June had quite a good start with the final tree shelters
installed at the Tulloch aspen site to the
 |
| Click beetle (Ctenicera cuprea) |
accompaniment of lots of greenish
click beetles, (Ctenicera cuprea), and a few small heath butterflies. On the track to the site a small, colourful
moth stopped me in my tracks and, after a bit of chasing, as it flew between
flowers, it perched up beautifully to allow photos to be taken. There were two potential species of Pyrausta
that it could have been and when I sent my photo off to expert Mike to check,
he said he could only confirm by seeing the under-wing. Unbelievably, I did have an under-
 |
| Pyrausta ostrinalis moth |
wing photo
and it was confirmed as P. ostrinalis, which I’ve seen before. At the planted aspen site the heightened fence
was finally completed. The young trees all appear to have produced leaves so
fingers crossed we have a ‘new’ wood developing. However, the hot/dry weather since planting
meant that four, 25 litre water containers had to be bought, to transport water
to the site with the first watering-can session taking place on the 2nd. With grasses and plants only just getting
going it was quite easy to see the wee canes and spiral guards at each of the
sites but toing and froing with the watering can took an hour and a half to
complete. A bit of a guessing game but,
with 100 litres of
 |
| How to make it rain! |
water and about 200 aspens, about half a litre of water was
available for each tree so the 10 litre can had to last for about 20 trees. Thankfully my hand-tally meter kept me well
informed and all the trees received some water.
Yes, you guessed it, and just as I finished and arrived back at the car
tiny drops of rain were landing on the windscreen but only for a few minutes so
not enough to help the trees. Driving
back to Nethy Bridge the rain had stopped but about a mile from the village the
roads were very wet and when I got home Janet told me that there had been a
torrential downpour with rivers of water running down the road, none of which
landed on my aspens!
Our outing to Croy near Nairn on the 4th via
Lochindorb proved to be an hour or so late.
Early evening the previous day the doorbell rang and our chalet guests
David, Anita and Christopher had just returned from Lochindorb and asked if I
thought the bird in their photo was an adult long-tailed skua, an amazing
record for this area if correct so I said I would seek a second opinion as
everything
 |
| Christopher's long-tailed skua photo © Christopher Teague |
about the perched bird looked right.
Within minutes the phone rang, and Richard confirmed that the bird ID
was 100% and that he would be heading out first thing the following day to see
if it was still there. In the meantime,
David had also received confirmation that their ID was correct. At 9am on the 4th Richard rang to
say the skua was still there more or less where it was the day before, so we
decided to head for Croy via the loch.
Despite lots of scanning neither Janet or myself managed to find the
bird so we continued our outing to an amazing ‘arboretum’ in the grounds of
Kilravock Castle. The inclusion of ‘Kil’
in the name is the Celtic word for church and suggests a church once occupied
part of the site. The castle which now occupies
the site is a 15th century stately home to six generations of the
Rose family the last family member – the 25th Baroness, Miss
Elizabeth Rose, died in December 2012, having given the castle and its adjacent
grounds to the Kilravock Christian Trust
 |
| Monkey puzzle top and sitka spruce |
in 1984. Despite the castle website saying the castle
and grounds are now closed to the public, Janet found a piece in the Nairn
tourist information leaflet saying it was okay to visit the grounds which is
where we were heading. A major part of
the grounds comprises an arboretum and in it we found some amazingly ancient
trees, a monkey puzzle tree the like of which you are unlikely to find anywhere
else growing close to a similarly ancient sitka spruce. Old estate tracks are edged by avenues of ancient
beech trees and generally the trees we saw on our walk were of an age seldom
seen in other Highland woods. We
returned via Lochindorb but once again failed to find the skua only to be
informed later the following day that it was seen heading north, and possibly
to the coast, at about 10am on the morning of our visit.
The next day, the 5th, will long live in my
memory as one of those special days.
