazing area to live in for a year or so just to see where all the
paths led and what might be residing there.
More brittle bladder fern turned up but the highlight of the walk was
Janet asking “is that the plant we saw at Fountains Abbey a couple of years
ago?” This was a question I could only
answer by struggling up a steep, slippery slope, under a canopy of hazels,
hanging on to the hazel poles as I bent down to check the plants, 3-4
 |
| A typical toothwort plant, not the ones we saw |
inches
tall, pale white but well past their best by several weeks. However, it was obvious that this was a group
of flower-spikes of a plant parasitic on the roots of hazels called toothwort (Lathraea
squamaria) a brilliant find, and with just one other record a few kilometres
away near a place called Crackpot! Carex
pallescens (pale sedge) was the other nice find for the day. Back in Gunnerside and the café was still
open so just time for tea and cake before heading back over the tops.
With just a few days of the holiday left we headed back to
the Burton Leonard lime quarries on a nice sunny day. For some reason, I had found that this
reserve was home to quite a rare sedge but one that is almost identical to the
spring sedge which I had been seeing in other places. This one is Carex ericetorum the rare spring
sedge and looks very similar to the commoner spring sedge Carex caryophyllea. Our visit to the Carperby area saw us in the
right type of grazed, lime-rich hillside, but the sedges I checked there were
all the common one so would this ex-quarry let me see the rarer
 |
| Spring sedge (Carex caryophyllea) |
 |
| Pyramidal orchid |
one? There are lots of good plants at this site
but I thought it would be best to visit the area where the rare sedge had been
recorded in the past but not since 2008.
It wasn’t to be despite checking many spring sedges and there has to be
a chance that the area where it was last seen is less grazed now than in the
past and the sedge has lost out to taller, more ‘aggressive’ plants. The quarry though was home to lots of common
twayblades and a reasonable population of pyramidal orchids along with burnet
rose (a plant that might have caused the rare sedge to disappear) with quite a
few of the roses sporting an orange fungus Phragmidium rosae-pimpinellifoliae (phew!). As we wandered a man appeared with a
butterfly net and, being keen to talk, let us know he was on the reserve to carry
out a butterfly
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| Burnet rose top and flower stem with Phragmidium fungus |
transect! I let him know
about my own Loch Garten involvement with this scheme over many years – small
world. He also told us that a nearby
reserve - Staveley Nature Reserve was worth a visit, noted for its birds,
plants, butterflies and dragonflies, so we decided to spend the afternoon there. We didn’t find any of the rarer orchids but
did catch up with small skipper and brimstone butterflies,
 |
| Not the most welcoming visitor hide |
breeding common
terns and common and blue-tailed damselflies, and generally had a pleasant
walk. The public accessible hide is the
furthest one from the car park and away from the main water-bird activity area
whereas the one with the best views is for members only and chains, locks and
signs let you know that’s the case, not the best way in my eyes to encourage
new members.
One of our most unusual finds came right at the end of our
holiday following a walk from Middleham over the fields to the River Cover and
back round via the Middleham gallops where the horses from the local racing
stables are trained. Lunch by the River
Cover saw us dining on a limestone riverbank with the river flowing through a
narrow channel which could be jumped with a bit of a run. Unusual
 |
| River Cover |
 |
| Giant puffball, my GPS is 6" long |
finds were a huge sweet chestnut
tree, a detached, but whole giant puffball (Calvatia gigantean), wood melick
grass (Melica uniflora) and a bit more brittle bladder fern. The best find though came about purely by
accident. Whenever I see a ladybird I
try and take a good photograph so that I can check the species via the UK
Ladybird website. As we left the river I
saw an area that looked like it might have nests of the yellow meadow ant so I
went to investigate. Despite seeing
possible nests of this ant in the past I’ve yet to see active ants, and that
was the case again, but on the vegetation I saw a couple of ladybirds which I
photographed, even though they looked like the common 7-spot ladybird. However, they just would not stay still so I
ended up taking several photos to ensure one
 |
| The scarce 7-spot ladybird (Coccinella magnifica) the 4 white spots just visible on the underside |
would have the right details. I did think that the colour was a little more
orange than red, but would check the photos once home. Back at the house I was happy that the
ladybird was the 7-spot and was checking a couple of other ladybird photos from
the previous day to try and get the right species. Having trouble with a possible harlequin
ladybird I checked other websites for more options and on a German website the
orangey colour of the 7-spot that I’d photographed seemed correct for the
scarce 7-spot! A bit more delving on the
internet and I found that the feature needed to confirm that species is on the
underside of the ladybird. Having taken
several photos, one of them did give a hint that the underside of my ladybird
had the four white marks pushing me towards the scarce 7-spot. Hmm. I
would have to go back to the site and have a proper look, provided I could find
the ladybird again. So, Janet headed off
to the local shops and I headed back to Middleham and the River Cover.
