Six-spots galore

As I type all around there is the sound of young buzzards mewing, lots of fungi popping out of the ground and small groups of curlews can be heard calling overhead as they leave the strath at the end of their breeding season. It must be August and time to catch up on events during July at home and over the sea.

All the data from the bird’s-foot trefoil survey was written up and delivered on the 1st before pedalling off to check on a local common twayblade site at the local gun club site at Tomachrochar. This is a rare plant locally, the first record of the orchid at this site was in 1975 and appears in Mary McCallum Webster’s Flora of Moray, Nairn and East Inverness-shire as “many plants in a hollow on the open moor between the road and Tomachrochar”. Three years ago I re-found the plant but the many had turned to 3 and the plants comprised leaves and a single flower spike just a couple of inches high seemingly unable to grow to full size (left). This was the case again this year but whether there are more to be found I don’t know, the farmer being unwilling to sanction a search of the wider area. The twayblades occur on the edge of an amazing group of northern marsh orchids and right on the stance used for “clay” shooting by the gun club members. Despite trampling feet and a small amount of mowing(?), all seem to survive okay. As I had parked my bike by the gate at the road the first thing that caught my eye was a 6-spot burnet moth, zooming around bird’s-foot trefoil and fragrant orchids. The moth seems to be getting well established locally after first being seen at the Flowerfield lesser butterfly orchid site about five years ago. At that time this was the only inland site for the moth well away from its normal coastal haunts. A tiny moth also visiting the trefoils turned out to be the grass rivulet, something I hadn’t seen for a while. Having checked the twayblades I pedalled on to Tomdhu to see if I could find any frog orchids. On the B970 road verge I spotted a few clover flowers (right) and parking the bike I found a nice flowering patch of zigzag clover (Trifolium medium) with its very distinctive leaves and flowers – worth having a look at if you know of a patch locally or keep an eye open for it when visiting the coast where it can be quite common. The Tomdhu field I was heading for is quite amazing and comes as near as anything locally to the magnificent Hebridean machair. All around were seed heads of the earlier flowering yellow rattle, masses of bird’s-foot trefoil and rockrose, and developing heads of knapweeds and scabious, food for the bees in August and September. Looking for a short-stemmed green orchid in amongst grasses and other plants demanded a bit of careful searching whilst watching where feet were being placed, all in a bit of a rush as the same farmer has never been keen on my visits! A 6-spot burnet (left) went whizzing by (another site) and perched on a rockrose flower was a northern brown argus butterfly, not a bad start. Eventually a couple of frog orchids were found and on my way back to my bike, a loose group of six were seen, so all was well on the orchid front. It would be interesting to know just how many frog orchids this amazing wee field supports – perhaps one day…. The same day saw the start of a major marathon to try and buy a new compact camera, but more of that anon.

My wonky knee from the last diary made me miss an opportunity to look for round-leaved wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia) at the end of June, but with a bit of TLC, a bit of massage and the odd ibuprofen, a visit to Deeside seemed worth the risk early in July. To cut down on walking I decided to take my bike for the few miles of vehicle track, hiding it in the heather when I reached the start of the path into the hills. The weather stayed true to the forecast and for once it was shirt sleeve conditions, with the jacket left with the bike. Apart from never having seen this wintergreen before the aim of the visit was also to see the sort of habitat in which the plant grew, with this particular site being both rocky and slightly lime-rich. Mary McCallum Webster lists a couple of sites close to home where the plant had previously been recorded but neither of which could be classed as lime-rich, but more about one of these sites later. With the sun shinning a few four-spot chasers and a single golden-ringed dragonfly were on the wing as I passed a small lochan, and as I got closer to the wintergreen site the heather moorland gave way to rocky scree with masses of rockrose, kidney vetch and bird’s-foot trefoil. The rare Osmia inermis mason bee (cousin of the one I had been erecting nest boxes for this summer) had also been recorded from the site in 2001, so I left the path and visited patches of flowers just in case the bee was on the wing (see http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Solitaries/Osmia/OsmiaMain.html for background to the bees). The bee wasn’t found but by checking the flowers a northern brown argus butterfly was seen and the amazingly colourful moth Pyrausta ostrinalis (above right). Suddenly, in front of me, appeared one of the most beautiful/amazing group of flowers I have seen in a long time, it was just like coming across folwers growing in the Alps but this was Scotland and this was round-leaved wintergreen (left). Green leaves, red stems and white flowers, all growing out of the rocks and with each flower showing the most distinctive identification feature of the plant, a down-turned style protruding from each of the flowers (right). In all, three distinct groups of wintergreens were found, possibly all one population originally, and higher up the scree a huge patch of white flowers turned out to be wood vetch (Vicia sylvatica). Two groups of Gold Duke of Edinburgh folk made their way along the path below probably oblivious to me and the botanical wonders they were passing through. Back at the bike more DoE participants were passing by, the second group looking at me enviously as I free-wheeled down the hill towards the road. An unusual bird call stopped me in my tracks and my stab at it being a young cuckoo was confirmed when a pair of meadow pipits disappeared up into an ancient Scots pine to feed their “giant” offspring. What a brilliant day.

