A new guest makes an appearance

Today it is raining, it’s one of my days off, so I am not tempted off out looking for things. Time to catch up with events and get down to writing the diary.

The main event during August and September was the reserve-wide survey of tooth fungi, similar to one carried out in 2007. Last years survey found just over five-hundred locations for these rare UK fungi but involved walking most of the tracks within the reserve part of Abernethy Forest. I found the first tooth fungus early in August and panicked a little about this being an ‘early’ season; when should I start the survey? The start date really, was outside my control because, to make the survey compatible with 2007, most of last years tracks and quarries would have to be visited on about the same day, comparing like with like. So the survey started on 15 August and ran through to 20 September, the work this year being supported by funding from the Cairngorm National Park, paying for five days of help from Liz Holden (left), and RSPB who (unofficially) allowed a few days off work to carry out part of the survey. Liz has made a name for herself in the Mycological world in being an expert in fungi identification, carrying out site surveys and running courses to introduce others to the world of fungi identification. Liz is also the person responsible for allocating English names to all the macro-fungi (the bigger ones) to help folk like me who just can’t seem to get their heads round remembering Latin names .(http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails-The+Fungi+Name+Trail+-9781851538911.html). Any photos of fungi in this diary will therefore carry both names as a thank you.

The first species recorded on the survey was the ubiquitous Hydnellum peckii (devils tooth), well it is ubiquitous here but nationally it is a very scarce fungus. This is the fungus which is famous for its droplets of ‘blood’ on the cap usually after light rain (right). The Speyside Way track close to the house, is one of the best places to see it, there were actually so many growing that I had to mark each group, as found, with cocktail sticks so that they weren’t double recorded. This is the third year running that this survey has been carried out and it was interesting to see so many fruiting bodies of Bankera fuligineoalba (drab tooth) this year, it was the second commonest species recorded this year up from third last year. League position doesn’t however tell you everything. In 2007 it was recorded at 62 locations, this year that increased to 130. The commonest species was the devil’s tooth with 153 locations. The most beautiful species remains Hydnellum caeruleum (blue tooth - left), vivid blue when fresh and even when a little older, the blue rim to the cap can be quite stunning. I was really pleased to see that a species found as new to Britain by the late Peter Orton and myself in 1991, increase from just 1 location found in 2007 to 25 this year. This fungus is Sarcodon glaucopus, (green foot tooth - right) and it was nice to record it from many locations where it had never been seen before. Overall, 87 miles of walking was undertaken, 601 tooth fungi locations and 11 named species were found. The mystery tooth fungus at Loch Mallachie appeared again, but we are still waiting for confirmation of a name from the DNA experts at Cardiff University. Watch this space!

A few photographs were entered into this years BBC Wildlife Photographer of the year competition and BBC’s Countryfile programme. Didn’t hear anything from the Countryfile folk but one photo did get to the semi-final stage of the other. Room for improvement there then! Well done to Firwood chalet visitor Christopher who did much better than me and won the adult section of the Minsmere photo competition with a stunning picture of a bittern. I’ll see if I can get some help and guidance when he comes back to the chalet in April.

This lack of success hasn’t put me off taking the camera out though and it (they actually!) has been busy over the last months. One of the early outings saw it accompanying me to Perthshire to help bee expert Murdo Macdonald create, hopefully, some bee nesting sites. Nest boxes for bees? Well not quite, these are mini rock caves which we hope the bees will find to their liking and use them as breeding sites. The bee in question is one of our rarest, Osmia imermis, a close relative of the bee I surveyed locally in 2007 Osmia uncinata. Both bees are small solitary bees, O. uncinata breeding in beetle holes in dead Scots pine trees and O. inermis breeding in cells it creates from ‘chewed up’ plant material stuck to the underside of flat rocks/stones on slightly lime-rich hillsides. See website for details - http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html (Murdo runs the Highland Biological Recording Group website). The wee bee is currently known from just five extant sites in the UK, two on Deeside and the others in Perthshire. At the site we were working on the bee hasn’t been seen for about four years and the worry is that the availability of suitable nest sites has declined possibly, in line with the lack of digging for track repair materials from small ‘borrow’ pits on parts of the hillside. The aim of our visit therefore, was to fill small rubber bags with flat rocks and carry these out onto the hillside where we created mini-caves, a flat rock propped up on a couple of side bearing rocks (left) keeping the main flat rock clear of the vegetation. This was the second breeding site creation attempt at this location, a similar exercise a couple of years ago seemed to fail because the flat rocks were placed straight onto the vegetation. These rocks quickly sunk into the heather and grasses leaving very little room underneath for the bees to build their nests. So, fingers crossed this second attempt will be more successful. The beauty of this method, if it works, is that you can quickly visit the artificial nests sites, turn over the top rock, and see if there are any bee cells (as right) without having to spend lots of time looking for the bee. However, the bee feeds on bird’s foot trefoil like its close relative, and I have had great success standing by clumps of trefoil waiting for that bee to visit. So, if you see a lone man, standing motionless on a Perthshire hillside in June next year, I might just be trying to photograph another rare bee feeding on its favourite flower. Interestingly, the farmer who until recently had the tenancy to graze this particular site, placed rocks somewhere on the hillside and managed to actually film the bee visiting its wee rock ‘cave’. Fingers crossed we can do it again.