 |
| Race horses in nearby Middleham |
Amazingly, when I got to the location I could
see there were several ladybirds and, having forgotten to take a bit of blutac
to hold the insect in place, upside-down, I tried several ways of trying to
immobilise one but without any luck. I
then noticed one of the ladybirds running about on a thistle leaf and just
occasionally, the underside was visible, so I took photo after photo (700 in
total!) in the hope that one would confirm the four white spots. Because there were several more ladybirds I
thought it sensible to take a single specimen, just in case the photos didn’t
work. Out of all the photos, including
nice ones of the top of the ladybird, 4 gave a reasonable view of the underside
and I was quite happy that I was seeing the scarce 7-spot (Coccinella magnifica), a species which is
associated with ant nests. Once home, I
let invertebrate expert Stephen see my photos and specimen
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| Rustyback fern (Ceterach officinarum) |
and he was happy not
just with the white spots, but also by the shape of the ladybird, the rarer one
having a much more domed appearance.
After all the excitement of the morning we spent our last afternoon
visiting the Masham allotments and chatting with a couple of the folk tending
their veg patches before taking a circular route back to the house. Along the way, a wall along the side of a
house had a big population of rustyback ferns, something I had been looking for
on our last couple of holidays following my find on a railway bridge in
Morayshire, a rare plant in our part of the world. A1, A66, M6, M74 and the A9 saw us back home
by mid-afternoon on the Saturday with just a day to get ready for my first
visit to Raigmore for radiotherapy. I
also had to get organised for the annual count of orchids at the Flowerfield
meadow.
On the Sunday, Janet had arranged to attend the Aviemore
Craft Fair and once the tent was up and the stall set up I popped round to see
the Flowerfield owners to explain what I planned to do, fitting in my counts
around the Raigmore timetable once this was clear. Jeremy warned me that some of the
 |
| Frosted lesser butterfly orchid |
orchids had
been blackened by a frost on the morning of the 8th June, and a walk
around the site showed that quite a few flower-spikes (lesser butterfly and
fragrant orchids) had been affected. The
small whites seemed to have survived okay.
9am on the 19th June will be remembered well into the future
as I met for the first time, the team in charge of the ‘linear accelerator’ in
the radiotherapy section of Raigmore Hospital.
It was obvious that I was going to get to know the team quite well over
the next few weeks and this was borne out by the people already in the system,
sitting in the waiting area, and all on first name terms with the team. A full bladder is needed before treatment so
 |
| Zone 2 for radiotherapy! |
a couple of cups of water would be needed each day about 20 minutes before
treatment. My time at the hospital was
30-40 minutes and the time under the machine was 5-10 minutes. I arrived at Flowerfield about 1pm and
started to walk the transects across the site, starting off with an area where
fewer of the orchids grow. A bonus on
this first day was finding a single spike of common twayblade, a new orchid for
the site. I got up on the 20th
to find the car covered in dew and with the thermometer reading just 20C
at 6.30am, perhaps the temperature had been lower during the night?
 |
| Lesser butterfly orchids top and annual totals table |
The afternoon transects took me into the area
where the population of northern marsh orchids is increasing and about 50
flowering spikes were counted. This area
also supports a good population of moonwort fern and around 70 were
counted. In the sunshine, the first
six-spot burnet moths were on the wing.
An email also informed me that Jane and Jeremy had been contacted by an
orchid expert who, having read my article about the site in the Journal of the
Hardy Orchid Society (Vol 14, No. 2), wanted to visit the site to photograph
the orchids at various stages of their growing phases, and he would be on site
the next day. I went straight to
Flowerfield on my return from Raigmore and met Sean on site who informed me
that he had found another orchid hybrid, a mix of heath spotted and fragrant
orchid, and this he was able to show me (Dactylorhiza maculata x Gymnadenia
conopsea = X Dactylodenia legrandiana).