Armed with a description of the wintergreen and knowing the sort of habitat it liked, I set off the next day to a hillside with rocky scree just to the east of the B9007 road from Duthil, one of the general locations given in Mary’s book. Popping out of the scree were several clumps of lemon-scented fern, with its distinctive sori on the very edge of the underside of the leaflets. Crushing a few leaves the scent of lemons is released, hence the English name. In places a few wintergreen leaves were found, but without flowering stems, the leaf shape suggesting Pyrola media or intermediate wintergreen. In many places the scree was a bit too loose for plants to grow but just occasionally a less steep section allowed some vegetation to become established. As I approached one of these less steep sections my heart skipped a beat because there, in full green, red and white glory, was a group of wintergreen plants (left). Could this be the long-lost round-leaved wintergreen? Everything looked the same as the Deeside plants – apart from the style protruding from the white flowers. Protruding it was, but it lacked the down-turned bend so distinctive of the real thing (right). This was definitely intermediate wintergreen, but without care I could see how easily a mis-identification could be made. The name “round-leaved” wintergreen is also very unhelpful as all the wintergreens have round leaves to varying degrees, so checking the style is vital in making the correct identification. This site also lacked any hint of lime-richness and as the day progressed more and more intermediate wintergreens were found though none mimicked Pyrola rotundifolia as well as the first flowering patch on the scree. A second visit a few days later to check more of the area failed to re-find the plant but a red admiral and a hill-side full of fruiting wild strawberry plants showed that some base-rich habitat was present. A distant wailing black-throated diver reminded me that my walk had taken me in the general direction of Lochindorb, their traditional breeding site. I couldn’t seem to get away from looking for wintergreen plants and the next day I was out with a few local folk to help the Cairngorms Rare Plants Officer search a section of Scots pine woodland near Cromdale for wintergreens and twinflower ahead of the owners thinning the woods later in the year. The woodland floor was home to masses of creeping lady’s tresses, and a known site for twinflower and intermediate wintergreen. A couple more sites were found for wintergreen and on the last sweep of the wood yours truly managed to find a tiny patch of twinflower. The forester would be given all the locations so that a bit of care could be taken to avoid damaging them at thinning time.

On the 13th I placed an order, for the third time, for a new camera! In an effort to carry less camera weight on my outings I was trying to upgrade my compact camera from my Coolpix P5000 to the P7000. In an effort to save money I placed my first order with a company(?) called Camerabox (avoid), and when the camera didn’t arrive I found I was dealing with a dodgy company as I found out too late after googling their name. Thankfully the credit card company re-funded me my outlay. My second order went to ‘Great Deals’ at Amazon – yes, The Amazon, but the camera that arrived was not UK/European stock, though this was not mentioned by the company and I only found out when loading some of the software. Angry emails, ‘Great Deals’ disappeared from the Amazon website and I was promised my money back. Third time lucky I went to a company I could talk to on the phone and someone I had dealt with before – Park Cameras. Camera arrived next day, was UK stock, and has been in the rucksack ever since. The timing was critical, the camera arriving just two days before we departed for our holiday in South Uist. Phew!

Heading off on holiday the weather looked dire, heavy rain and strong winds, it was so wet when we got to the ferry terminal at Uig on Skye, we spent a couple of hours sheltering in the car (left). However, on South Uist things looked a lot better, and for the whole of our holiday we only had one wet day – amazing! After a day of travel our first day was a car-less day and we ambled down towards the shore counting a few lesser butterfly orchids as we went. We had several fly-bys from a short-eared owl which was feeding big young nearby and Janet spotted our first hen harrier. After counting a wee group of orchids I noticed a small, pale moth perched on a clover head and obligingly it let me take its photograph. With the help of iSpot (http://www.ispot.org.uk/node/193071 ) it was identified as Evergesstis pallidata, a micro-moth, and a new species for the Western Isles. On the shore we saw our first six-spot burnet moth, the first of many and here in its more typical habitat rather than the moorland habitat of Tulloch Moor. The next day, as the sun started to shine at almost full power we made contact with our first Northern colletes bees (Colletes floralis right), and an evening wander to check out sand dunes near the cottage, more breeding holes were found. As I scanned the further dunes for suitable nest hole sites I could see a couple of people walking by them and after they stopped I was quite sure that I saw a bird flying up from where they were – very odd! A couple of minutes later and another bird took to the air and I then knew I was either watching some illegal activity or bird ringers in action, worth a look. As I got nearer I could see the billowing black shape of a mist-net, behind which were the distinct holes of a small sand martin colony, something quite rare out on the islands. I said hello and introduced myself and over the next hour watch a dozen or so adult and juvenile birds measured, weighed and ringed before being released. After the last catch and release the nets were furled ready for another, last session in the early morning and after our cheerios I made my way back to the car passing a couple of calling corncrakes and a corn bunting singing from the top of a ‘Passing Place’ sign. Brilliant.

The daily view to the east of our cottage was the dramatic outline of the highest “hills” (there are no mountains as such on the Uists) in the Uists, Hecla on the left, Ben Corodate in the middle and the highest at 620m, Beinn Mhor on the right. Over the years I have photographed this outline many times from across the waters of Loch Druidibeg (right) in the north to the backdrop to many of the scattered houses of the wee communities in the south. Lost in the low clouds on some days and topped with cotton-wool clouds in blue skies on others. I also harboured a hope that on this visit the summit cairn of Beinn Mhor would be visited. A visit to the Baghasdal area of South Uist allowed us to catch up with the crafts exhibited at Kildonan and to visit Glendale where we saw our last young cuckoo of the year. The beach walk took us to the dunes near Dalabrog where we found an 11-spot ladybird and, close to the cemetery, a single pyramidal orchid. As the sun deserted us the temperature dropped due to the persistent north wind, lots of Northern colletes bees were found on the ragwort flowers, possibly too cold to make it back to their holes. And there, beckoning in the background was the mile long ridge of Beinn Mhor. Damn it, tomorrow I will have to get the summit challenge out of my system.