Work colleague Andy has a crafty way of getting things looked for or found. A short email will often appear on the works PC saying “one to look out for” and sometimes it works and I try and rise to the challenge. Many additional records have been obtained for the reserve by this method, twinflower, heath cudweed, heath dog violet to name a few. One such email arrived in early September asking folk to look out for a plant which was a recent addition to the UK list – Lycopodium lagopus – Arctic Stag’s-horn Clubmoss. It’s lowland relative, common old stag’s-horn clubmoss (left), is regularly found creeping out onto many of the forest tracks with its distinctive leafy green creeping runners with the double headed ‘strobili (spore bearing cones) rising two to three inches from the runners. The reason for the request was that a small patch of the plant had just been found close to the Cairngorm ski-grounds and there would be a good chance that it could also occur on the Abernethy reserve. The worm was dangling and I was just about to have a go at taking it! The most sensible way I could tackle this new ‘project’ was to go and see the plant on Cairngorm and then I would know what I was looking for on the reserve along with the sort of habitat to aim for. Andy’s email had a photo attached showing the clubmoss with lots of fruiting cones, and, with a fairly accurate known location I thought it would just be a case of getting to the site to see this plant in all its glory. However, all the known British sites (3 or 4) are above 800m asl, so a bit of extra leg work would be needed to get to the right sort of area even before a search could begin – hence the reference in the last diary. With a few regular back and knee problems I wasn’t too sure this was going to be one of the easier projects, but, with the last of the late summer weather being fairly kind I set off in mid-September for Cairngorm. If you do manage to do a bit of botanising on the higher Scottish hills or slopes of Cairngorm you will be in clubmoss heaven. Above 600m you will start to find lots of interrupted clubmoss (L. annotinum) and fir clubmoss (L. selago), a bit higher still and you will find plenty of alpine clubmoss (L. alpinum). There is a good chance you will also see a close relative lesser clubmoss (Selaginella selaginoides) growing in damp areas in both green and pink forms (right)! The following website is brilliant for this clubmoss and all things ferns http://www.rogergolding.co.uk/ferns/ferngenus/lycopodium/lagopus.html .

A steady plod up the hill and the site was reached, the rucksack dumped and a search of the site started. One of the features of arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss is that it has quite long hairs extending from the ends of the leaves on both the runners and the flowering shoots, so identification should be fairly straightforward once found. However, all across the site and across large patches of the surrounding ground there was masses of interrupted clubmoss and, at this height, growing in a fairly stunted form. To confuse the picture even more, I was finding obvious hairs on the tips of the leaves – was this actually arctic stag’s horn? But the email photo showed lots of fruiting cones and these differed from interrupted clubmoss, growing on short stalks. After a couple of hours of searching – failure. I began to doubt that I was at the right location so the search went a bit wider afield. Nothing. However, I did have some good photos of the ‘hairy’ interrupted plants, which might be something new, and I had a feel for the sort of site where L. lagopus had been found. A plant sample from the finder at this site had also been confirmed as correct by Dr. Fred Rumsey at the Dept of Botany at the Natural History Museum in London.

The next outing was to a similar type site on the Abernethy Reserve, close to Bynack More. At 800m I walked into very similar habitat to Cairngorm and all around I was finding the slightly hairy form of interrupted clubmoss. Just in case I was wrong and this might be the plant I was looking for a sample was taken from each of the three main sites and again the plants were photographed. A walker, seeing this strange man grovelling around on his hands and knees passed me by on ‘the other side’. A second walker however was more enquiring and came over for a chat. He went on his way knowing more about the ptarmigan we could hear calling that he did about a new site for arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss! I was on site from 10am to 3pm, covered quite a large area but knew in my heart of hearts that I hadn’t yet found what I was looking for. The view over Abernethy Forest at the end of the day though was brilliant (right). When I got home I had an email waiting for me from Ian, the man that had found the Cairngorm site – “sorry, the photo you saw originally was of another arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss site near Glenfeshie, the Cairngorm site had very few cones and in fact I’d had quite a problem re-finding the site when Fred Rumsey had asked for a second plant sample. You were though in the right area!” The knees weren’t happy, but they were going to have to make a return trip to Cairngorm, this time with success (left), and I’m pleased to report that a few more runners and cones were found (right). Over the three week period I had visited Carn Bheadhair, Meall a Bhuachaille, Cairngorm twice and Bynack More twice, six time above 800m – something that might not be repeated again in the near future – the snows have arrived. A paper on the arctic stag’s-horn clubmoss exists and is entitled “An overlooked boreal clubmoss Lycopodium lagopus (Laest. Ex Hartm.) Zinserl. Ex Kusen. (Lycopodiaceae) in Britain. Author Fred Rumsey. Published Watsonia 26: 477-480 (2007)”. The plant samples from the three sites near Bynack More are now with Fred Rumsey (UK clubmoss expert) because he says leaf-hairs aren’t known from interrupted clubmoss! Amazing. A short report on the search for this clubmoss can be found at http://www.bsbiscotland.org.uk/Documents%20on-line/Lycopodium%20lagopus.pdf.

