Life is getting back to normal

The cold weather returned at the end of the first week of January and the temperatures plunged again to the -14 deg C level with a couple of daytime temperatures down at -10 deg C. The first victim of this second spell of frost was the car battery though getting home from work on 6th January might have also played a part. I had taken the car to the end of the Forest Lodge track and walked in to work from there. I could see light snow falling but being inside I wasn’t really aware of how deep the snow was getting. A couple of work colleagues bailed out at 1pm, but I still didn’t think it was too bad. A quick phone call to Janet at home in Nethybridge alerted me to the fact that there was more than 6” of snow and it was starting to fall a lot harder. Time for me to bail out too! In the deep snow the track takes about 35-40 minutes to walk to get back to the road and conditions were a little worse than I had realised. In the morning I had dug an area clear of snow (half an hour) just to park the car off the road and when I got back I had to do the same thing all over again – just to get back on the road! Lights on and I was off, praying that I wouldn’t meet anything coming the other way. The edges of the road had snow about two foot deep and frozen and the single track of the driveable road was only in that condition because one of the local farmers had snow-ploughed it a few days earlier. Still no council wagon, no plough, no salt or grit! The snow was about 8” deep and looming up in front of me was the butt end of a fairly large branch which had fallen since the morning journey. The wing mirror didn’t quite get past the branch, I just thought if I stopped to move it I wouldn’t get going again! As I pulled in to the Firwood drive, two landrovers went up the road, perfect timing cos I’m not sure what would have happened if I had met them on the road. So a mixture of powder snow getting under the bonnet and a battery that was as old as the V-reg car meant the car wouldn’t start the next day. Twenty minutes of heat from a couple of wee fan blowers and the car fired up with the last dregs of battery power so it was off down the road for £45-worth of new battery!

Quite a scary experience walking the forest track on the return to work in the New Year. All around branches were snapping from trees and some branches that had been pulled out of their sockets, finally came crashing to the ground - one did whilst digging my car parking spot. Thankfully it was a few yards away but man and car received a good covering of snow. One tree next to Forest Lodge has lost half of its crown with the tonne of snow on the top branch causing it to snap, the additional weight of falling snow caused the next branch to snap and so on until all the branches on one half of the tree had been snapped off. The damage to trees throughout the area has to be seen to be believed. The combination of a couple of feet of snow and several days of below freezing temperatures seems to be the cause of so much damage despite so many branches and trees falling during the heavy fall of snow a few months earlier in February 2009 (see diary). There are some gains with all the fallen limbs creating an invertebrate heaven. At one stage Forest Lodge resembled a frozen waterfall, an old building with little insulation and heat escaping everywhere, was causing the snow on the roof to slowly melt but the frost meant that the gutters were full of ice and the constant low quantities of overflowing water had nowhere to go but down the outside of the wooden clad building. In places the ice penetrated the walls but of course once in side it started to melt! This phenomenon was also reported from quite few more old and modern houses in the area. Eventually the build up of ice won and half the gutters on the building came off. Despite a few more inches of snow this last week things are getting back to normal but a lot of frozen snow still remains along the verges of most roads. In Abernethy no road vehicles have been able to drive further south into the forest than Forest Lodge – even now!

In the forest I have heard a few goldcrests in several places so mortality for Britain’s smallest bird might not have been too bad. I have not though, heard a wren for weeks now. There are reports of red grouse moving down from the moors and in areas where Abernethy staff have been, a few dead roe deer have been found so goodness knows what carnage will have occurred on some of the surrounding estates where deer populations have remained high, land is overgrazed and there is little woodland shelter or, where woodland does exist deer fences keep them out. The additional dustings of snow allow mammal records to be made without having to see to them. A few days ago, walking into work the first tracks I encountered were roe deer followed for a short distance by badger. More roe and a few red deer tracks were followed by a set of tiny prints scuttling across the snow from a wood mouse or vole. The unmistakable tracks of a red squirrel appeared in a few places. Close to the sawmill, a fox track appeared followed a little further along the track by a second one? Possibly a male and female running together or two individual foxes at different times? One set of tracks were certainly slightly bigger than the other so possibly a courting couple. The one set of tracks I would have loved to have seen was capercaillie, but on this occasion nothing was seen. The number of calling crossbills around the woods is increasing and a couple of staff are struggling through the snow to carry out a detailed survey of birds breeding and, by getting birds to respond to short burst of taped crossbill song, an identification between Scottish and parrot crossbill can be made. Until the Scots pine cones start to open to release their seeds (warmer weather needed here) common crossbills are probably absent from the forest.