This was the follow up day mentioned in the May blog to the wood where
several old flower spikes of bird’s-nest orchid had been found during a green
shield-moss recording visit. On leaving
the car at about 10.30 the notebook was out as this would also be a general
recording visit, mainly plants, but also anything else of interest. The first entry was a speckled wood butterfly
along with a green-veined white, cuckoo flower and the sedge Carex nigra. A few plants were recorded by 100 metre OS
squares as I walked
 |
| Goldilocks buttercup top and sun-lit bird's-nest orchid |
so there were quite a few repeats but for the day the 175
records comprised 80 species. At the
first location where old bird’s-nest orchid spikes had been found previously I was
relieved to find a new site for flowering spikes of goldilocks buttercups,
progress from just the basal leaves from the first visit. Next to the goldilocks were two, fully
in-flower, bird’s-nest orchids, a brilliant start. Leaving my rucksac as a guide, I wandered
back and forth to see if there were any more, and two more were found. The bright sun, whilst not the best for
taking close up photos, was a big help in sort of ‘lighting up’ some of the
bird’s-nest orchid spikes in the vegetation, and as I wandered, their numbers
grew. In total, the orchid was found at
18 locations as detailed below.
|
Spikes/location
|
No. locations
|
Total spikes
|
|
1
|
4
|
4
|
|
2
|
7
|
14
|
|
3
|
2
|
6
|
|
6
|
2
|
12
|
|
9
|
1
|
9
|
|
10
|
1
|
10
|
|
22
|
1
|
22
|
|
Total bird’s-nest orchid
flowering spikes = 77
|
||
The bigger groups were growing over a few square metres but
just about visible in one photo and quite an amazing sight. In Scottish terms this is an important site
for this orchid. There is only one
higher count of over 170 spikes in Argyll back in 2011 with several locations
of counts of around 30. In the area of
my count the orchid has been recorded nearby with the first record in
1963.
Considering that I was in my wood
for almost five hours and only covered about half of the wood, there could be
more to find. Was this a good flowering
year? If so, future counts might prove
more difficult. Whatever, it was a great
day out. A phone message waiting for me
when I got home determined what I would be doing over parts of the next few
days.
When I made the phone call it was to a TV producer who was
keen to film the now famous ‘longhorn’ timberman beetle for a slot in one of
the evening programmes – did I know if there were any locations where the
beetle might be active and could be filmed?
RSPB staff had been contacted but suggested I might be the person who
could help. HELP! The BSW sawmill in Boat of Garten was
mentioned as a site where the beetle had been seen recently and, with the loss
of Rab’s sawmill in Abernethy, this might prove to be a good alternative
particularly as lots of fresh logs were stored there. However, unlike Rab’s sawmill, it isn’t
located within a native pinewood but, on making contact excellent assistance was
given given by Dave the site manager.
Staff were asked to keep an
 |
| Ant beetles top and egg laying red-belted awl-fly |
eye open for any wandering beetles and I was
accompanied by staff (for safety and H&S reasons) during a morning search
of logs and cut timber in the stacks yard, but without any luck. A major thinning of Scots pines had taken
place within the Craigmore section of the RSPB Abernethy reserve with lots of
logs still lying by track-sides and a felling of a few more mature trees had
also taken place to remove trees from two important archaeological sites near
Tore Hill. So, over the next five days
log stacks and felled trees were visited for a couple of hours a day in the
hope that the freshly cut trees would prove attractive to mating/egg laying
timberman beetles. I managed to do
something similar for the BBC series ‘Highlands – Scotland’s Wild Heart’ but
realised at the time just how lucky I was to find males and a female together,
and as the days/checks crept by I was beginning to think my luck had run out on
this occasion – particularly when a filming date had been specified. The bigger trunks at the archaeology site
seemed to be the best option particularly as the other species which were found
during the ‘Highlands’ search were present.
Ant beetles (Thanasimus formicarius) were regular along with a couple of
other longhorn beetle species and a couple of weevil species including Pissodes
pini. An unusual fly was also present the
red-belted awl-fly (Xylophagus cinctus)
 |
| Male timberman beetle |
again a species seen during the last
timberman search and, like the beetle, an ancient pinewood indicator. On the morning of the 10th June a
single male beetle was found on one of the trunks of the pines at the
archaeology site and I heaved a sigh of relief.