The next day I armed myself with Sheet 22 of the OS map series and Janet with the map of the places participating in this years “Art on the Map” exhibitions. She headed north, I headed up! Leaving the road I crossed the hollowed out sections of peat moor where the crofters had, for centuries, cut peat for fuel. This year’s fuel was drying nicely in the sun. Away from the active workings both round-leaved and long-leaved sundews started to appear and yes, you’ve guessed it, there was Ivan’s paddle, the hybrid between the two. Following the burn up into Coire Dubh I encountered large numbers of common hawker dragonflies and in a wee gully roseroot (left) and beech fern. A large patch of scattered white feathers turned out to be the remains of a greater black-back gull, caught and plucked by either a golden or sea eagle. Exiting the Coire I was on the start of the ridge to the summit and, just in case the clouds descended, I took a GPS reading. The ridge to the summit was not difficult with the option to go over rock Torrs or go round them. In the distance, out to sea, were the lumps of rock known as St. Kilda (right). Damp rocks forming the cliffs to the north-east of the summit tempted me down a little, but time was not on my side (though the wonky knee was doing me proud) so I didn’t wander too far from the ridge and eventually the summit trig-point was reached. However, another cairn about half a mile away offered brilliant views of our old home of Rum, so I headed there to have a late lunch and inform Janet re progress. The view to Rum didn’t disappoint even though it was a bit hazy, and lunch was accompanied by acrobatic ravens overhead, views to the watery lands below and St. Kilda in the distance. Oh, I forgot, and dozens of sheep. Now the difficult bit, getting back down, something wonky knees are not good at. The quickest route seemed to be a straight line from the ridge to the track to the peat-workings, and at six-o-clock I phoned Janet to ask for a lift from the road back to the cottage. I must be getting old, a few years ago I would have skipped over all three peaks, checked out the cliffs AND walked back to the cottage. The view to Beinn Mhor from the cottage looked just a little different that night.

We made the following day an “easy” day and headed for the South Uist Agricultural Show where it was nice to catch up with some of the RSPB staff. There was great interest in the stock judging with sheep and cattle making their way through the ring to be poked and prodded to allow the judge to see their best features. This is the show where Father Roddy McAulay from the BBC series Island Parish exhibited his prize cockerel in 2010 in a successful effort to wrest the first prize from the regular winner Flora Campbell. We missed all this excitement as the hens had already been judges by the time we got there and, with Fr. Roddy having moved to pastures new, the outcome reverted to the norm. Perhaps the most amazing feature of the day was associated with the riders and horses being judged in an adjacent field. Janet commented that she thought the ground was moving as the horses were cantering by and sure enough, when we watched carefully the bouncing of the horses was causing the ground to ripple, the whole field being a part of a peat-bog! Weird.
An outing to Eriskay took place on a day of warm sunshine with stunning views across the sea to Barra. A singing whitethroat by the road just before the causeway was unusual and masses of red clover and kidney vetch on the landscaped verges as we drove onto Eriskay was absolutely stunning. We parked up by The Politician pub and picnicked above the shore in amongst the machair flowers with a local profusion of stunted field gentians and dark-green fritillaries whizzing by. We headed across the bay towards the ferry terminal, Janet paddling in the sea and me wandering along the edges of the dunes looking for Colletes bee colonies. I stopped to GPS a small colony in an ex-quarry and suddenly realised that I was almost trampling a group of pyramidal orchids, a couple of which were deep purple in colour (left). Looking round there were a few more and down the bank even more, over 70 in total a big population for this part of the world. At the end of the bay the ferry came and went depositing cars and a few cyclists, the cyclists facing a very steep climb over a hill to get to the main township on the island before heading onwards to the causeway. As we got back to the car a golden eagle soared overhead being harried by a couple of ravens. Amazing.

We spent our last day in the Uists at Bornish, the archaeology suggesting that this wee outcrop into the sea may have been a look-out station during the last war. We lunched watching a group of seals determined not to be washed off their rocks by the rising tide. A couple of plants on the edge of the small lochan were unusual and turned out to be thread-leaved crowfoot and fool’s watercress. It was again sunny but windy and we failed to find the target for the day – grayling butterflies. On the way back to the cottage Janet popped into the pottery with the giant great auks in the garden, and as we were just setting off again a huge birds took off from close to the road and flapped right over the car trying to gain height. We both agreed sea eagle as I tried to stop the car safely whilst trying to grab the camera with the big lens to try and capture the moment (right). By the time I had got the camera out and working the eagle had started to gain height but it was still possible to see the white tail between the barn-door sized wings. I had one last evening botanising on Mid-Loch Ollay and as I was puzzling over what I had found (lesser water plantain) a sunset was developing and as I turned to head back for the car a red-throated diver, heading for the sea, flew overhead calling. Despite the gathering midges, it was a perfect end to the holiday. Next day we sailed across a mill-pond sea, saw Skye in the sunshine and arrived home at teatime. The following day chalet preparations, and with the sun still shining it was off to walk the butterfly transect before grass cutting, it’s amazing how quickly you slot back into the old routine!