Mid-January Janet headed south to Lancashire for her mum’s 90th birthday bash. I should have gone as well but with the frost and unpredictable amounts of snow possible, we felt we couldn’t both be away from the house at this time of year. As Janet left I thought it was time to try and get out and about again and set off to walk along the road from Nethybridge towards Boat of Garten (B970) turning left off the road to head back towards the house on the tracks through the forest, part of which is the Speyside Way which emerges from the forest close to Firwood. Madness or what! The whole circuit usually takes about an hour but on this occasion, and with nobody having walked the track ahead of me, it took two hours to get from road to road. At least it would be easier for the next person to walk the track – following in my footsteps.
The following day continued the “madness” theme and on the way back from Inverness I stopped off at Moy to visit a Forestry Commission woodland. Their local ecologist has supplied me with a list of stands of Norway spruce as possible green shield-moss sites and, despite the deep snow on the track, I reckoned the wooded areas might be not too bad. Well, I was sort of right, but the tracks were hard going and once there I saw the spruce areas were too young and just didn’t look quite right. However, the track proved interesting and a sycamore was found with a good population of the lichen “lungwort” Lobaria pulmonaria, and a little further along the track I came across an ancient aspen tree, looking a bit forlorn on the edge of a clear fell area, but, growing from below one of the lower branches was the now famous aspen bracket fungus Phellinus tremulae (left). Both fungus and lichen were new to that particular 10 kilometre square so once again looking for one thing turned up something else. Check http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/kingussie2001/aspen_fungi.html for a bit more information on the fungus as well as other aspen related topics.

The next day dawned very frost but sunny so I thought a visit to one of the more outlying areas of Abernethy might produce a few nice photos. Considering it was impossible to drive to this area I thought I could get there by the back door – via Glenmore! The aim was Ryvoan Bothy, parking the car at the Forestry Commission visitor Centre in Glenmore and walking in via Glenmore Lodge and the Green Loch. Crampons would have been a good idea, the track being covered in hard-packed snow/ice via all the visitors’ feet acting like piste machines at the top of Cairngorm. It was slow going, but worth the effort for the stunning views along the way. Lots of folk were slip/sliding their way as far as the Green Loch with just a few pressing on towards the bothy, one group of ladies had actually managed to do the Glenmore – Meall a’ Bhuachaille circuit but said the going had been very hard. Despite the cold there were 3 tents pitched at Ryvoan Bothy and a few folk had stayed at the bothy that night. Hmm, a trip to the top of Meall a’ Bhuachaille could be challenging and it WOULD be interesting to see how the mountain lichens got on in deep snow conditions. But not today, it was already early afternoon and it would be sensible to allow for a few more hours of daylight if I did decide to go.

The next day dawned a little warmer, +2 degrees C, and with sun forecast for later in the day a walk up the mountain was on. The track from Glenmore was even more slippery today than the day before; the rise in temperature had added a slight layer of water on top of the ice making it deadly and much safer to walk in the deeper snow along the sides of the track. Eventually Ryvoan Bothy was reached and it was decision time, onwards and upwards, or back to Glenmore? The sun was shining, there was little wind, and it would be nice to see the lichens. Very few people had been up the hill despite the fact that this was the 18th January and the snow mostly fell around New Year time, but the first bit of the track was visible so off I went. After a few hundred feet of climbing there was no sign of a track but there was a set of footprints which were heading generally in the right direction – upwards! At about 700 metres there were deep drifts of snow and areas which were snow free. In places the snow surface was solid and easy to walk on but in other areas I was going through the crust and sinking about knee deep. It was starting to be obvious why the mountain lichens grew where they did, they mostly liked the snow free areas but I knew some where buried in the deeper snow. 750 metres and the first patches of Alectoria ochroleuca (alpine sulphur tresses) (left) were found and as the monstrous cairn on the summit came in to view more was found in amongst the commoner species and in places a second localised species Cetraria nivalis (right) started to be seen, all where the snow had been blown away and the rocks and gravel remained exposed. I have been up this hill several times before to look for these two lichens and, amazingly, and despite this being mid-January, this was the warmest I had been whilst taking photos – no wind – and what a difference. A seat by the cairn for lunch and with a bit of mist starting to form, it was time to see what the descent to Glenmore would be like. The first bit was brilliant, frozen snow down which you could, in places, slide, provided you didn’t slide into the dog poos, which, unbelievably were in several places on top of the pristine snow (absolutely disgusting), and not the first encountered on the walk. The nearer I got towards the beallach between Meall a’ Bhuachaille and Creagan Gorm where you turn left for Glenmore, the softer the snow became and it was one minute on the frozen crust and the next knee deep in snow. So few people had been up this route that there was no obvious route to follow so it was straight down following a couple of sets of tracks of folks ascending. It was very hard going and I ended up waist deep in the snow on a couple of occasions and I was extremely glad that I hadn’t ascended the hill in this direction. A slip/slidy bit once back on the forest track and 6 hours after setting off I was back at the car. Brilliant, apart from the dog mess! Shoot the buggers I say.