The film unit were due in a couple of days time so a phone call was made
to say I had a beetle and could they arrange for the cameraman to come to film
it only to be asked if I could look after it for 2-3 weeks because they didn’t
have a cameraman available! The beetle
was released the next day, however, it had been an interesting exercise and
several of the rarer insects living in Abernethy Forest had been recorded once
again. The next day Fraser from RSPB
popped in to the house to install the last of my swift nest boxes at the top of
the ‘high-topped’ Scots pine at the back of the garage. Fingers crossed a pair will find it.
An email from the Flowerfield orchid site owners mid-month
warned me that the orchids were appearing early this year possibly due to the
hot and dry conditions. The rainfall
comparisons are given in the table. With
these conditions my guess was that there would be fewer flowers and that they
would be slightly earlier than normal.
|
Rainfall
|
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
April
|
May
|
June
|
Total
|
|
2017
|
64.2
|
39.0
|
39.8
|
47.8
|
43.9
|
85.6
|
320.3
|
|
2018
|
37.5
|
45.2
|
33.1
|
37.0
|
29.3
|
21.9
|
204.0
|
A visit to the site the following day did show lots of
flower spikes appearing, so the count was arranged to start on the 18th
a few days early than normal. The first two
days counting along cane-marked transects covered the first five sections with usually
the fewest lesser butterfly orchid spikes.
 |
| Lesser butterfly orchid top and small white orchid in an amazing year |
However, the tally counter produced a count with
a hint of things to come: 112 spikes compared to 35 in 2017. It then took a couple of days to count the marked-out
area running parallel to the road and, as the count of this area progressed, I
realised that this might be a special year, 4830 against 1892 in 2017! With dry weather though some flower spikes
were already going over whilst others were just getting going. It was notable though that there were hardly
any heath spotted orchids, the northern marsh orchids were stunted and the
fragrant orchids appeared to be fewer but in good numbers. None of the latter are counted accurately. As the count progressed the usual six-spot
burnet moths were obvious and active and, with a few found resting on the lesser
butterfly orchid heads, I checked to see if they were feeding on the flowers
because we still don’t know which insect(s) is responsible for cross
pollinating that orchid. A few were
found on the fragrant orchid flowers where it was obvious
 |
| Six-spot burnet and pollinia on fragrant orchid |
they had been feeding
on the flowers as their proboscis’ were covered in the orchids pollinia. In orchids the pollinia is a single mass of
pollen grains with a viscid (sticky) coating attached to the plant’s anthers. They attach themselves as a single unit to
the insect’s proboscis as it feeds to be carried to the next orchid to
pollinate it. A single pollinia can
contain tens of thousands of pollen grains and it remains attached to the
insect as it visits several other orchids.
A strange bulge high on
 |
| Hawkweed and plant gall |
the stem of a hawkweed turned out to be a plant
gall created by the gall wasp Aulacidea hieracii not rare, and with few local
records but a few more were found over the next few weeks. Butterflies were also seen in good numbers comprising
northern brown argus, common blue, meadow brown, small heath and several
dark-green fritillaries a couple of which were seen mating. On the last day, as the canes were being
collected in a bee beetle (Trichius fasciatus) was found on a heath spotted
orchid flower-head rather than the more usual thistle flowers and on top of one
of the fence posts was a wee but impressive snake-fly (Atlantoraphidia
maculicollis). Over the 6 whole and
part-count
 |
| Bee beetle top and snake fly |
days, a remarkable 7700 lesser butterfly orchids were counted, a total
I feel will take some time to emulate.
The last job was to mark-out and count the more compact population of
small white orchids and over a couple of hours the hand-tally counter totalled
1673 with an additional 14 becoming well established tens of metres from the
main population. It would be very useful
if someone could spend a bit of time at this site to undertake a study as to
why this fairly non-descript meadow produces so many orchids particularly as
the count doesn’t take in the thousands of fragrant orchids that also appear
every year.
