With warm weather continuing into August conditions were
suitable for another monthly butterfly transect to be walked near Grantown on
Spey. Not the best route for good
numbers of butterflies due to the lack of flower-rich areas but, covering the
same route as the bird survey, the data adds a little more to our knowledge of
the ups and downs of the butterfly populations across the UK. It was a mid-day start, the thermometer
hovered around 210C, and the southerly wind was quite kind. August is the month when, locally, we see
good numbers of Scotch argus butterflies (as I did on the Loch Garten transect)
and this walk didn’t disappoint with 18 contacts. Speckled woods appeared on this transect just
a few years ago as breeders arrived slowly, probably from the Moray coast, and
2 were seen on this walk. The only other
butterfly seen was a small copper, a butterfly that seems to have done quite
well this year with regular contacts on other outings. So, three species during the hour and a half
walk with a record also of an annoying ear moth, possibly large ear (Amphipoea
lucens).
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| Ear moth agg. |
Another of the Cairngorms rare invertebrates project species
popped up on the calendar this month, the small scabious mining bee (Andrena
marginata). This is a small bee that
excavates holes in firm, sandy ground in sunny locations to create a nest where
the next generation of this rare bee will be reared. As far as is known, the female creates the
holes and collects pollen from devil’s-bit scabious flowers (Succisa pratensis)
to provision their nests. Nectar is
known to be foraged from a range of other plants and is collected in the bee’s
stomach whilst pollen is collected via pollen baskets on the
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| Colletes succinctus the heather colletes |
bee’s legs. Pollen is stored in the nest cells ready for
the larvae to consume as they grow.
Gabby, the Rare Inverts project leader managed to find (with others)
several new locations for this bee during the August/September breeding period
in 2017 so the aim this year was to check if the same sites were occupied again
and to try and find new ones. Having
looked for this wee bee before I thought it best to go out with Gus and Tessa
to a location where they had found it in 2017.
Sadly, half of the length of track where the bee had holes last year had
been bulldozed away, in error, but the second half of the track remained
suitable and I saw for the first time the ‘volcano’ shaped holes which the bees
create to make their underground nest.
However, despite the hot sun we didn’t manage to see the bees either
digging or bringing in provisions but did see another mining bee using the same
section of track Colletes succinctus, the heather colletes. As we stood waiting for activity, we became
aware of an unusual fly which seemed to have some interest in the bee nesting
area so one to try and catch up
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| Andrena marginata nest 'volcano' |
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| A crab spider on a devil's-bit scabious flower-head |
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| Small copper butterfly |
with on future visits. Now that I knew what to look for hole-wise, I
thought I should visit a site visited last year where I wasn’t aware if the
scabious mining bee was present or not.
The location though was covered in devil’s-bit scabious flowers so at
least the main food plant was available should the site have the right nesting
habitat. I started by checking the areas
where there was minimal vegetation and areas of bare ground, eventually ending
up on an old tractor track. High up the slope
the sandy soil was just too loose but further down the slope it looked just
right, lightly vegetated with patches of bare, compacted, sandy soil. Was it too early to shout “bingo” because I
was also seeing a couple of volcano shaped holes! I then spent the next hour or so walking
slowly back and forth along the right looking section of track where I noticed
a different fly landing on pebbles close to the bee holes. I spotted a small bee land in the vegetation
on the sloping bank of the track and when I managed to get a good look at it,
it was the heather colletes, a slightly darker and differently shaped bee to
the one I’d never seen. Kneeling and
bending over wasn’t too good for back and knees so after an hour of careful
watching I thought it was time to see if I could find the bee visiting scabious
flowers. On the top of the knoll
something on the top of a scabious flower-head
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| Crab spider with Andrena marginata bee |
caught my eye and when I looked
closer, I could see it was one of the crab spiders, perhaps the same as last
month (possibly Xysticus cristatus).