In between times an article about the green shield-moss was written for Field Bryology, the 100th edition no less, and it may be one of the articles the show on their website at http://www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/ . Click on the “here” button to see if it is listed, also click on “Home” to see what else they have available including access to an electronic field guide. As the weather eased we eventually managed to get to Giles Pearson’s shop at Logie ( http://www.giles-pearson-antiques.co.uk/ ) to pick up a table he had been restoring which we had bought as a joint 40th wedding anniversary present. 22nd January and we were only the second visitors Giles had had in 2010, incredibly the deposits of snow had been much worst between Grantown on Spey and Logie (nr Forres) than they had been with us. On the way back I couldn’t pass a buzzard, perched on Castle Roy on the outskirts of Nethybridge, as the sun was setting, without stopping to take a photo. Buzzards, like other birds of prey, have been having a hard time of it with everything covered in deep snow. During the worst of the weather I twice had buzzards feeding on rare road casualty, and refusing to fly off as I drove past.

26th January a fuel tanker tried and failed to reach Forest Lodge with a load of kerosene. Staff had had to resort to bringing in fuel in 45 gallon drums for most of January just to keep the heating going in Forest Lodge. Thankfully, the tanker made it 3 days later. 29th January we changed our broadband provider and we’re still tweaking bits and pieces to get everything running smoothly. The same day the lack of Highland Council gritting wagons almost had severe consequences, the school bus slid off the road between Boat of Garten and Nethybridge, untreated snow on top of ice being the cause. Three cars were off on the same stretch of road.

30th January we did our RSPB Garden Bird Count and over the day managed to count 21 species: starling 4, blackbird 7, chaffinch 40, great tit 5, woodpigeon 2, collared dove 4, blue tit 6, coat tit 20+, sparrowhawk 1, rook 5, robin 2, dunnock 2, yellowhammer 4, crested tit minimum 1, pheasant 2, jackdaw 10, great spot woodpecker 1, mistle thrush 1 in tree above garden, goldfinch 1, siskin 3 and house sparrow 2. No greenfinches!

The next major milestone is preparing a talk for the RSPB Scottish Staff Conference in Pitlochry, but more about that in the next diary.

That’s it
Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

Green shield-moss search late afternoon Inshriach Forest

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Normal service will be resumed a soon as possible

Good news - we had a heavy thaw of the snow this week.
Bad news - it's snowing again!

Just a quick diary today to warn viewers that we might be "off air" for a wee while during a change of broadband provider, but will be back just as quickly as we can work out what is needed.

Another 800m outing to cover when back on air, despite the snow!

All the best

Stewart & Janet

ST high up on Meall a' Bhuachaille

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Snow, snow, snow-more please

It all really started on the days when Janet attended the craft fair at Rothiemurchus. As we travelled in on the evening of 17th December to set up her stall it started to snow, not much, but enough to slow us down as we drove to the church hall where the fair was being held. I had spent that day in the forest at Glenmore and after mooching about in a patch of Norway spruce for four hours I was totally frozen and glad of the half hour walk back to the car to warm up. There had been a threat of snow all day and finally at 6pm it arrived. As we drove back from the church hall the snow had stopped but I was cursing because I had another days work in Glenmore to complete and the light dusting of snow might make that impossible, but more about that later. The following morning there was a good inch of snow lying and really it has been a story of snow and frost ever since. 6” had fallen by the time we packed everything up at the craft fair on the 19th and I seem to have done nothing but clear snow from around the house ever since. Travel to work for the last few days before Christmas reverted to Janet dropping me off at the end of the Forest Lodge track and walking in and out from the office, and even this became impossible on 23rd when another 6” of snow was dumped all around. Laura and Douglas just about got to the house from Aberdeenshire on Christmas-eve and, when another 7” of snow greeted us on Christmas morning we were quite worried that Ruth, Sean and the boys wouldn’t be able to get to us for Christmas dinner and present opening. The house drive was cleared of snow yet again and at 11.30am Ruth’s car appeared in the drive to a big cheer and present opening could begin. Phew! Janet produced a brilliant meal and Laura and Douglas some excellent bottles of champagne but all the time a wary eye was watching weather outside. A new experience was linking the Firwood gathering to family in Lancashire by “skype” as dinner was drawing to a close, a sign of things to come in the developing world of computer technology. There were lots of oh’s and ah’s as baby Archie’s turn came round to appear on screen, the first time the clan in Lancashire had seen him for “real”. Amazing.