Enjoy the read

Stewart & Janet

Uist folk have to pay £1.54 for a litre of petrol

Janet visits an Art on the Map venue

Isle of Rum from Beinn Mhor

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Little blue lines on maps

June started with a bit of a shock. Ex-work colleague Bob had asked me for any lichen records I might have from the ancient aspens on his farm at Easter Tulloch to help with a grant application. Knowing how important these ancient aspen stands are for lichens and other flora and fauna, I offered to write a wee note about this to accompany his application particularly as the grant might pay for fencing to exclude stock grazing and allow trees to regenerate, or for planting new areas. Added to the note I provided a list of lichens “likely” to be present on Bob’s aspens drawing on information on common species that had been recorded by experts in the adjacent aspen woods and from other woods close by. Having recorded the lichen Lobaria pulmonaria on one of Bob’s trees (left), the only location for this species within the Tulloch aspen woods, I also suggested that a full survey by expert lichenologists might reveal other unusual species. Job done, Bob sent in his application, and I thought that would be that. I received an email the following day from the grant aiding body saying that I had been nominated as “lichen expert” for Bob’s farm, something I had to decline by return email explaining that apart from looking for and recording a few rarer lichens, I knew little about all the common species hanging thickly from Bob’s trees! Phew, me a lichen expert, they must have got me mixed up with someone else! I did offer though to help with butterfly recording, if needed.

We had another shock at the start of the month, the temperature, for two whole days, rose to the dizzy heights of 29 degrees C. Just what was needed now that all the Osmia bee nest boxes were installed and waiting for occupants. A walk along one of the Abernethy tracks where there were boxes and where the bee had been recorded in the past, found them visiting bird’s-foot trefoil flowers (right) at three different locations. A great start. A visit to a small lay-by at School Wood in the village (threatened with houses as endorsed by the Cairngorms National Park and housing association) with an abundance of trefoil flowers also found the bee on the wing, the first time it had been seen here since 2001. But that was it, and the following day temperatures dropped by 20 degrees, heralding what was to follow for most of the rest of the month. We even had several night-time frosts down to -2 degrees C! Janet’s flowers in the garden suffered quite badly and a check of a local site for one-flowered wintergreen showed several of the earlier emerging flowers had been browned off. The visit to the wintergreens was also to carryout a bit of habitat management, cutting back some of the ever expanding bushes of rhododendron particularly where the best flowering patch for the plant was being threatened. Getting rid of this ultra-invasive plant really is soul destroying, almost every branch that has grown outwards and is touching the ground, roots, converting a single bush into something quite monstrous, and if you don’t pull every bit up, off it goes again. In the west of Scotland trying to remove this plant is costing millions of pounds, and as you drive around the east of Scotland you can see a time-bomb gathering pace to explode. One of the plants on my most hated list. Searching around the site it was nice to find a single plant, sheltered from grazing sheep by a fallen pine branch, in a location where Janet and myself found it growing about 25 years ago. In another location a group of wintergreens were growing in a flowering patch of twinflower (left), something I’ve not seen anywhere else.

One of the plants on the list of the Cairngorms Rare Plants Project is small cow-wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum). Andy Scobie is the Project Officer and had mentioned this plant to me whilst helping out with lesser butterfly orchid counts in the area. There are a few extant sites for the plant in the Cairngorms National Park but many more “old” records where it hasn’t been seen for a long time. Many of the old records also have little accurate data regarding exact location so it’s quite difficult to know where to start looking. One of the best ways of knowing where to look is to try and see the plant at one of the known sites and hence we come to the first of “the little blue lines on a map”. The small cow-wheat at some sites seems to like to grow in or close to damp woodland. It is a parasite and has to have its host plant blaeberry/bilberry close at hand. In 2004 it had been recorded from a site close to Inverness “on a grassy area under hazel and birch above and 3 metres from a wee burn with blaeberry and the grass Holcus mollis and bracken”. Little did I know just how valuable that tiny bit of information would be. There was a grid reference but only to an accuracy of 100 metres. The easy bit was finding the little blue line on the map, a small burn running south from the River Nairn. Thankfully I had put my wellies on and was able to walk in or along the burn checking for suitable sites. The first interesting find was sanicle growing at the base of an incised outcrop of conglomerate (a concrete like rock consisting of pebbles and gravel embedded in what looks like cement). The moist site had lots of ferns including the tiny brittle bladder fern. Initially the banks were too steep to match the description and, there was no blaeberry! The first hour of searching failed to find anything and considering I was trying to find a patch of plants one to two metres square, I was beginning to think of failure. A little further up the burn the bank became less steep and the mix of hazel and birch was still present and I decided to concentrate on looking for blaeberry and Holcus mollis rather than the wetter areas I had been searching. A larch tree gave a bit of hope and the first plants of blaeberry but a check of my GPS showed I was now in the wrong 100m OS grid square to the one from the last record. Sparse bracken and some blaeberry under hazels indicated I might be in the right area so I kept looking and it was with great relief that as I climbed up the bank from the burn a cow-wheat plant with tiny flowers came into view (above right). Small egg-yolk yellow flowers a few with a touch of orange and the flowers no longer than the green calyx from which they grew told me that this was the plant I was looking for (compare with common cow-wheat left). Time for a sandwich (just as the heavens opened) and a count of the number of plants, a quick photo before heading for home now knowing what I was looking for elsewhere. This one was easy, now to try and find the plant at Kinrara near Aviemore where the last grid reference from 1890 gives the location to the nearest one-kilometre grid square!