Once again, this spider was sitting there, legs outstretched, waiting
for possible prey insects to land on the flower. I saw another couple as I continued to
search. A small copper was found again
along with dark-green fritillary, Scotch argus, painted lady and small
tortoiseshell, but no bee. Time to go so
I made my way slowly back to my bike continuing to check the scabious flowers
as I walked. I spotted another crab
spider and it was obvious that it had caught something and, taking a closer
look, I could see it was holding a bee with obvious pollen pouches on its legs
– surely this wasn’t going to be my first scabious mining bee? The bee was obviously dead and not struggling
so, sorry spider, I detached it from the spider and
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| Andrena marginata at nest hole and foraging |
popped it into a tube to
take home to check. So, on the 4th
August 2018 I had found my first Andrena marginata and in possibly the
strangest way possible. I was back on
site the next day complete with a picnic stool to sit on so I could concentrate
more on looking than worrying about back and knees. Straight away I was aware of a bee landing
near one of the ‘volcanoes’ with obvious leg pouches filled with pollen and
within half a minute it had disappeared into the hole. Over the next hour
several scabious mining bees were seen arriving and departing and with a bit of
careful marking with short sticks I was able to identify holes bees had gone
into and was able to note that most re-emerged after 5-6 minutes. At one hole I was lucky enough to see a bee
leave and return with the time out being
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| Kite-tailed robber fly top and; satellite fly bottom |
about 30-31 minutes. A few days later one of the Abernethy
Highland Games organisers asked if it was me he had seen sitting on a stool in
a field – well, of course! I re-visited
the first site again to see if the odd fly was still active and once located I
waited for it to land on a rock or pebble and slowly homed in with camera
firing away as I got closer. This fly
turned out to be kite-tailed robber fly (Machimus atricapillus) a biggish fly
which preys on other flies and insects so possibly also the mining bee? The fly at the other site was identified as
Leucophora grisella, a satellite fly whose larvae are parasites of solitary
bees so again, the concentration of just a few mining bee nests looks
attractive to these fly predators.
Mid-month, Gabby organised a gathering of people involved in
checking sites for the scabious mining bee and this led me to Tomintoul for the
day. After a brief introduction to the
gathering of about 6 folk we headed out to a field covered in scabious flowers
and spread out to carry out our search.
This would be mostly checking the flowers but also keeping an eye open
for any suitable open ground that might have been suitable for nests. The one thing against us was a slightly
strong
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| The captured Lasioglossum bee before release |
wind and patchy sun but with several bumblebees active and occasional
hoverflies we pressed on. I thought I’d
found the bee and swung my net to catch it to give Gabby a chance to check, and
once in a glass tube to check Gabby thought that it might be a blood bee slightly
similarly coloured as Andrena, but a different bee species. However, checking my poor photo of the bee in
my tube expert Murdo pointed me in the direction of Lasioglossum calceatum or albipes. These small bees are very similar to the one
we were looking for, a mining bee that is classed as primitively eusocial, meaning
it creates a small social colony though each bee breeds independently. We also saw the tiger hoverfly (Helophilus
pendulus) but in the windy conditions, almost impossible to photograph. Despite several folk looking, the mining bee
wasn’t found. However, the field looked
so promising that I decided to
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| Tiger hoverfly top and common blue sow-thistle bottom |
return a few days later, but not before giving a
filmed interview to an RSPB team about the shining guest ant. Thankfully, the guest ant was active on a
nest where I had seen it previously, so interview finished I left them to see
if they could capture the ant on video.
I got to Tomintoul and the weather was calm and with the sun
shining. I started off by seeing several
peacock butterflies, a good start. Next
came a big population of field mushrooms (Agaricus campestris) and, as with
many other rich flower sites, several antler moths. But no scabious mining bees! By the road there were leaves of
burnet-saxifrage (Pimpinella saxifrage) and an unusual blue flowered plant
turned out to be common blue sow-thistle (Cicerbita macrophylla). However, several mining bees though were seen
at the Flowerfield orchid site a few days later, adding yet another rare
species to its status as nationally important.