Boxing Day was very frosty with the temperature plummeting to -14 deg C at 7pm, and we managed -16 deg C during the night of 27th not managing to get above -12 deg C during the following day. The birds feeding in the garden were hopping about on one leg, trying hard to keep the other one warm whilst pecking at the food. Since 17th December we have only managed to get the thermometer above freezing on two occasions (day or night!), the maximum being +0.5 deg C, and there doesn’t seem to be any end of the big freeze in sight. Frost and snow conspired to knock many New Years Eve events on the head, and the “happy new year” greetings have been very subdued as everyone digs snow and stops everything from freezing. Undisturbed snow on the football pitch in the village is now 18-20” deep and all around house gutters are hanging thick with icicles, many having fallen off. Trees are bending double with the weight of snow and throughout the forest trees and branches can be heard snapping. Adding up all the daily snow fall measurements at the house for the period given earlier we have a total of 40”. We have only seen one snow-plough go up the road since before Christmas the Council blaming bendy trees and branches over the road or is it really a money saving exercise! Their response to the crisis has so far been pretty pathetic. Cleared heaps of snow around the house are now 4-5’ deep and we are running out of places to throw the stuff particularly when all the snow avalanched off the house roof over new year, filling the drive with 1-2’. Grandson Finlay lent a hand to clear the snow with his new tractor/digger, an eye popping present he received at Christmas. Needless to say we haven’t ventured very far from the house during the period and with only one outing into the woods since the main snow falls so lots to write about from around the house!

Keeping the birds alive has been one of the major tasks during the diary period, dishing out food, thawing out the water bowl each morning and topping up with fresh water. The garden area is now filling up with two foot diameter lumps of ice from the water bowl though many have now been buried by the snow. The seed feeders are currently being topped up twice a day but interestingly the peanut feeders are not being used as much as when we have no snow. A couple of crested tits have been regular in amongst the 30-40 coal tits. Chaffinch numbers must be in the region of 40-50 birds and the yellowhammers show up brilliantly against the snowy background (left). Despite the cold the blackbirds, robins and dunnocks continue to fight over the food and the rook and jackdaw mafia drop in a couple of times a day to see what is available. Both species have now mastered the art of hanging on to the peanut feeders! Rarities comprise the odd greenfinch and goldfinch, the latter having forsaken our garden for Bill and Rita’s down the road with its gourmet niger seed feeder (right) where up to 18 birds have been seen. Charming! The biggest rarity has been a single brambling and the garden is visited daily by at least one sparrowhawk. It is only when the sparrowhawk goes charging through that you realise just how many birds are at the feeders or around the garden as with a great din of synchronised flapping the birds dive for cover in the surrounding trees.

With the Christmas turkey having fed the family on Christmas day, kept the two of us in meals and sandwiches for a further four days, made a pot of soup from the carcass, it was time to put what remained out in the garden for the birds to pick over. The blackbirds and starlings had reduced it to a scatter of bones when Janet noticed a very strange bird having a go (left). A second take and she realised that we had a new bird for the garden – a jay! Being at work on the day it appeared, I thought I had missed my chance to see this new arrival but with Janet raiding the freezer for more chicken bones and me not being able to get to work the following day we kept an eye on the new pile of meaty bones in between clearing snow and helping out our neighbours. At lunchtime it re-appeared and fed for a while before disappearing with a large chunk of meat and bone. The camera was ready and waiting for its return (right)and a few reasonable photos were obtained as it fed on the chicken carcass. Locally, this is quite a rare bird with a single pair known to be regularly breeding in the Craigmore section of the reserve, but with also an increasing number of winter records of individual birds around the area in the last 10 years. With the camera out and ready I had been using it to watch the squabbling starlings fighting over the fat ball lying on the packed snow. Was that a ring on one of the birds legs? A second chance to check the starling came a few minutes later and sure enough on one leg was a metal ring topped with a second, orange colour ring and with a green/white coloured ring combination on the other leg. A few minutes later a second starling was seen with a different colour combination, blue over green on its left leg. Without the big lens on the camera I would never have seen the rings so again, watching out for one thing gave a bit of information on another. A quick phone call to Keith confirmed that he had ringed them at a site about a mile away from Firwood, one as a juvenile from one of his nest boxes in 2009, though the colour rings were only added in January 2010, the same time that the second bird was ringed. It will be interesting to see if either of the birds turn out to be linked to the Firwood nest box this summer. In amongst the starlings a large black and white bird suddenly appeared at the fat ball – a great spotted woodpecker (left) and amazingly when both starling and woodpecker squared up to one another, it was the starling that won. With the daytime temperature down at about -8 deg C the woodpecker (a male) was as desperate as all the other birds to take on as much food as possible during the day so as to try and survive the even lower temperatures that would come with night-fall. So an interesting hour without even going any further than the window.