And finally, bee man Murdo is also an expert on ants and he had asked me to try and check as many wood ant nests as possible during the summer to see if a small ant that lives as a guest within the wood ant nest, could be found. The guest is the shining guest ant Formicoxenus nitidulus a very small ant that lives and breeds symbiotically within the bigger wood ants nest. The guest ant had been found in a wood ant nest on Abernethy in 2007 (see map left) and he was hopeful that this nest would continue to be used in 2008 and that other wood ant nests could also play host to the guest. So, wandering the tracks looking for fungi I found lots of wood ant nests, and similarly when involved in BTO Bird Atlas work, more were found. By the time ant activity on the wood ant nests had started to decline with the onset of autumn I had looked at probably more than one hundred and hadn’t found any guest ants, however, I did find green shield-moss capsules on two of them, the first time that this moss had been found on occupied wood ant nests, another UK first! When I started looking for the guest ant I was badly hampered by not knowing what I was actually looking for. It is small, about 3mm long I was told, but what I didn’t know was how similar to a wood ant it was. The only pictures I could find on the internet were poor – so little help there, so I went to the nest where it had been seen in 2007. After a few minutes staring at the hundreds of wood ands milling about the nest I saw a small ant, moving much slower, low down on the side of the nest. This was it. The next challenge was to photograph it and it was only after the picture was taken and looked at on my computer screen that I realised the ant is so shiny, that despite its small size I could actually see my reflection on the ants abdomen! (photo above right). Not bad when you remember that the ant is 3mm long by 1mm wide! Having got a decent photo I was really happy and the ant experts thought it was great but colleagues at work continued to ask “but how big is it actually”. So the next challenge was to try and take a photo of the guest with its bigger host, and, after a bit of fun trying to get the two of them to stay still whilst standing side by side, the photo was obtained (above left). I hope you enjoy the two pictures and know what to look for when you see the ants on the move again next summer.

That’s it for another month or so.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

In between times Ruth & Sean got married - beautiful

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A hill with a thousand holes

Dearest daughter, many apologies for the delay in producing this diary, and your chat on the 'phone tonight made me sit down and get on with the next copy! Too many excuses, bees, tooth fungi and clubmosses are to blame, but more about them in the next diary.

The promise at the end of the last diary was to show you a little of our South Uist holiday, so here goes. The wee cottage we stayed in was located at a place called Stoneybridge, a beautiful location close to the highest hills in the Uists (a whole 600m!) and very close to the flower rich machair. The name of the settlement in English doesn’t come near to the name in Gaelic, I hope this picture of the road sign explains what I mean.

The holiday started on a great note when we found a strange looking plant growing in a deep ditch draining a rich, grassy area where corncrakes were calling. The first plant was a burr-reed, but just behind it was a strange plant with white flowers, sticking out of the water. Normally I wouldn’t take a bit of plant away that looked vaguely like an umbellifer, but I did, and thankfully, the odd leaf helped with the identification – whorled water dropwort! What? A plant that I had never heard of so I decided to check the plant list of South Uist that Andy,my work colleague, had suggested I look at. Andy always has an ulterior motive in suggesting these things knowing I am likely to go and look for some of the plants in the list that haven’t been seen for a while. And so it was with the w-w dropwort. It had only been seen at two location in the Uists, and we had found one of them, a new plant for me and a record for the BSBI recorder (Botanical Society of the British Isles http://www.bsbi.org.uk/ ) to say it was still there.

The plant list was to provide me with one of the real highlights of the holiday – the rare orchid, Irish lady’s tresses (Spiranthes romanzoffiana). On the middle Saturday, Janet was keen to see one of the “open gardens” on these wind swept islands. “Do you think you could drop me off on the way?” and I was off to 'feed' the horseflies and midges. The orchid had been recorded from close to a roadside loch in the late 1990s, and, being on my ‘keen to see’ list, I thought it was worth spending a few hours trying to re-locate it. This plant has a strange UK distribution (see map left) occurring in parts of Ireland and on some of the islands between there and the Uists. The island of Barra to the south of South Uist, has the most locations in the islands, but there are a scatter of old locations in South Uist. The plant is often found in areas of old lazy beds, sites were crofters of long ago used to cover lines of seaweed with shallow soil covering the bedrock in which to grow crops. This system of cultivation left distinct ridges and furrows on hillsides, many of which can still be seen today. How on earth they were given the name of lazy beds I don’t know because humping the seaweed and digging the soil was carried out by people who were anything but lazy (see picture right picture property of St Andrews University). I digress. The orchid has also been recorded from the shorelines of some lochs. At this location the orchid had been recorded from a typical lazy bed site and also from close to the loch. A search of the lazy beds didn’t produce anything so I made my way to the loch. The previously known site was on the opposite shore; I had a long walk to get there and decided to follow the shore. Just above the high water mark there were carpets of long-leaved sundews, interrupted in places with the pinky-white flowers of bog pimpernel. Whilst photographing the sundews (left) I could see a small white plant growing very close to the loch shore. Hmm. I walked over and found that there were four plants, all very small but looking distinctly orchid like. Damn it, I’d forgotten the flower book so I had to phone Janet and get her to read the description of the flower to me. This had to be Irish Lady’s tresses, I wouldn’t need to go to Colonsay after all, where a colleague had offered to show me the orchid! The plants were so small I had to be very careful whilst taking my photographs not to trample any I’d not noticed. With decent pictures I would be able to check properly with the flower book once back at the cottage. The orchids were a long way from their best, the photo (right) was taken mid July, the plant isn’t fully grown until a month later. However, beggars can’t be choosers and here was a plant I had waited a long time to see. A nearby hen harrier with young and lots of royal fern along the loch shore and I had had a great day. I even managed to photograph a solitary bee building a nest in a rock crevasse for Murdo to check later. When Janet picked me up she had been so amazed by the garden she had just visited that we both made a return visit, it was good to see that with a bit of TLC, lots of manure and even more enthusiasm a brilliant show of flowers could be achieved, despite the wind. Their onions also put mine to shame, they had though, been growing since the previous November!