It’s been a bit of a month for trying to re-locate old plant sites. The location of herb paris in the Pass of Ryvoan woodlands has been a bit of a challenge for a few people over the last few years and despite the late Mary McCallum-Webster recording the flower from two locations neither have been found in recent years. I made the pilgrimage mid-month and joined the list of failures but then every cloud has a silver lining and the visit resulted in finding yet another group of ancient willows with the three Lobarian lichens (L. pulmonaria, scrobiculata and amplissima), masses of woodruff and a rare sedge locally wood sedge (Carex sylvatica right). Climbing high into the scree zone gave a great view of the Green Loch – Lochan Uaine. A visit to the same loch a day later was a slightly sadder affair but at the same time a celebration of the life of a neighbour in Nethybridge who had walked and cycled the tracks of Abernethy and Glenmore and who wanted her ashes to be scattered by the loch. She chose a good spot and those present enjoyed the view from the loch to Ryvoan Bothy as they said farewell. The couple of visits to Kinrara have also failed to re-find the small cow-wheat but an erupting willow warbler from my feet revealed a nest full of chicks, the biggest population locally for a rare grass mountain melic (Melica nutans) and false-broom (Brachypodium sylvaticum), oak and beech ferns growing together and masses and masses of common cow-wheat – some with small flowers. The search goes on.

The next “little blue line on the map” to be visited was near Ballindalloch Castle, and was a follow up visit to one made by ex-work colleague Andy where additional woodland needed to be checked for coral-root orchid. During his visit he had found huge numbers of the orchid in a mixture of wet willow/birch woodland where an earlier record had stated that a few plants had been found. I had been visiting this area of the last couple of years looking for this plant but had been looking in the wrong bit of woodland! Dooh! So, the start of the little blue line was located - the small burn that would eventually lead to the area to be checked. I had hardly left the road when the first orchids were found and this was nowhere near where I was supposed to be searching. A good omen. As I worked my way up the burn more small groups of orchids were found and as I approached the area where Andy had concluded his search, larger numbers were found. This orchid is quite beautiful in its own way. It lacks the bright colours, showy flowers and leaves of other orchids and even when the pale yellow flowers are “fresh” they look like they have just gone over (right). The flower doesn’t photosynthesise like most other orchids/flowers having almost no chlorophyll in its make up but relies on the fungi that live in the coral-like lump at the base of its stem for most of its nutrients. Bird’s nest and ghost orchids grow in a similar symbiotic way. The coral-root orchid is also self-pollinating and has no nectar or scent to attract insects. Amazing. I digress. The little blue line eventually gave way to a series of areas of boggy willow woodland and it was within these areas that the majority of orchids were found and our combined total of 400 flowering spikes is probably the largest population known locally, and a bit of additional woodland that I thought have been counted, wasn’t even visited. Beech fern and pale sedge were also new to the site and a group of bird cherrys in the drier woodland were totally covered in spooky webs (left) of the munching army of ermine moth caterpillars (visit http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=424 to see it).

An email mid-month lead to me renewing my links to the pinewood hoverfly (Blera fallax) project. PhD research student Ellie had been rearing and releasing adult hoverflies at a location in Abernethy Forest where the fly had been last seen in the 1980s and where larvae had been released in artificial rot-holes the previous autumn (see November 2010 diary). Ellie was having to head south to get on with writing up her thesis and a few adults had yet to emerge before being released and would I like to be foster-dad to any that might emerge? What an opportunity to be involved with this bonny wee fly at the most important part of its life just before it heads off into the wilds of the forest to search for a mate and ensure the next (and first new wild) generation of pine hoverflies continue as part of the forest ecosystem. It took a few days for the first hoverfly to emerge and I found it hanging upside down on white gauze covering the top of the “pot” – actually a white plastic catering cup. Most of the flies emerge first thing in the morning and spend the next few hours “pumping up their body and more importantly, their wings, in preparation for their first flight, best described as the fly swaying gently back and forth whilst trying to pump itself up a bit like a very constipated human on the loo! Then came the tricky bit. Ellie likes to have a record of the biometrics (size of head, body, wings etc) of each fly that emerges and this is achieved by placing the fly on a squared piece of encapsulated paper to have its photo taken (left). The squares on the paper are 5mm in size and from that the fly’s measurements can be deduced. With luck the fly might stay still when on the grid but more often than not they run around or climb up into the wee plastic pot kept close to hand in case the wee beastie tries to take off, so great patience is needed whist waiting for the right moment to release the shutter. Photo taken they are left quiet for an hour or so before being taken to the release site in the forest (right), the first three having to wait for gaps in some fairly wet weather. In all, five hoverflies were released and from the body markings it was noted that 4 were female and 1 was male. We wish them all well and I hope I have played a little part in helping the pine hoverfly to re-establish itself in the forest close to Loch Garten. See
http://www.mallochsociety.org.uk/blera-2006-status/ for more information.