There has been an interesting development in the world of the green shield-moss. Having found so many capsules linked to Norway spruce in Abernethy during the last growing season, I was keen to test whether they would also be found in other Norway spruce stands outside Abernethy. To this end I contacted Colin (area Ecologist) at the Forestry Commission in Inverness to see if he could point me in the right direction of any semi-mature stands in the Inverness District area. A phone call from an excited Colin just before Christmas informed me that he had found two capsules growing on a recently wind-blown Norway spruce in Glenmore Forest Park (below left) and, unlike the long-dead spruces linked to the moss in Abernethy, this tree had only blown over in the last couple of years. This I had to see, and while Janet was attending the craft fair at Rothiemurchus, I spent the same two days in Colin’s stand of Norway spruce (above right) seeing what I could find, and it was quite mind blowing. I didn’t find Colin’s tree straight away but was drawn to a couple of piles of felled logs that hadn’t been extracted at the time of the last thinning, and straight away, there were a few capsules. There were capsules on a few stumps, capsules on root buttresses of felled spruces, and, amazingly, capsules on roots of “live” spruces, the first time I had found the moss not linked to a deadwood habitat. Not only were they growing on the roots (which are normally protruding above the ground) but also, more regularly, on the soil debris on top of the roots (left) as indicated by the white peg. A whole new world for the moss in the UK, not dependant on deadwood, and potentially an abundant habitat in many Norway spruce plantations in this area and also further a field, and possibly, at last, the most favoured habitat for the green shield-moss has been found. We just need the snow to melt so that a few more sites can be visited to see whether this “Taylor” theory will hold water. If correct, I don’t see any reason why the moss shouldn’t be growing in woodlands south of the Scottish border – it has yet to be recorded outside Scotland, so have a good look at the photo (left), find yourself a 60 year old stand of Norway spruce, and be the first to find it south of the border! There are still only about 20 folk who have found this moss for themselves in the UK so you would also be joining an elite band of natural history recorders. I’d be happy to receive any records from north or south of the border via the Firwood website email address.

The lichen work written about in the last diary also turned up a brilliant wee species from the aspen woods close to the River Nethy. When I visited the site a few weeks ago a leafy lichen complete with spore bearing apothecia (right) looked a little different so I set up the camera and tripod and took a decent photo which eventually found its way to Dr. Brian Coppins. Peltigera collina was the name that came back, a new species for Abernethy Forest and a first for OS Square NJ01. Not only is the lichen rare in this part of Scotland (see http://data.nbn.org.uk/interactive/map.jsp?srchSp=38026 ) but to find it with spore bearing apothecia (the black bits on the lobes) in Britain is quite rare. Again it goes to show just how special our small group of 25 aspen trees are for rare lichens.

Stop-press. We have a thaw, +1.9 deg C today as I type (12 Jan) so will I be writing about floods in the next diary? Watch this space.

Happy reading
Stewart & Janet

Frozen umbellifer start of big freeze 11 December 2009

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Gorges Rule Britannica, okay!

It feels like a month where I have been out a lot but with not too much to report. The search for the pipe club fungus continued and in the end over 40 new sites were recorded and the details forwarded to the British Mycological Society (BMS) for their database. The records will eventually appear at http://www.fieldmycology.net/FRDBI/FRDBIrecord.asp?pg=6 and to search for other records go to http://www.fieldmycology.net/GBCHKLST/gbchklst.asp and type the Latin name in to the Genus search term box and click “search for genus”. This is quite a good site and for each species page you can click on a tab for NBN maps to show distribution. Still on a fungus theme, I managed to sort through all my tooth fungi records for 2008 (600+) and forward these to BMS with all my records for 2009 (770+) due to be sent shortly. The names of all species recorded over the years can be found in an earlier diary (15 Oct 2009).

The pipe club fungus search took me into many broadleaved woodlands and whilst in the beech woods I had an eye open for something the Highland Biological Recording Group had asked its members to look for – the beech leaf-gall midge (Hartigiola annulipes left). The mind boggles at what we get up to. But of course a challenge is there to be met so, looking down at the ground for fungi, my eyes were also on the look out for beech leaves with strange wee growths on their upper surface. It didn’t take long to find some, firstly in the ancient beech woods at Rothiemurchus, and then in most of the others visited in the Strathspey area. The galls were also found in beech woods at Mar Lodge on Deeside, a first for this area. As is the case with these undertakings, we are out there looking for something that is obviously fairly common but just hasn’t been searched for before. The actual midge is very difficult to see but the gall literally “sticks out like a sore thumb” and is relatively easy to see. Before this request there was one location known in Scotland so to see what has happened over the last couple of months visit http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Frameset.html and be amazed.

As the fieldfares departed the wild greylag geese arrive (as compared to the ever increasing flock of feral birds locally 400+) and can now be seen on many of the cereal fields locally. The first round of BTO Winter Atlas tetrads were visited without coming across anything out of the ordinary. Our chalet guests spotted a rare species on rowan berries in the garden mid-November, a male blackcap. The same bird(?) also turned up in another garden in Nethybridge the following day but hasn’t been seen since. A turnip field close to Lurg farm on the outskirts of Nethy was starting to attract a large number of chaffinches on 15 November along with a few twite and goldfinches and a single reed bunting. A brilliant male king eider is also currently tempting birders up to Burghead where it can be seen just off-shore along with a few scoters and long-tailed ducks. Firwood garden has also seen a big increase in bird numbers recently with frosty weather turning to heavy snow over the last couple of days. As I type and the snow falls heavily, there are 30+ chaffinches, yellowhammers, coal, blue and great tits, the odd crested tit (above), collared doves, woodpigeons, house sparrows, blackbirds, dunnocks, robins, great spotted woodpecker and a couple of pheasants in the garden searching for food. A few rooks appeared yesterday and no doubt the odd sparrowhawk will have whizzed through. Up to 5 red squirrels are also around. Brrr!