On one day Janet unpacked her paints and brushes and plonked herself in the machair close to the cottage to do a full day's painting whilst I was left to roam. Some of the coastal graveyards were known to be good for orchids and as I could see one in the distance, I headed in that direction. Along the way I found my first colony of the solitary bee Colletes floralis, a rarity found breeding in the firmer bits of sand dunes. Last year we found about twelve colonies, adding greatly to the known population on the islands. The burial ground proved to be very poor for all plants, regular cutting of the grass ensured that anything growing more than a couple of inches high was decapitated, so my search for the pyramidal orchid failed miserably. Many lochs on the island have one or two pairs of breeding mute swans and the SNH reserve at Loch Drudibeg is famous for it population of wintering swans. Even in July there were probably fifty to a hundred swans to be seen on the loch along with family parties of greylag geese. On my way back to Janet a family of swans caught my eye and I slowly crept up on them to see if I could get a photograph without disturbing them. The family behaved wonderfully and this nice picture was obtained. When I got back to Janet her painting session was drawing to a close and a couple of pictures had almost been completed. Where she had been sitting she had found a nice wee colony of lesser butterfly orchids. As this is a species SNH was asking for records of, we searched a little wider around. The further we walked the more orchids we found and by the time we had worked our way back to our starting point over one hundred had been counted. We then noticed there were some on the other side of the road and at least another fifty were counted. A bit of flotsam from the nearby shore provided Janet with a bit of late afternoon exercise! We also passed what must be one of the best washing lines in Britain with one of the best views. Put the washing out and with the helpful 'breeze' it could probably be brought back in within half an hour! Be warned though, the Islanders have special 'western isles' pegs to ensure the washing doesn't end up in Greenland!

The following day we parked the car up close to the dunes to the west of Lochboisedale and headed for the beach. A firmer bit of dune caught my eye as possibly a suitable site for the solitary bee and, despite the dune housing a crofters bonfire site, I could see quite a few holes. Despite the fact that the bees nest in loose colonies, each bee digs its own hole in which to breed. As the clouds parted and the sun started to shine the bees became more active many coming back to their holes covered in yellow pollen. A little further off I could see another suitable-looking hillock and when I reached it I realised that I had found something special. The whole hillock was covered with holes each with its telltale heap of dug out sand at the entrance. Impossible to count but an estimate suggested there were at least a thousand holes, and possibly the biggest colony yet found. As the sun shone the bees became more active and it was a bit like standing next to a traditional beehive. A few metres away was the pebbly edge to the beach and this was covered with clumps of flowering ragwort and a tall, very large headed yellow hawkweed, swaying around in the strong breeze. Bingo, this was where the bees were foraging, and for the first time I was able to see not just the odd one, but dozens of bees visiting flowers. The camera was quickly assembled and with Janet’s help I tried to photograph the feeding bees. The technique adopted was for us both to walk slowly amongst the hawkweeds and when a bee was found with its bum sticking out from the petals, Janet would gently hold the stem of the flower to stop the plant swaying, and I would move in with the camera and try and get a photograph. Eventually we saw bees visiting a sheltered patch of ragwort and here it was possible to wait for one to land and start to feed before trying to photograph it on a plant that was hardly moving. Brilliant! By the end of the holiday about fifty colonies of bees had been recorded - I'll be getting blamed for them becoming less rare!

Our holiday cottage was far enough south to allow us to visit Eriskay quite easily and on one day we took the early morning ferry from Eriskay to Barra, an island we had never visited before. On the road to Eriskay we found one of the neatest peat workings we have ever seen. The crofters pride themselves in building neat peat stacks when the peats have been brought ‘home’, but at this site the crofter had made an amazing job of stacking the freshly cut peats neatly, something I never managed when I cut peat at Tulloch Moor. On the causeway linking Eriskay we found a few seals hauled out on rocks, waiting for the incoming tide to wash them off. This one didn’t seem too worried by our presence.

This amazing statue can be seen by the A865 road close to West Gerinish. It’s shown on the OS map and overlooks an amazing area of houses, lochs and sea. It is known as Our Lady of the Isles and for more information about the statue see http://www.rcdai.org.uk/articles/27/1/Our-Lady-of-the-Isles/Page1.html

The evening sunsets alone are worth going to the Uists to see, this one occurred at the end of the day after heavy rain.