During the course of my orchid count I found three more locations for
the hybrid. At the end of my first week
of treatment I was feeling okay but a bit under-dressed for a
 |
| The hybrid orchid X Dactylodenia legrandiana |
very windy and
cold day and counting orchids left me a little chilled. However, another unusual find was made – an
enormous oil beetle (Meloe violaceus) which I assume would be a female, full of
eggs, and looking for somewhere to create a few burrows in which to lay
them. This beetle relies on solitary
mining bees to complete its life cycle, the newly hatched larvae must
immediately find a bee and hitch a ride on its back, usually by climbing flower
stems to wait for visiting bees. The
adult bee then carries the larvae back to its nest where they disembark and
begin to feed on the bee’s eggs and
 |
| The oil beetle (Meloe violaceus) |
the store of pollen and nectar. The larvae
develop in the bee burrow until they emerge as adult oil beetles ready to mate
and start the whole cycle again. Amazing. Later that day Janet and myself went up to
Nairn for a bowl of soup and walk on the beach, little did we know that this
would be the last such venture until after my treatment was finished. The lesser butterfly orchid count was
finished the next day leaving just the small white orchids to count. The cold morning of the 20th did
seem to have had an impact and from no frosted flower spikes on my first visit,
quite a few of the small whites were now brown or bent over. The small white orchids grow, mainly, in a
hollow section of the field and this might have been prone to a ground frost,
acting as a frost hollow. Over a couple
of hours the count was complete and as was expected, the count of both species
was down on 2016. There is no rest for
the wicked so they say and later that day I was on the road again. I had been
 |
| One-flowered wintergreens (Moneses uniflora) |
hearing good things about the
one-flowered wintergreens near Grantown where I had also been carrying out
counts for the last few years. A lack of
grazing in recent years had seen the number of flowers dwindle to almost single
figures but, as part of the Cairngorms National Park Rare Plants Project, a
machine had been brought on to the site to remove the dense stands of
rhododendron which were also threatening the plants future. Amazingly, it was within these ‘trashed’
sites that the wintergreen had started to appear possibly having been held in
check under the dense rhododendron canopy.
Whatever, I was absolutely taken aback by the number of new leafy
rosettes popping up and also quite a few with the characteristic white,
drooping flowerheads. I would have to
return to
 |
| Orchid beetles (Dascillus cervinus) |
explore further, but first there were two other lesser butterfly
sites to count. The first of the Tulloch
sites was a bit disappointing and only 12 plants were found (18 in 2016) and
once again no small white orchids were seen.
The second site was even worse, possibly because the dense vegetation is
now starting to have a big effect and only 4 lesser butterflys were found (22
in 2016). One bonus though was a big
count of orchid beetles (Dascillus cervinus).
At the top of a flower stem I found 3, a pair mating with probably
another male in attendance but in the surrounding vegetation were another 10
beetles, possible more males attracted by the scent of a female in mating mode.
It was towards the end of week two of treatment that my body
suffered a sudden change, the note in my diary saying “the trots have
started!” This was something I had been
warned was likely to happen and it just meant that for all outings thereafter I
carried a loo roll in my rucksack along with a clean pair of undies – just in
case. On the last day of June I made a
return visit to have a proper look at the one-flowered wintergreens, the ones
appearing in the ex-rhododendron areas but also to check out my previously
known sites in the surrounding woodland.
The first find though was of the green
 |
| The 'fungus' as found top photo. The 'fungus' cap was actually on the inside of the skin! |
shield-moss, with two new
locations producing 12 capsules (6+6).
In the surrounding woodland I was pleasantly surprised to find a few
wintergreens in eight locations with the number of flowers ranging from 1 to 7. The strangest find though was linked to a
dead hedgehog. When I found the
well-rotted corpse I was fairly convinced that the spines sticking up from the
body were covered with a distinct fungus, so photos were taken along with a
sample to check. Once home I put one of
the mushroom shapes from the tip of a spine on a glass slide to check under the
microscope but it was so hard the glass cover-slip broke. I emailed Brian at Kew to see if he knew of
any spine related fungi but received a negative reply. I checked my sample a little more carefully
and realised that the ‘mushroom’ shape was on the spines but from under the
hedgehog’s skin, and wasn’t a fungus at all but part of the natural make-up of
the spines! You live and learn but do
sometimes find something unusual.
Enjoy the read
Stewart and Janet
British Shieldbugs
Oak apple gall
Burton Leonard Lime Quarries
Rare spring sedge Carex ericetorum
Staveley Nature Reserve
UK Ladybirds
German ladybird website
The Hardy Orchid Society
Oil Beetles
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate recording database
NBN Atlas
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG)
 |
| Mum pine marten and two youngsters |
 |
| Mandarin with young River Ure Masham |
 |
| The Yorkshire Dales National Park puts our local Cairngorms National Park to shame with lots of flowery meadows and no major housing developments |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