The month ended with a bit of paid work – recording patches of bird’s-foot trefoil along several tracks in Abernethy, a repeat of a survey carried out ten years ago. Locations of patches were recorded along with size and quality/quantity of flowers. Bird’s foot trefoil flowers support a wide range of insects including the wee bee Osmia uncinata which was mentioned in the last diary. As the major management projects have declined (mainly timber felling and extraction) the track verges have received little disturbance and without disturbance, the populations of the plant will decline. The survey found that whilst the plant was found in many of its 2001 haunts, very few of the patches were producing many flowers, and if the track verges are not disturbed a little, the plant is likely to disappear under masses of heather and young pine trees. Watch this space.

It was also the time of year for counting lesser butterfly orchids at two local sites. The field in Tulloch produced just 6 flowering spikes this year and at the other site by the B970 it was obvious that there would be less flowers than the massive count of 2800 in 2010. Once again late frosts had caused many flowers at the main site to keel over (left), along with some of the fragrant orchids, though these would be included in the count. One of the mysteries to be solved in the lesser butterfly orchid world is what insect or insects are responsible for pollinating the flower and to try and answer this question a couple of local moth experts had offered to help the Park’s rare plants officer by running a few moth traps at the site to see if any of the moths trapped had the right “pollinia” attached to their head, eyes or proboscises. To ensure pollination the orchids have developed some pretty novel methods when compared to other flowers which have “free flying” pollen, where the pollen can cross-fertilise nearby flower by wind-borne pollen grains or by the grains being transferred from flower to flower by insects. In orchids all pollination is by insects and to ensure this is carried out successfully the orchids provide the pollinators with a landing pad, the bottom lip of the flower, and “landing lights” ultraviolet guides (invisible to humans) which guide the pollinator towards the orchid’s pollen masses or pollinia. The pollinia (above right photo © Mike Taylor shows 3 types of pollinia) are stored in the flower behind the anther cap (male sexual part of the flower) and as the insects explore the flower the clubbed shaped pollinia (pollen mass) with a sticky pad at its base, glue themselves to the part of the pollinator that comes into contact with them. The insect’s role is then to carry the pollinia to the stigma (female part) of other orchids to ensure fertilisation. The tricky bit would be trying to identify whether the right pollinia was attached to any of the moths trapped, not easy when the trap site had three species of orchids present. Would they even be any pollinia? The moth traps did their job and indeed there were moths with pollinia (The Spectacle moth left) but so far all have been identified as coming from the fragrant orchids. After the traps had been emptied I stayed on at the orchid site to see if I could physically see anything visiting the lesser butterfly orchids. The first “insect” to appear that was interested in any of the orchids was a six-spot burnet moth, but all it (and others later) was interested in was the fragrant orchids and at one flower spike I watched the build-up of pollinia on the moth proboscis (right) as it probed into each flower on the spike. One of the moths from the trap had 20 pollinia attached to its curled up proboscis! The next day was count day but sadly an on-going injury to one of my thigh muscles meant I had to pull out of the count. The count though was completed and this year’s total was 800 lesser butterfly orchids. The summer is flying by far too quickly.

That’s it, enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet

Brother Peter at the end of his Coast to Coast charity ride
Budding Tarzan - grandson Archie New bird for Firwood garden - scarlet rosefinch

All photos © Stewart Taylor

A hairy and sticky month dominated by wind and homes for bees (we hope)!

During May, Scotland changed, possibly for ever.

In 1998, when the late Donald Dewar oversaw the passage of the Scotland Bill through the Houses of Commons he set up a type of PR voting system which tried to ensure no one party would have an outright majority. For two elections this worked well. But, with inept leaders of the non-SNP parties, poor manifestoes or whatever, this didn’t work on 5 May 2011 and many experienced MSPs lost their seats to leave a majority SNP government in post and seemingly “anything but English” Alex Salmond in charge. With a whacking majority the push for an independent Scotland has started, with every opportunity taken since the election (and despite an independent Scotland not being a part of the election manifesto) to up the anti about perceived national policies that affect Scotland. I would suggest these are dangerous times for Scotland with a lack of experience in parliament and a majority that can allow bills to be steam-rollered through. And the man himself? Not that I would say we have a vain and pompous man in charge of Scotland but if you compare photos that appeared in the press and election leaflets with the non-airbrushed real thing, we have every reason to be worried. With everything now “free” in Scotland perhaps the country will just go bust before the 5 year-term is out. Less time spent pushing the ‘anti-this - anti-that’ agenda and more time governing this great country – Scotland, would be best for everyone.

A good part of the month was spent preparing and installing bee nest boxes with the tiny mason bee Osmia uncinata the target. In other parts of the world nest boxes are used successfully to ensure healthy populations of other Osmia bees used for the purposes of pollinating crops. An earlier trial of laminated type boxes in Abernethy during 2007 failed to attract any bee residents but it is hoped that this design of “box”, proven elsewhere for other bees, might be successful. The current boxes were supplied by the Red Beehive Company (http://redbeehive.coolitshopping.com/dbeehive.coolitshopping.com/ ) and comprise a section of 4” plastic drain pipe filled with cardboard tubes with internal diameters of 6 to 8mm. These are aimed at mimicking the natural long-horn beetle breeding holes found in dead trees within the forest which, once vacated, are used by the bees as their breeding sites. Very few of these natural bee sites have ever been found with Mike Edwards and Andy Davidson the only people I know who have ever seen them and numbering probably no more than 10. We know that the bee feeds heavily on bird’s-foot trefoil but there may also be other important flowers it visits for pollen and nectar and the only way of identifying foraging plants is to check breeding sites for residual pollen grains. Where the bee occurs it is therefore important to ensure enough lightly disturbed ground is available for the trefoil to grow (its preferred habitat) but there could be other important plant populations that need to be considered. If the tubes in the nest boxes are used, this would be a great help in allowing access to pollen which would be analysed for plant identification. In all 100 boxes have been installed at 17 locations where the bee was recorded during my survey in 2007 and at a couple of other sites where Murdo Macdonald has regularly seen it. We now just need a bit of prolonged sunshine during June (the bee needs temperatures of more than 16 deg C) and for the wee bee to find one or more boxes to its liking. In addition, I have drilled out a few Scots pine logs (right) with 6, 8 and 10mm holes and installed these to see if they might also be to the bees liking.