A special mention must go to Barbara, our chalet guest in early November, she has to be the first guest to clock up about 100 walking miles during her weeks stay. I staggered up and down Meall a’ Bhuachaille above Glenmore in an afternoon. Barbara walked from Firwood to Glenmore and back in the day, and nipped up the same mountain in passing!

It has been a month dominated one way or another by lichens. Oliver, the Bryophyte apprentice working at Abernethy started it off by finding Lobaria scrobiculata (left growing with green Lungwort) growing on an equally rare hazel tree above the River Nethy. We thought the lichen was new to Abernethy until I checked the map on the NBN website (below left) and was intrigued to find that it had been found close to Oliver’s site in 2001. Strange I thought, because a report bringing together all known lichen records for the reserve had been compiled by Sheila & Les Street in……….. September 2000! A quick email and I find out that Sheila & Les were involved in a survey of lichens in aspen woodland stands in Strathspey in 2001, a year after the comprehensive list was compiled. During the survey with Brian Coppins, they visited a stand of just 25 ancient aspens close to the River Nethy on the reserve when the Lobaria was found. A report had been compiled but for some reason, I had never seen/received a copy, so attached to the email was a new copy. The report was mind-blowing, the Lobaria was a minor find compared to what else was found. The survey found 65 species of lichen on the 25 aspen trees with some spectacular finds. Lecanora populicola was thought to be extinct in Britain and hadn’t been recorded for 150 years. Caloplaca flavorubescens, now very rare in Britain was found on a third of the aspens at this site making it the most populated site in the UK for this species. Arthonia patellulata was found here and at a site but a few days earlier at Insh Marshes reserve and was new to Britain but pride of place has to go to Rinodina laevigata the first British record for this species and the first time it had been recorded in Europe outside Fennoscandia and Russia. Despite the small size of this aspen relic and its remoteness from other mature stands, the richness of its lichen flora suggests a very long history of ecological continuity. The priority now is to ensure a few more of the root suckers (young trees) appearing on the site receive protection from deer grazing to ensure the aspen stand survives and increases in size.

A visit to the stand a couple of weeks ago to accurately record the locations of some key lichen supporting trees produced another wee surprise. A strange woven cocoon was found on one of the aspens, covered in what appeared to be moth or butterfly eggs. I circulated the photo to a few experts and the answer came back that it was the cocoon of a vaperour moth. In this species the female moth is flightless so that when she emerges from the chrysalis inside the cocoon she has to stay put until a male moth finds her, mates, and she then lays her eggs on the outside of the cocoon. The female moth had long gone but she had left behind a real work of art.

Oliver’s find also inspired me to revisit a steep wooded gorge near Kingussie where I had found lungwort lichens (Lobaria pulmonaria) way back in January whilst looking for green shield-moss capsules. If lungwort was there there was always the possibility of other localised species and perhaps L. scrobiculata, a lichen quite rare this far east, and anyway, an accurate count of the trees with lungwort needed to be made. This gorge (left) doesn’t have too big a stream running through it but the sides are quite steep and a bit slippery particularly when there had been a hard frost the night before. Thankfully Janet only sees the pictures of where I get too! The first patch of lungwort was found growing on an old willow and when it was time to head homeward, six willows had been found with good populations of the lichen.

In places there were good patches of a dog-type lichen Peltigera membranacea, mainly grey in colour but with very long “teeth” or rhizines on the underside of the leafy lobes (right). I was still hopeful though of one more lichen turning up and as I made my way to the stream at the bottom of the gorge something bright green caught my eye on the rock wall opposite. Visits like this are always best made in wellies so there was no problem in paddling across the stream to the other side and there in all its bright green livery was Petligera britannica, the one lichen I was hoping would turn up.

So just time for a few photos (left) and a GPS location before it was time to head back to the car. As I exited the gorge the sun was shining brilliantly in a blue but frosty late afternoon sky and the snow capped top of Carn Bán Mόr in the far distance made for a stunning sight. Red nose, rosy cheeks and a wonky knee but a brilliant day, and a few new lichen locations to boot.

Janet has also been very busy on the Harris tweed craft front with many amazing creations coming from her sewing machine along with cards of local scenes. A full day sale of local crafts at friend Sally’s house in aid of charity in November depleted her stock so another busy period ensued to make more stock for another craft sale at Rothiemurchus in aid of Trees for Life. Craft-work may have to play an important part of her life after Christmas after having had to make a life changing decision recently. Loss of pension rights since going part-time at Grantown Grammar School a couple of years ago means that she will be giving up her job early in the new year, much to the horror of the pupils she supports in the Learning Support Department. So a new year and a new dawn in her life. Watch this space.