Yesterday was a very sad day for the staff at Abernethy, particularly those involved with the breeding ospreys throughout the summer. You get to September, the birds have all migrated south and the Osprey Centre is closed up after another summer breeding season. Job done – you think. As you saw in the last diary, this summer we fitted the two osprey chicks with satellite tracking devices, so, for the first time the season didn’t end with the closing of the Centre, and the movement of the two chicks (Deshar & Nethy) was watched and waited for on a daily basis. The first heart-stopping moment was when Deshar on one of his first major flights, took off out over the north-sea, only returning to terra-firma after a flight of twelve hours. Nethy on the other hand sauntered gently south over land. For four weeks both birds stayed in the south of England, no doubt well stocked lakes allowing them to learn to fish and look after themselves properly as well as putting on weight in readiness for the longest flight of their young lives south, to northwest Africa. Last Friday they were on the move again, Nethy hopping across the Channel into France but Deshar turned right (blue line) and remained over the Channel, missing France and Portugal and flying on over the sea. When he also missed the Azores we knew he was in real trouble, five days on the wing, 2000 miles flown and then another fatal turn to the west. The download from the tracker at 6pm on Tuesday showed zero altitude and zero movement, he had to be in the sea. If by chance he had found a ship, there should at least have been lateral movement recorded. It’s not very often a line on a map can leave you feeling so helpless and full of pending disaster. Perhaps this happens more than we realise, modern technology taking us into a world we’ve never been in before. Nethy moved from France and into Spain during the same day.

The next diary will let you know how the month-long tooth fungi survey got on and what has this plant got to do with this man climbing to unheard of heights, well for him it was!

That’s it, enjoy the read.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

This man with a funny beard appear in the local paper last week!

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Late frost creates orchid disaster

Quite a bit of water has flowed under the bridge since the last diary, the bird atlas work has been completed, Ruth’s challenge supported, the veg patch weeded and a trip away to the Western Isles for a fortnight – more about this trip in the next diary.

Late June and early July was notable for the unusual birds which turned up locally, singing their heads off and getting me thinking they could be breeding. The first was a wood warbler, picked up on one of my BTO Atlas tetrads, singing quite happily in an area of mature birch woodland, similar to the woodland were birds regularly breed at Rothiemurchus. Had I missed the bird on the first round of visits? A check a week later and the bird had gone. A photographing visit to the green and brown shield-moss logs by the River Nethy found a chiffchaff in full song. Visits to a nearby field full of bird’s-foot trefoil to check for Osmia bees over the next week allowed visits to the chiffchaff site to be made quite regularly, and on all visits the bird was still singing and, there seemed to be the possibility of a second bird – a breeding pair, very unusual in this area.

A week later and this bird or birds had also gone. A real bonus of re-visiting the chiffchaff and Osmia bee sites was re-locating a few coralroot orchid flowers (left), and hearing a distant wryneck calling, in very suitable habitat to make me think of possible breeding. In the heady days of the late 1970s there were high hopes that this mini-woodpecker was starting to colonise the Scottish Highlands. A pair found breeding in 1969 returned to roughly the same area to breed over the next few years, and as we moved into the 1970s, a few more were turning up. Whilst involved in survey work and osprey nest protection work in the late 1970s I was lucky enough to become quite familiar with this bird and in one unforgettable year I found a singing bird with a mate, saw the pair mating, found the tree hole nest site, watched them feed their young and, to top this honour off even more, found a second site where young were also being fed. Luck, a lot of standing around listening, and walking quietly in the direction I saw the birds flying, lead to these amazing finds. A few more nests were found over the next decade but sadly, the hoped for colonisation of the Highlands never really materialised and few birds have been seen or heard over the last few years. A pity really, as the wryneck has now disappeared completely from its southern Britain strongholds. Because of my involvement, I was asked to write the species account for The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland 1988-1991, shown right.

The last diary mentioned Ruth’s mad day out – the Corrieyairick Challenge! Cleaning and overhauling my bike for the 26 mile cycle section went okay and we both went down to Kincraig on the Friday night to deliver the bike, drinks and crash helmet to the organisers so that everyone's bikes could be loaded onto wagons to take them to the change-over point at Garva Bridge. I bought Ruth a bottle of tonic water to drink as I’d heard that it could help reduce the possibility of cramp when changing from walk to bike. I ran Ruth home and said cheerio knowing the next time I would see her would be the following day, hopefully, having successfully completed the 17 mile walk. As I got out of bed on Saturday morning at 7am, Ruth was already on the move, on a bus heading for Fort Augustus – the start point. At 8am I had a date at the Loch Garten osprey site to see the chicks being ringed but more of that excursion later in the diary. A little later I said cheerio to the chalet guests, cleaned the windows, the patio, cut the grass, topped up the bird feeders and set off for Garva Bridge. As I drove through Newtonmore, the first competitors were already passing me, heading towards the finish. These were the 'elite' folk and had only taken two and a half hours to get to that point! All the way up the single track road from Laggan, past Spey Dam to the change over point, competitors were pedalling their way down the road. These were mostly mountain bike folk who had pedalled the Corrieyairick Pass, and were sticking with the same bikes right through to the end. The elite folk had mountain-biked the Pass and were on swish road bikes for the road section. As I got to Garva Bridge the first runners were just arriving exchanging running shoes for bike shoes, snacking quickly on a banana or two, and pounding off down the road on their bikes. How was Ruth getting on? Ruth and her team, Sarah and Jo had been on the go now for four and a bit hours and would hopefully, be at the top of the Pass. And suddenly there they were, on the top of the bridge (left), Ruth with here arms triumphantly in the air – phew and one very relieved dad! A loo stop, drinks and they were off on their bikes, but though the sun was shinning there was a very strong headwind. I had a quick bite to eat and then set off in the car towards the finish. The group had made good time and I didn’t pass them until Laggan. I waited at Newtonmore so that I could get a few photos of the team on the road and then I sneaked past them all again so that I could get a few photos as they passed Ruthven Barracks near the Insh Marshes Reserve. The 'phone rang – Sarah had punctured! A quick dash back to Newtonmore found the team by the roadside with the bike upside-down wondering what to do next! Wheel out, new inner-tube installed, and the team were back on the road. The rest of the bike ride went by without mishap and the team arrived at the finish just before five-o-clock. Without the puncture they would have completed the challenge in seven hours, not bad, and actually ahead of some of the folk who rode their mountain bikes all the way. Well done the three of you.