Installing the boxes had the added benefit of visiting a few locations where I hadn’t been for a while, including parts of the Forestry Commissions forest at Inshriach, Bognacruie at Abernethy and the wonderfully boggy woodland at Monadh Mor north of Inverness. The last run was to Culbin Forest near Forres. A singing whitethroat was the only bonus on a wet and windy day at Inshriach, and I witnessed an insect expert in action when I was joined by Murdo Macdonald at Monadh Mor where we saw our first white-faced darter dragonfly (Leucorrhinia dubia) for the year. The visit to Culbin was different as the bee was found here by the late Gill Nisbet and I had to spend quite a bit of time looking for the best stands of bird’s-foot trefoil before installing the boxes. One wander took me towards a boggy bit of land in an ex-quarry where an unusual clubmoss – Lycopodium inundatum the marsh clubmoss grows. A wee detour and I was in the quarry and there, creeping across the wet gravel, were lots of new shoots of the clubmoss (left). Culbin never fails to amaze me. Here we have a mainly conifer wood growing on former sand dunes but with nearly all the rarer pinewood plants present, and here in a fairly recently worked quarry, one of our rarer clubmosses. How did it and all the other plants get there? Amazing. After installing bee boxes near Loch a’ Chnuic in Abernethy a walk up one of the wee burns took me close to the highest sand martin colony I know of locally at 440m above sea level, and with about 20 holes (right) the birds seem to be doing quite well.

Nearer to home Loch Morlich on the way to Cairngorm used to be a site locally for the clubmoss but having made several visits to the shores of the loch, I hadn’t managed to re-find it. Inspired by how easy the bright green new growth at Culbin was to see, I thought another visit to Morlich might pay dividends so a couple of evenings later I made my way to the loch. Nothing could be found in the boggy hollow between the road and the loch so I paddled my way across the loch’s outflow and searched the shore and adjacent boggy bits. The first thing that caught my eye was long-leaved sundew (left Drosera anglica), quite a good population right on the shore. This a fairly rare plant in our area. In fact as I walked along there were quite a few small clumps of this plant but not a sign of the clubmoss. An egg floating in the water looked like goldeneye or goosander – both were present on the loch, as was a distant wailing red-throated diver. In one boggy area a nice patch of flowering cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus) but just too dark to get a decent photo. As I pushed my way through a few stunted bog-pines I found quite an amazing bog with a slight flow of water. On most of the wee “islands” I could see lots and lots of long-leaved sundew, perhaps the mother and father of those plants on the loch shore. However, some groups of sundews looked a little bit different, the leaves were neither as round and prostrate as the plentiful round-leaved sundew, but neither were they tall, and a bit curled, like the long-leaved plants, the leaves were best described as “paddle” shaped (right). Being early in the growing season I thought I was just looking at young plants of the long-leaved sundew but just in case I carefully removed one and popped it into my container for checking. All around the sticky leaves had plenty of insect “food” attached to them – hence their collective name as insectivorous plants (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivorous_plant for a description). It should really have been pretty obvious, growing side by side were round-leaved and long-leaved sundews and in between was a perfect hybrid called Drosera x obovata (right) named as “Ivan’s Paddle”, and it had even been recorded from this area in 1956. 1956! I think the keen botanists need to get out a bit more.

So, as is usual with me I wondered if the one known site in Abernethy with both sundews present, might also have Ivan’s Paddle amongst them. The hybrid plants found weren’t as big and bold as the Morlich ones, but the paddle shape was obvious so a new species was added to the RSPB list. Anywhere else? A check with BSBI colleague Andy produced another couple of local sites where long-leaved sundews had been recorded in the past and usually if the rarer one is present the common round-leaved should also be there. I failed to find anything at one site but the other site, in the hills above Aviemore, turned up all three species along with a pair of nesting greylag geese, a few flimsy flowering spikes of alpine meadow rue and the rare moss Dicranum bergerii, though a group of Bryologists had found this moss in the same general area a few years earlier. So you know what the moral of this tale is – remember to look for Ivan if you see the other two species present. The photo above should help you with L to R, long-leaved, round-leaved and Ivan’s Paddle (D x obovata).