|
Lesser butterfly orchids
|
Small white orchid
|
|||
|
2008
|
650
|
2008
|
101
|
|
|
2009
|
1288
|
2009
|
277
|
|
|
2010
|
2800
|
2010
|
570
|
|
|
2011
|
800
|
2011
|
no count
|
|
|
2012
|
970
|
2012
|
416
|
|
|
2013
|
4345
|
2013
|
1508
|
|
|
2014
|
1225
|
2014
|
338
|
|
|
2015
|
1667
|
2015
|
1010
|
|
|
2016
|
5655
|
2016
|
2645
|
|
|
2017
|
2820
|
2017
|
1182
|
|
|
2018
|
7710
|
2018
|
1673
|
|
After the count the new Director of Conservation and Visitor
Experience at the Cairngorms National Park, Dr Peter Mayhew (my ex-boss at
RSPB) spent a couple of hours meeting the meadows owners and mostly walking the
orchid meadow to appreciate the sheer number of orchids but also to think about
how, this, the best site in the UK for the two orchids in the table, might
receive some form of ecological protection/support. I’m still working at it.
The second of two BTO Breeding Bird Survey was completed
with lime trees by the road and farmhouse adjacent to the transect route producing
yet another surprise. As I walked past
them I spotted lots of tall, red growths popping up from their leaves, a gall mite
that would require a sample for checking once home. The limes are the common lime, the hybrid Tilia
x europaea (hybrid of Tilia cordata and T. platyphyllos (small and large leaved
lime)) and checking the British Plant Galls book I arrived at the name
Eriophyes tiliae, confined to the common lime host. According to NBN Atlas
 |
| Lime leaf and the Eriophyes tiliae wasp gall |
this is just the
fourth Scottish record. The third and
final woodcock survey was also completed with again a reasonable number of
roding birds seen or heard. However, the
midges were pretty unbearable! An outing
to Dufftown had a dual purpose, a nice wee walk for us both but a walk that
would take us past four of the town’s six distilleries to see if the black
whisky fungus (Baudoinia compniacensis) was present, the by-product of the evaporation
from the barrels of whisky maturing in the bonded warehouses. This information was to be added to the
growing list of sites as a paper was being prepared for Field Mycology to
highlight this seldom recorded fungus.
Armed with a couple of tasty sandwiches and cakes from a recently opened
cake shop the walk went well with lots of nice flowers along the way.
Evening activity in the garden was quite entertaining during
the month with Colin and Jackie seeing a badger by the chalet. The following evening new chalet guests
David, Anita and Christopher were entertained by a pine marten and Janet saw
the first hedgehog of the year.
Amazingly, a week later as our chalet guests were ready to leave a pine
marten dropped in to say cheerio at 9.30 in the morning!
That same evening we had one of the most
unusual encounters to date on the garden deck, both pine marten and hedgehog
feeding together and side by side! Mid-month
a pine marten turned up at the squirrel feeders at mid-day and whether it was
the same adult that turned up with three youngsters a couple of days later, we
can’t be sure. A second female turned up
with one youngster, but she looked to be in a poor state, loosing hair from
face and body whereas the family of three appeared quite regularly with the
noisy, calling youngsters letting us know they were around. As in previous years the young martens had
fun around the squirrel feeders with mum ‘trapped’ in the box with youngster
sitting on the lid and one or more youngsters regularly falling or almost
falling from the wooden arch supporting the feeder!
The month ended on a positive note with a couple of aspen
hoverflies (Hammerschmidtia ferruginea) seen visiting a fallen aspen to lay
eggs at the site where all the fallen aspens were ‘tidied up’ a couple
of years
ago. Permission was also given for some
of the hazel stumps at the same site to be protected by rylock fencing rings to
try and minimise browsing of new shoots by mainly roe deer and to allow the
trees to re-grow. A trial one was
installed at the end of the month whilst funding was sourced to do more later
in the year. The planted aspens also
received another watering on the last day of the month with most looking very
well.
That’s it for another month, and still trying to catch up!
Stewart and Janet
Long-tailed skua in Highland Region
Kilravock Castle
NBN Atlas
Strathspey Weather
Parkswatch
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate recording database
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland
 |
| Tick removed from cat being bitten by another tick! |
 |
| F1 driver grandson Harry |
 |
| Dark-green fritillary |
 |
| A day out on Nairn beach |
Photos © Stewart Taylor. Long-tailed skua © Christopher Teague