It has been a busy year at Firwood and we would like to take this opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to all those visitors who have made the journey to Firwood Chalet in Nethybridge. It was nice to welcome those making their first visit and also great to welcome back so many regulars, now friends.

We wish you all a Happy Christmas and send our best wishes for 2010.
Janet & Stewart

Frosty sunset Loch Garten

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Hey, you missed a few!

October is that time of the year when we wave bye bye to the last of the summery things and start to get major hints that winter is on its way. The odd capercaillie on the road or track as I pedal in to work is typical in October, the last of the blaeberries, plant seeds and plant shoots to feed on on the ground before the birds transition to pine needles and bits of vegetation. Red admirals hung on for the whole month, enjoying a bit of an Indian summer mid-month. The lights were dusted off, charged and attached to the bike again preparing for the misery of pedalling up the road in the dark and descending again at the end of the day in even blacker dark. To assist with lighting the way down the track after work the bike has a set of twin headlamps, a massive 10 watt one for lighting everything up and a 5 watt one for finding the edge of the track and the major potholes. Two lamps also confuses the rare motorist approaching me on my descent – wondering why such a thin car is heading his or her way. I suppose the orange reflectors on the pedals give it away, a thin car, twin headlights and funny orange yo-yos going up and down on either side. It works though, and all the motorists slow down a bit and thankfully dip their headlights. The lighting set was new last winter after my trusty Vistalite set, which had served me well for ten years, final packed up. £70 the new set cost, half the price of the Vistalites of ten years ago, and not quite as good. The clocks went back and the lights were needed for the descent but one was off as much as it was on, thankfully there was the second one. Back to the shop went the faulty one along with the original box which had all the information and receipts inside as proof of purchase. Jenny, at Cyclelife in Aviemore looked at the box and said “You got a bargain there, those lights retail at £110!” Taylor had managed to get two for the price of one. “That’s alright then” I said “cos only one of them is working!” Water during last winter had got into the lamp and caused its failure, so it’s back off to the makers to see why something that sits on a bikes handlebars, out in the open, had packed up so quickly because of damp.

Something quite unusual also happened last month, I had a three week break from work, possibly the longest time I have been away from work since we took the children to France before the eldest started school about 20 years ago. Time off had been planned to be available to help out Ruth following the birth of Archie, and well, it was kind of hard to get back into the work mode! Anyway, looking after Finlay for a few days was great fun and I have to blame Finlay for a major bit of recording work that developed during October. On the day when Finlay was practising his camera skills (see earlier diary and photo left) on an outing to the Craigellachie NNR at Aviemore we found a strange ochre coloured, thin pencil shaped fungus growing in the grass by the path. I remembered seeing one about 15 years ago when the late Peter Orton was at Abernethy recording fungi. A photo emailed to Liz (see http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/planning/inquiry/env_FungiReportPt2BlairtonLinks.pdf for a sample of her excellent work) confirmed that it was indeed Macrotyphula fistulousus var. fistulosus, the pipe club fungus (right) and that though Roger Philips Fungi guide says it is rare, Liz suggested that it was probably overlooked and under-recorded. This appeared to be possibly the case when returning from a search of one of the bogs by the osprey nest site for Dicranum mosses, I found 3 groups of the fungus growing under birches on the Osprey Centre car park. The next day I popped into four birch woods along the A9 and it was in all of them, and a visit to similar woodland on Tulloch Moor produced the same results. Aviemore, Kingussie, Loch an Eilean visits produced more records and a hop over the boundary into Moray produced what appear to be the first records from that county. Amazing, Liz was right. A brilliant bit of mixed hazel, birch aspen wood in Tulloch produced so many records that I re-visited the site in the hope that a much rare relative M. fistulosus var. contorta might be there, and after half an hour of searching there it was, growing, just as the books say, from a one inch diameter hazel twig half buried in the ground (left). Its commoner relative grows in the same way but usually from small twigs of broadleaved trees that are fully buried in the ground, though a few can be found growing from twigs on the surface. Thanks Finlay. A bonus of this search was an amazing meeting with a none too worried roe deer which, for a few camera grabbing seconds, didn't seem to think I was so close. With fieldfares cacking over head I took off my rucksac, got out my camera and managed to take a quick photo of our brief encounter.

The warmer weather mid-October saw many of the late summer dragonflies still on the wing. At the dragonfly viewing deck by the Speyside Way Sympetrum danae the black darter and Aeshna juncea the common hawker were still on the wing on the 17 October and a few days earlier a single Sympetrum nigrescens the Highland darter was regularly resting on the decking hand-rail. The latter has been a rare beast on the reserve and something I have searched for in some of its previously recorded haunts. It would appear though, that the Highlands and Islands has lost one of its local species because the Highland darter has been subsumed into the family of Sympetrum striolatum, the common darter. It has been deemed therefore that the Highland darter is not a separate species as decreed by A. E. Gardner way back in 1955, but was, as some Odonata experts had suggested for a while, just a variety of its commoner relative. Whatever, it still remains a rare beast within Abernethy, the red males adding colour to our dragonfly fauna.