The hazel stump protection work mentioned last month really
got going this month, with light-weight rylock wire bought at the start of the
month and the first 5 rylock rings installed on the 6th. At each ‘stump’ about five metres of rylock
was unwound, formed into a circle round the hazel and once the ends were joined
together fixed in place with 4 or 5 stakes, donated to the project via spares
left over from the aspen sucker tube protection work. Each hazel stump was a little different, some
comprising just a stump with new shoots trying to grow again, to a few stumps
where usually just one stem had been left growing from the stump, the rest all
having been cut off. At all the
locations, any new growth was being eaten back by visiting roe deer, preventing
the trees from re-establishing. New
stems had already been trying for two growing seasons, but none had made it to
more than a few inches high and, without protection, many of the once mature
hazels would fail to grow again to be
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| Staking a rylock ring round hazel |
part of the aspen/hazel wood that once made
this wood so important. Each visit saw
me unrolling lengths of rylock, cutting it and then forming the ring before
bashing in the 30mm square stakes with a lump hammer to hold in place. I didn’t spend whole days on site but did
manage to install between 5 or 6 on each visit and making ten visits in all to
complete the protection of 40 stumps.
There was a slight delay late in the month when I ran out of stakes
before Dave at the BSW sawmill in Boat of Garten came to the rescue by
providing, free of charge, the 30 more that were needed. One of the last jobs in early September was
to attach numbered tags to each ring so that success of otherwise could
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| The aspen bolete (Leccinum albostipitatum) found whilst installing the hazel rings a local/rare species |
be
monitored. It would have taken about 10
metres of rylock to put in circles that would keep visiting deer totally away
from the re-growth, so we will just have to see what will happen with the
slightly smaller rings. At several sites
I also placed fallen aspen branches close to the wire to try and make life
difficult for the deer to browse so only time will tell. A deer height fence around quite a bit of the
wood would benefit both the hazels, including those stumps not protected, along
with hazel seedlings and aspen suckers to try and ensure a wood for the future
was established … watch this space.
Hopefully, the tree tubes protecting about 20 aspens suckers and my 40
hazel rings will be superceded by something better in the future. I can only thank local fencing contractor
Davie McDonald, Hayley Wiswell at the Cairngorm National Park, the estate owner
and Factor and Dave at the sawmill for their help with materials, funding and
permission to do the work.
Janet was busy early in the month to ensure she had plenty
of stock to adorn her stall at the Abernethy Highland Games on the 11th. My job is helping with the gazebo, loading
and unloading the stock and, with Janet then taking on the role of seller,
greeting and chatting with some of the 3,000-folk attending the games. I sneaked off to carry on looking for the
scabious mining bee and finding purple loosestrife growing in the village
pond. Thankfully, the heavy downpours of
the day before the games didn’t re-appear until the games had finished and
everything was back in the car and safely driven home. The following day a local site was visited
where heath cudweed (Gnaphalium sylvaticum) had appeared in the last few years
in big numbers, mainly in areas created to park cars or the tracks they drove
along – ideal habitat after the visitor site closed down. A window of a few years is ideal for the
plant which likes open gravelly ground in which to grow, but, over time, the
natural vegetation takes over and the plants then will just about disappear. Tree seedlings and vegetation is starting to
have an effect but just over 700 flower-spikes were counted, still an important
site for this nationally declining species.
The work on the hazels also produced a few unusual records one being
rare in the UK category. The hazels are
growing close to the River Spey and whilst checking river bank populations of
devil’s-bit scabious for the wee bee, I noticed one of the aquatic bur-reeds
growing out of the water below a steep river-side bank. Not being able to
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| Unbranched bur-reed |
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| Collard parachute fungus and spores x1000 oil |
reach the plant without
potentially falling into the river, I zoomed in on it with my trusty camera and
after letting local expert Andy see the photos, we agreed on unbranched bur-reed
(Sparganium emersum), a plant I’d found last year, about a mile up-river
growing in a wee burn running through a golf course. Possibly, an escapee from there because these
are the only records from that area.