In my last diary I showed a picture of the satellite tags that were to be attached to the Garten osprey chicks at the same time as they were given their rings. So, on the morning of the 5 July, Roy Dennis, the osprey staff and a few of the regular Centre volunteers, gathered at the Centre ready to go out to the nest tree to carry out the task. At 8am the team set off across the bog (left)to the tree, ladder at the ready. As soon as the team broke cover the female osprey rose from her perch and flew overhead calling. Within minutes the team reached the tree, the ladder was up and Ross was climbing towards the nest. On the ground Roy was preparing the rings for putting on the chicks' legs and the satellite tracking devices, to be attached to the chicks backs with wee harnesses. During the previous day the female osprey had removed the dead chick from the nest so Ross knew he would be dealing with almost fully grown ospreys. At the nest one chick was put into a large rucksack and brought down to the ground. Osprey chicks are quite unusual in that they lie flat in the nest when they are threatened, whereas most other bird of prey chicks would be standing in the nest trying to grab you with their talons! The first chick arrived at ground level and Roy and helpers went about the task of weighing and measuring the chick and attaching a metal BTO ring to one leg and a lettered plastic ring to the other. Next, came the tricky task of attaching the satellite tracker and its mini-harness. To operate correctly the device has to be fixed securely to the chick's back so that its battery can be charged by the sun and the data can be sent heavenwards towards circulating satellites. Two small straps of the mini-harness meet on the birds breast and are sewn together using cotton thread. Cotton thread will decay over 2-3 years and the harness will then fall off. Roy, with glasses perched towards the end of his nose, looked very much like a doctor sewing up a patient in hospital, so delicate is the sewing operation. Once the sewing was complete, the first chick was returned to the nest and the second one brought down to go through the same process. The whole operation took about half an hour and once the team had departed the nest site the female osprey was back on the nest within a few minutes and shortly after that the male osprey brought in a fish. On the way back I came upon quite a sad sight, the dead chick which the female had removed from the nest the previous day, was lying right by the track leading to the tree (right). The chick was left where it had been found. The rest of the osprey season has progressed very normally and both youngsters made their maiden flights on 20 July. The two chicks have been named after the two local primary schools Nethy and Deshar and the pupils in both schools (as can you) will be following the birds migration by going to http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/tracking/lochgartenospreys/index.asp

and follow the osprey blog at http://blogs.rspb.org.uk/lochgartenospreys/archive/2008/08/07/A-quick-update_2E002E002E002100_.aspx

Other chicks have also been on the move. On 4 July, whilst visiting a green shield-moss site, a goosander female with six chicks following on behind zoomed down the River Nethy on their way to the River Spey. The bird will have had its nest on a hole in a tree somewhere along the river, an old Scots pine or Alder tree being the likely host. A couple of weeks earlier I was just completing a BTO breeding bird Atlas square when a commotion on the track ahead had me guessing for a few seconds, just what was happening. Partridges? Not in the forest. Then a large brown bird appeared on the track in front of me, wings down by its side and trailing on the ground, I had stumbled into a capercaillie family, a female with about four chicks. At a young age the chicks can 'fly', that is they can get off the ground a little, and flutter off into the undergrowth, hopefully to safety. My 'partridge' had been a capercaillie chick, and the female was doing her best to try and get me to follow her, away from her brood. I quickly left the area so that mum and chicks could get back together without delay.

It was a good period for flowers, well until the frost on 24 June (minus 1 to 2 degrees centigrade). Flowers in the forest were fine, protected by the woodland canopy, but flowers out in the open where very vulnerable, and in these areas lots of flowers were badly affected. At one site a whole field was affected, this particular field being one of the most important in Scotland, if not the UK, for lesser butterfly orchids. This field, by the B970 Coylumbridge to Nethy road, is visited by hundreds of folk each year just to see the amazing display of flowering spikes. Last year there were hardly any flowering but this year they were back with a vengeance and a rough count from the roadside on 21 June produced a minimum of 600 flowering spikes, along with a few small white and lots of Fragrant orchids. Driving past the field a few days later I told Janet to keep her eyes open to view the spectacle but was horrified to see that many seemed to have disappeared. We didn’t have time to stop so I returned the next day to find a field of brown lesser butterfly orchids, many of which were bent over double(left), the frost having caused them to collapse and die. Higher up the field quite a few had survived along with most of the fragrant orchids. Frost often ‘rolls down a slope’ causing most damage in the hollow at the bottom, which is what seemed to have happened on this occasion. I asked the owners if I could carefully walk through the field to carry out a second count, and they were happy for me to do this. They were all to well aware of the damage that had occurred. Perhaps a hundred had survived along with most of the fragrant orchids, but most of the small whites had been killed. The final count showed there to be about 700 lesser butterfly, 100 small white and 3-4000 fragrant orchids, an amazing field, managed carefully by the owners to try and maintain this annual spectacle. If you do visit the site, please view from the road and don’t be tempted to climb over the fence. A bonus when carrying out the count within the field was seeing three or four six spot burnet moths, many miles from their normal coastal haunts.