It’s October so time for an 800m high outing, not Bynack Mor this year but the Shepherds Hill above Glen More. Major engineering works a couple of years ago by the Forestry Commission created a new path from the Ryvoan Bothy almost to the summit and then from just over the summit back to Glen More. The sheer numbers of people ascending the hill on the old path was causing so much erosion that something had to be done. The old path had never been a maintained / managed path, and followed a few lines that added to the erosion problem, too steep, boggy ground etc, and whilst the new path looks new and a bit of an intrusion on the landscape, with time is should vegetate over and blend more into the hillside. I digress. This trip was to enjoy one of the best views over Abernethy and the surrounding lands from the summit hence the name Shepherds Hill or Meall a’ Bhuachaille and also to have a look for quite a rare lichen for which the hill is one of the main sites. It was a glorious day and on the way up the hill I passed about a dozen people who were making their way down. Messing about taking photos near the top it was amazing how the wind had increased and the temperature had dropped markedly so on went the light-weight gloves, woolly hat and waterproofs. But there it was, Alectoria ochroleuca (Alpine sulphur-tresses) growing out of the wind-clipped vegetation in amongst other commoner Cladonia type lichens (below). This is a lichen that is only found above 750m asl. and is mostly found in the Cairngorms. If you check the distribution map at http://data.nbn.org.uk/gridMap/gridMap.jsp?allDs=1&srchSpKey=NBNSYS0000018168 you will see it is a lichen we share with a site on St. Kilda.

The 18th October was quite a good day, Jensen Button became F1 World Champion and Beth Tweddle became a world champion gymnast and guess who the Prime Minister didn’t ring to say well done?. In the local home Derby in Lancashire it was Blackburn 3 – Burnley 2, 17 years since the two teams last met in the league. Thankfully there were no riots! The following day I fancied a wee wander on one of Abernethy’s smaller but very interesting bogs in the hope of finding a new location for the rare Dircranum bergeri moss. There were a few hummocks of Sphagnum austinii and the straggling runners of berryless cranberry, but no bergeri. It was starting to get a little dark as I left the bog and I have often thought I should devote a bit of time to checking the stumps of felled Norway and sitka spruce along the edge of the bog for the green shield-moss. I had to pass a couple of sitka stumps as I made my way back to the track and I couldn’t help myself and I bent down to have a quick look. Nothing on the first one but another nearby looked a more likely site, and sure enough there were a couple of capsules from the last growing season. I wouldn’t have mentioned this find but felt I had to due to its significance. In the last diary I mentioned a find by Oliver on a wood ant nest, which, a couple of weeks later, turned out to be the brown shield-moss and not the 100th new site for its close relative for last season. So here, at my feet, was the 100th new site for Abernethy (right) to conclude a year of searching, and on the stump next door was the 101st! Stop! Despite missing out on the 100th site Oliver’s find was however significant and a visit to the site last week showed that there were 18 brown shield-moss capsules on the ant nest, the biggest single group that has been found in the last few decades.

Way back in May I took a photo of a group of rowan trees so heavy in flower that they looked like trees covered in snow. The weather was quite kind at the time and it looked like the bees were getting on well with the job of pollination. By August I had to trim a couple of branches on the rowan in front of the chalet because the weight of the berries was bending the branches so much that you couldn’t see the bird feeders. Amazingly, none of the branches snapped under the weight and I started to look forward to the invasion of thrushes to devour the crop. The first few redwings arrived on 9 October followed on 12th by a few fieldfares but little happened in the rowans. As Julie and Neil were leaving the chalet on 30 October they reported a few of both species had been eating the berries along with a couple of bullfinches (left), but it wasn’t until a few days later that main invasion occurred. There had been a lot of fieldfares in nearby Tulloch from about the 20th but suddenly on 4 November tens of thousands of fieldfares arrived in the area and within a day the rowan tree in front of Firwood had been stripped bare and a lot of birds were starting to feed in the tree in front of the chalet. Getting my bike from the shed at 7.30am on 5th, 200-300 fieldfares (right), a few redwings and blackbirds erupted from the garden and the cack-cack-cack of fieldfares was everywhere. Getting my bike from the shed at 7.30am on 6th, nothing and the chalet rowan was still quite heavily laden with berries! Even in the wider area few birds were to be found. Why the sudden mass departure, particularly with so much food still available? Even as I type, the chalet rowan has still lots of withering berries.

So not a bad month, a new grandson, a 40th wedding anniversary, fungus guidance from Finlay and the longest holiday for ages! Brilliant.

Happy reading
Stewart & Janet

All photos © Stewart Taylor