Whilst walking along the fisherman’s path I also noticed a tiny
fungus. With a little care I managed to
dig down with my pocket knife to see what it was growing from as this can often
aid identification. Once home, I made a
guess that it might be one of the Marasmius family and checking Collins
Complete Guide to Mushroom and Toadstools the one that looked right was Marasmius
rotula, the collared parachute, a fungus that grows from buried bits of
deciduous wood debris. It was only once
I was guided by the book to look under the cap of the fungus that I could see
how the common name had been arrived at – like a parachute from above but with
a gap between stem and gills when checking under the cap, hence collared. Just to be sure, the spores were checked
under the microscope. However, the most unusual
find was as I made my way back to the car.
By
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| Diplolepis nervosa galls on wild rose bush |
the road I saw wild rose bushes with lots of red galls growing on
their leaves. Assuming these would be
something quite common, I took a couple of samples home and, consulting Redfern
and Shirley’s British Plant Galls book I was led to a gall called Diplolepis
(rose pea gall) but either nervosa or eglanteriae, depending on whether the
galls had spikes or not. The ones
collected had spikes which lead me to Diplolepis nervosa the commoner of the two species but with few, well just one, record in
Scotland on NBN Atlas. I contacted
Margaret Redfern just to check that I had ended up with the right species and
she was happy with my ID but told me to enter my record as “larvae not
checked”, because this was something few people in the UK would be able to do. The last time the gall was found north of the
border was by well known insect expert Philip Entwistle from the Spinningdale
woodlands near Dornoch and on that occasion he found someone who kept the larvae
alive until they emerged as adult gall wasps when they were able to have their
identity confirmed 100%.
An advert appeared in the local paper in late July warning
of traffic delays between Inverness harbour and a remote area of moorland
adjacent to the B9007 road between Carrbridge and Furness. There would be delays twice a day for five
weeks, starting on 20 August, as sections of wind turbines were moved from the
harbour to their moorland home 9 km, yes, 9km from the B9007 road. Okay, we need sustainable, renewable power
but once again the Scottish Government overturned objections from over 500
people, SNH, Highland Council, despite the location being in a designated area
the Drynachan, Lochindorb and Dava Moors Special Landscape Area. “Well, not much of it will be seen!” said the
reporter - unless that is you are in the Cairngorms National Park looking down
from many of the hills and mountains.
The John Muir Trust’s objection said that despite this application not
being on land within the CNP, they found that “the Park is being circled by a
potential total of 880 turbines. These
would need roughly 3,315,840 metric tonnes of reinforced concrete for the bases
of the turbines alone which will only ever be grassed over when the wind farms
are decommissioned.
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| The base of one wind turbine - before the concrete |
This calculation is
based on an estimated average of a round foundation 20m in diameter by 5m deep
with 1m3 in volume weighing 2.4 metric tonnes”. That doesn’t include all the steel mesh which
is buried in the concrete. See Firwood
Blog in 2011 for the scale of one wind-turbine base. Whilst picking up the grandchildren from
school one day a police car whizzed by lights flashing, followed by a second
and a couple of police on motor-bikes to zoom ahead to stop approaching traffic
at any dodgy bits of the A95. I grabbed
a couple of photos but then thought it would be useful to photograph the convoy
creeping along the B9007 over the moor.
So, a couple of days later I headed off to be ready for the
mid-afternoon convoy on a very visual section of the B9007. The police car with flashing lights told me
it was arriving and there, in the distance the three very long lorries, each
with its accompanying escort vehicle, were heading towards me. Camera at the ready I took a series of photos
as the convoy approached and a couple after it had passed. As I packed up the camera I thought it would
be interesting to see the convoy trundle across the moor so I headed in the
same direction catching up with it just as it was turning off the road. Over the next half an hour or so the convoy
disappeared further onto the moor as it covered the last nine kilometres on a
new moorland road to a boggy hollow at about 500m asl called Tom nan Clach (NH8634),
the name of the windfarm, and soon to become home to thirteen 125m high
turbines. Obviously, nothing is sacred
anymore and no doubt there will be more applications to add to the ring of
turbines on other remote areas of moorland around the Cairngorms National
Park. I will refrain from naming the
person I’m sure is behind this loss of this remote, special Highland landscape.
At the end of the month we decided to test out our map-reading
skills once again with an outing along the west side of the Moray Firth setting
off from under the A9 and the Kessock Bridge.