A second visit to one of the twinflower sites allowed me to get a couple of nice photographs (left) but only when the wind stopped blowing very briefly, and on the way a nice patch of serrated wintergreen, right, (Orthilia secunda) was also in flower.

And then it was off to the Uists, but a bit about that in the next diary.

That’s it

All the best

Stewart & Janet

Firwood garden in full bloom

Our cottage on South Uist

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Late frost creates orchid disaster

Quite a bit of water has flowed under the bridge since the last diary, the bird atlas work has been completed, Ruth’s challenge supported, the veg patch weeded and a trip away to the Western Isles for a fortnight – more about this trip in the next diary.

Late June and early July was notable for the unusual birds which turned up locally, singing their heads off and getting me thinking they could be breeding. The first was a wood warbler, picked up on one of my BTO Atlas tetrads, singing quite happily in an area of mature birch woodland, similar to the woodland were birds regularly breed at Rothiemurchus. Had I missed the bird on the first round of visits? A check a week later and the bird had gone. A photographing visit to the green and brown shield-moss logs by the River Nethy found a chiffchaff in full song. Visits to a nearby field full of bird’s-foot trefoil to check for Osmia bees over the next week allowed visits to the chiffchaff site to be made quite regularly and on all visits the bird was still singing and, there seemed to be the possibility of a second bird – a breeding pair, very unusual in this area.

A week later and this bird or birds had also gone. A real bonus of re-visiting the chiffchaff and Osmia bee sites was re-locating a few coralroot orchid flowers, and PHOTO hearing a distant wryneck calling, in very suitable habitat to make me think of possible breeding. In the heady days of the late 1970s there were high hopes that this mini-woodpecker was starting to colonise the Scottish Highlands. A pair found breeding in 1969 returned to roughly the same area to breed over the next few years, and as we moved into the 1970s, a few more birds were turning up. Whilst involved in survey work and osprey nest protection work in the late 1970s I was lucky enough to become quite familiar with this bird and in one unforgettable year I found a singing bird with a mate, saw the pair mating, found the tree hole nest site, watched them feed their young and, to top this honour off even more, found a second site where young were also being fed. Luck, a lot of standing around listening, and walking quietly in the direction I saw the birds flying, lead to these amazing finds. A few more nests were been found over the next decade but sadly, the hoped for colonisation of the Highlands never really materialised and few birds have been seen or heard over the last few years. A pity really, because the wryneck has now disappeared completely from its southern Britain strongholds. Because of my involvement with this bird I was asked to write the species account for The New Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland 1988-1991, shown left. SLIDE

The last diary mentioned Ruth’s mad day out – the Corrieyairick Challenge! The cleaning and overhauling of my bike for the 26 mile cycle section went okay and we both went down to Kincraig on the Friday night to deliver the bike, drinks and crash helmet to the organisers so that every ones bikes could be loaded onto wagons to take then to Garva Bridge, the change over point. I bought Ruth a bottle of tonic water to drink because I’ve heard that it can help reduce the possibility of cramp when changing from walk to bike. I ran Ruth home and said cheerio knowing the next time I would see her would be the following day, hopefully, having successfully completed the 17 mile walk. As I got out of bed on the Saturday morning at 7am, Ruth was already on the move, on a bus heading for Fort Augustus – the start point. At 8am I had a date at the Loch Garten osprey site to see the chicks being ringed but more of that excursion later in the diary. A little later I said cheerio to the chalet guests, cleaned the windows, the patio, cut the grass, topped up the bird feeders and set off for Garva Bridge. As I drove through Newtonmore, the first competitors were already passing me, heading towards the finish. These were the elite folk and had only taken two and a half hours to get to that point! All the way up the single track road from Laggan, passed Spey Dam to the change over point, competitors were pedalling their way down the road. These were mostly mountain bike folk who had pedalled the Corrieyairick Pass, and were sticking with the same bikes right through to the end. The elite folk had mountain-biked the Pass and were on swish road bikes for the road section. As I got to Garva Bridge the first runners were just arriving exchanging running shoes for bike shoes, snacking quickly on a banana or two, and pounding off down the road on their bikes. How was Ruth getting on? Ruth and her team, Sarah and Jo had been on the go now for four and a bit hours and would hopefully, be at the top of the Pass. And suddenly there were all there, on the top of the bridge, Ruth with here arms triumphantly in the air – phew and one very relieved dad. A loo stop, drinks and they were off on their bikes, and though the sun was shinning there was a very strong headwind. I had a quick bite to eat and then set off in the car towards the finish. The group had made good time and I didn’t pass them until Laggan. I waited at Newtonmore so that I could get a few photos of the team on the road and then I sneaked past them all again so that I could get a few photos as they passed Ruthven Barracks near the Insh Marshes Reserve. The phone rang – Sarah had punctured! A quick dash back to Newtonmore found the team by the roadside with the bike upside-down wondering what to do next! Wheel out, new inner-tube installed, and the team were back on the road. The rest of the bike ride went by without mishap and the team arrived at the finish just before five-o-clock. Without the puncture they would have completed the challenge in seven hours, not bad, and actually ahead of some of the folk who rode their mountain bikes all the way. Well done the three of you. PICTURE x3, bridge, ruth, finish.