Installing the bee boxes also had another major spin-off. As a trial I put up 5 boxes at one of the Osmia sites close to the Speyside Way in Abernethy Forest. Job complete I walked a few adjacent tracks to see if there were any good patches of bird’s-foot trefoil where another group of boxes could be installed. Along the side of one track were large mounds of spoil left over from the time the track was installed about 10 years ago and they looked like they could provide a home for brown shield-moss capsules (Buxbaumia aphylla). Sure enough, there were a couple of capsules on one mound and a few more on the next, quite a find I was thinking. Compared to the major finds of the rarer green shield-moss, few brown shield-moss capsules have been found in recent years, so I was feeling quite pleased with myself. A few hundred metres along the track and the verge itself also looked suitable and as I looked down I first saw a dozen capsules (left), then a few more, and a few more. A quick count gave a figure of around 150 capsules, something probably unheard of in the UK. I returned a couple of days later with pegs and tapes to do a “proper” count and thankfully, a hand tally counter because after a couple of hours of bent over counting the track had revealed it was home to 680 capsules, definitely unheard of before in the UK.

Just as the last of the bee boxes was installed (20th to 23rd) we had lying snow down to 1500’, sleet on the A9 and winds of over 100 miles per hour on the summit of Cairngorm. What happened to the hot weather we enjoyed in April? This change to cool, windy weather made for poor results from the butterfly transect after such a promising start to the season, and the weekly weather forecast had to be studied quite a bit to ensure some of the ongoing bird surveys could be carried out in reasonable conditions. Not ideal. The second round of visits were made to the BTO breeding bird survey squares with little to report apart from more flowering cranberry (right) but in the dawn daylight this time. I also accepted a request to undertake a farm bird survey (mainly waders + other key species) for a local farmer needing breeding bird information for a grant application he was making. “Within an hour of dawn….” states the survey rules, and with 3 visits to be made, each start time got progressively earlier. The farm is in a known good wader area so the possibility of good numbers of breeding lapwings, oystercatchers and curlews was appealing. Wrong! The farm comprises a mix of stock, crop and heathery bog totalling more than 100ha. All three species are present but with just 1 family of lapwings, 1 family of oystercatchers + 1 on eggs and possibly 1 family of curlews, this is nothing less than a disaster. There should be dozens of successful waders in this area but something dramatic is or has happened and even the farmer is wondering where his birds have gone to. Personally I think we are seeing the results from a slow but progressive change from wader friendly farming to the modern mono-crop system and despite the farmer saying we are not doing any different crop rotations now to 20 years ago, subtly I think lots of things have changed. Someone needs to really get to the bottom of what is happening otherwise the loss of ALL the skylarks (do you remember them?) over the last 20 years will be followed very shortly by all the waders. A ‘Silent Spring’ is not that far away and no-one seems to care. The big problem is that the folk who know what is happening are those who walk the miles and see and record things, the folk who are trying to “address” the issue tap out tales of woe on their PC’s from within their offices. Sorry, but it is depressing.

Despite the weather there are lots of family parties of birds in the forests locally, 3 families of crested tits on one outing last week along with all the coal tits and treecreepers, and around the house blue and great tits and the family of robins from next to the chalet. After a depressing meeting about houses planned for School Wood in the village, I hopped on my bike and pedalled onto the Dorback Estate to re-visit the area close to the Bridge of Brown lime-kiln in the last Diary. This is my third visit to the area in the last few weeks to try and find a plant that hasn’t been seen at its previously known locations for 15 years, and if you take into account records in the wider area, 30 to 50 years. Most of these older records didn’t have the benefit of modern GPS recording equipment and are quite often given as 10 kilometre map square locations, or 1 km or 2 km squares, so there can be lots of potential sites to search. The plant is the hairy stonecrop Sedum villosum, and is one that keen botanists locally know of its decline and a few have had a go at finding it. On my last visit I had a pretty good description (at the top of a small waterfall) of where it had been seen by a couple of well known botanists in 1972, but nothing was found. Vegetation local to the site had obvious signs of sheep grazing, so this could be part of the plants demise. It likes to grow on the gravels by small streams or on wet rocks in similar situations, so it’s a case of starting at the bottom end of any running water and them make your way up the hill searching as you go. The bike ride out along the moorland track was quite eerie with very little bird song to be heard. Lapwings had chicks on improved grassland by another lime-kiln and close to where I was going to start my search (the waterfall again) there was a very noisy curlew with chicks. Thankfully it got used to me and quietened down. Again, nothing at the small waterfall site nor in the next gully with a wee stream, though the moschatel (Town Hall clock above right) from an earlier visit were a bit sheep nibbled. The next wee stream looked really suitable in patches with lots of wet gravel but it was only when I looked closely at something growing from the rock that I though I had found what I was looking for (left). The plant was certainly a stonecrop with the characteristic “inflated” looking leaves, but to be sure I would need to see if the alternately growing leaves were “glandular-pubescent” meaning that on the tip of each leaf hair there was a tiny drop of liquid (enlarge photo to see). With my hand-lens this feature was confirmed and amazingly, hidden under a tiny rock outcrop was a single stem of hairy stonecrop. Phew! Being a single plant I couldn’t remove anything so my evidence would have to be obtained through my camera lens – thankfully I had brought the bigger D80 + macro lense with me rather than the infuriating compact with its hit and miss method of focusing. I had to lean against and sit on wet rock to get the photo but to hell, what’s a wet bum after 15 years! And that was it, further searches of streams and runnels yielded nothing, so the current population remains at a single plant - still a bit more searching to do.

That’s it until after the longest day, enjoy the read.

Stewart & Janet

Fire tender heading to try and save Rab's Forest Lodge sawmill

Narrow-bordered Bee hawk-moth visiting Firwood honesty flowers

Wow, chickweed wintergreen in afternoon sun

All photos © Stewart Taylor