All very simple to begin with, just follow the wee road then track and
then the actual shore. It was nice to
see plants not often encountered with big patches of sea aster and sea campion,
a plant in put down in my notebook as a sedge to check but turned out to be sea
club-rush (Bolboschoenus maritimus)
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| Greater sea-spurrey top and hedge bindweed bottom |
occupying a nice boggy. Negotiating a few rock out-crops we
approached a group of houses in Kilmuir and there found a small blue plant we
couldn’t remember seeing before, greater sea-spurrey (Spergularia media). With the sun shining we found a seat by an
ex-telephone box and enjoyed our sandwiches filled with Janet’s delicious
homemade plum jam. From here we made our
way uphill to a scatter of houses in the hope of finding a track into the
Forestry Commission’s Ord Hill plantation which would take us back towards our
car. A lady from one of the houses could
see we were hunting around for the track and guided us past her house and into
an area of bracken where a family member had cut a path, assuring us that it
would take us to the track. However, the
‘path’ petered out and we
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| Kilmuir and the Kessock Bridge |
were left searching along a deer fence battling
through head-high bracken. Eventually we
gave up and headed back down towards the shore negotiating a deer fence along
the way! After about a wasted hour we
were back where we started in Kilmuir, stopping to admire a big patch of hedge
bindweed (Calystegia sepium) before heading back along the much simpler
seashore. It was nice to see a red
admiral, a painted lady and a few speckled woods but very few birds of note.
I also had a few interesting outings along the Dava Way, a
long-distance footpath linking Grantown on Spey with Forres using the
ex-railway line. I had been asked to
keep an eye open for a gall growing on seed-heads of the common hawkweed
(Hieracium vulgatum), a gall which had only been recorded once before in the UK. That find was made along the same railway
line but at Dunphail some 20km from the Grantown area I would be visiting. The hawkweed grows from walls and stony
habitats with the original galled plant growing from the ‘cinder’ trackside
back in 1966. The BSBI
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| Common hawkweed but without the gall |
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| Common hawkweed seed-head where the Aulacidea nibletti gall would appear |
website gave me a
few locations where the plant had been recorded in recent times along the Grantown
end of the Dava Way, so these would be the sites to visit. However, I was dealing with a none too easy
to identify plant, so a bit of a learning curve. However, the plant was growing from the
stonework near Castle Grant but without the gall and via the four outings,
including the ex-railway line at Dunphail, few plants were found, and none had
the Aulacidea nibletti gall. However, other items of
interest were found one of the best being a rarely recorded fly Eriozona
syrphoides and several robin’s pincushion
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| Robin's pincushion galls |
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| Eriozona syrphoides |
 |
| The unusual finds |
galls caused by the bedeguar gall wasp
(Diplolepis rosae), a rare gall in this part of the world. Further out on Dava Moor grazing sheep had
access to the footpath so most plants had been nibbled well back but a wander
off the path into an area of conifer wood produced a nice patch of interrupted
clubmoss (Lycopodium annotinum) and, the best surprise of the outings a
discarded sea eagle primary wing feather, and, back on the path, a fifty-pence
piece! It also became apparent that to
find the gall an outing much later in the year would be needed, once the plants
had finished flowering and the seed-heads were developing.
On 10th August I attended the launch of a book by
RSPB Research Scientist Dr Ron Summers, a book 3 years in the making and with a
little help from me via commenting on three drafts and
providing several photographs. This book covers the
history and natural history of Abernethy Forest and gives an amazing picture of
the forest, its people, natural history and RSPB ownership. However, it certainly puts you off ever
trying to write a book of your own! Well
done Ron.
That’s it for another month, enjoy the read.
Stewart and Janet
Ear moths
The Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS) 2017 report
Tom nan Clach windfarm
Tom nan Clach windfarm developer’s website
Firwood blog 2011
Abernethy Forest - The History and Ecology of an Old
Scottish Pinewood
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
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| Painted lady butterfly |
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| August down-pour |
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| Janet's pride and joy - best onion crop ever! |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