In my last diary I showed a picture of the satellite tags that were going to be attached to the Garten osprey chicks at the same time as they were given their rings. So, on the morning of the 5 July, Roy Dennis, the osprey staff and a few of the regular Centre volunteers, gathered at the Centre ready to go out to the nest tree to carry out the task. At 8am the team set off across the bog to the tree, ladder at the ready to climb the tree. As soon as the team broke cover the female osprey rose from her perch and flew overhead calling. Within minutes the team reached the tree, the ladder was up and Ross was climbing towards the nest. On the ground Roy was preparing the rings for putting on the chicks legs and the satellite tracking devices, to be attached to the chicks backs with wee harnesses. During the previous day the female osprey had removed the dead chick from the nest so Ross knew he would be dealing with almost fully grown ospreys when he reached the nest. At the nest one chick is put into a large rucksack and brought down to the ground. Osprey chick are quite unusual in that they lie flat in the nest when they are threatened, whereas most other bird of prey chicks would be standing in the nest trying to grab you with their talons! The first chick arrived at ground level and Roy and helpers went about the task of weighing and measuring the chick and attaching a metal BTO ring to one leg and a lettered plastic ring to the other. Next, came the tricky task of attaching the satellite tracker and its mini-harness to the chick. To operate correctly the device has to be fixed securely to the chicks back so that its battery can be charged by the sun and the data can be sent heavenwards towards the circulating satellites. The two small straps of the mini-harness meet on the birds breast and are sewn together using cotton thread. Cotton thread will decay over 2-3 years and the harness will then fall from the bird. Roy, with glasses perched towards the end of his nose, looked very much like a doctor sewing up a patient in hospital, so delicate is the sewing operation. Once the sewing was complete, the first chick was returned to the nest and the second one brought down to go through the same process. The whole operation took about half an hour and once the team had departed the nest site the female osprey was back on the nest within a few minutes and shortly after that the male osprey brought in a fish. On the way back from the nest I came upon quite a sad sight, the dead chick which the female had removed from the nest the previous day, was lying right by the track leading to the tree. The chick was left where it had been found. The rest of the osprey season has progressed very normally and both youngsters made their maiden flights on 20 July. The two chicks have been named after the two local primary schools Nethy and Deshar and the pupils in both schools (as can you) will be following the birds migration by going to WWWWWWWW. Blog WWWW.

Other chicks have also been on the move. On 4 July, whilst visiting a green shield-moss site, a goosander female with six chicks following on behind zoomed down the River Nethy on their way to the River Spey. The bird will have had its nest on a hole in a tree somewhere along the river, an old Scots pine or alder tree being the likely host. A couple of weeks earlier I was just completing a BTO breeding bird Atlas square when a commotion on the track ahead had me guessing for a few seconds, just what was happening. Partridges? Not in the forest. Then a large brown bird appeared on the track in front of me, wings down by its side and trailing on the ground, I had stumbled into a capercaillie family, a female with about four chicks. At a young age the chicks can “fly”, that is they can get off the ground a little, and flutter off into the undergrowth and hopefully to safety. My partridge had been a chick, and the female was doing her best to try and get me to follow her, away from her brood. I quickly left the area so that mum and chick could quickly get back together. PHOTO.

It was a good period for flowers, well until the frost on 24 June (minus 1 to 2 degrees centigrade). Flowers in the forest were fine, protected by the woodland canopy, but flowers out in the open where very vulnerable, and in these areas lots of flowers were badly affected. At one site a whole field of flowers was affected, this particular field being one of the most important in Scotland, if not the UK, for lesser butterfly orchids. This field, by the B970 Coylumbridge to Nethy road, is visited by hundreds of folk each year just to see the amazing display of flowering spikes. Last year there were hardly any flowering but this year they were back with a vengeance and a rough count from the roadside on 21 June produced a minimum of 600 flowering spikes, along with a few small white and lots of fragrant orchids. Driving past the field a few days later I told Janet to keep her eyes open to view the spectacle but was horrified to see that many seemed to have disappeared. We didn’t have time to stop so I returned the next day to find a field of brown lesser butterfly orchids, many of which were bent over double, the frost having caused many of them to collapse and die. Higher up the field quite a few had survived along with most of the fragrant orchids. Frost often ‘rolls down a slope’ causing most damage in the hollow at the bottom, which is what seemed to have happened on this occasion. I asked the owners if I could carefully walk through the field to carry out a second count, and they were happy for me to do this. They were all to well aware of the damage that had occurred. Perhaps a hundred had survived along with most of the fragrant orchids, but most of the small whites had been killed. The final count showed there to be about 700 lesser butterfly, 100 small white and 3-4000 fragrant orchids, an amazing field, managed carefully by the owners to try and maintain this annual spectacle. If you do visit the site, please view from the road and don’t be tempted to climb over the fence. A bonus when carrying out the count within the field was seeing three or four six spot burnet moths, many miles from their normal coastal haunts.

A second visit to one of the twinflowers sites allowed me to get a couple of nice photographs but only when the wind stopped blowing very briefly and on the way a nice patch of serrated wintergreen (orthillia secunda) was also in flower.

And then it was off to the Uists, but a bit about that in the next diary.

That’s it

All the best

Stewart & Janet