Conon Bridge, Highland Region, Scotland, the bird of prey killing capital of Britain!

I write this blog having just returned from a rally in Inverness, organised by the RSPB, in protest at the recent killing of 5 buzzards and 14, yes FOURTEEN, red kites near Conon Bridge at the northern end of the Black Isle.  There could be more.  The news of this killing spree broke on 25 March when 5 red kites and a buzzard were found dead but it was only after wider searches of the area by RSPB staff and the police that the full scale of the tragedy emerged.  I have to remind readers at this point that this is 2014 and not 1914, a date when just a few red kites were clinging

Piper Davy & "ghost" kites & buzzards at rally

on as UK breeders in a tiny area in Wales, the once widespread population having succumbed to persecution during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  All the dead birds were found in a two square mile area to the south-east of Conon Bridge, toxicology tests have shown that 9 of the kites and 3 of the buzzards were poisoned.  This is the largest single find of dead birds of prey in many decades.  To date, there has been no arrests of those responsible but hopefully there will be something more positive to report in the next blog.

The first week of March was spent in Lancashire visiting Janet’s mum and catching up with family.  Pub lunches were to the fore with mystery tours along quiet country lanes extending the outing until late afternoon as mum recalled “cycling along here” and “if you follow that footpath

Young cuckoo pint leaves

down there it will take you to Grindleton”.  Her memory for walking and cycling routes hasn’t diminished despite her 90+ years and it was a great joy to be guided along the narrow, wooded lanes.  An hour at the end of each afternoon allowed a little time to add locations for knopper galls, beechmast candlesnuff, witches butter and shining cranesbill.  The young leaves of bluebells and cuckoo pint (lords-and-ladies) were everywhere showing the first flowers of spring were not that far away.

Over the last couple of months I have been helping the local community team with text and photos for displays along the new village pond and birchwood walk and as we arrived home a request had landed in the “inbox” for a few more photos to complete the woodland display.  A search through the photo files and a bit of time at the garden feeders managed to fulfil the

Encalypta moss to be identified

request and by mid-March both displays were at the final draft stage.  Hopefully visitors to the village will find them interesting.  Having driven around the limestone areas of the Ribble Valley without visiting any whilst in Lancashire, I was in need of a “limestone” fix so an afternoon was spent in the old quarry near Tomintoul.  The outing provided more queries than answers in the form of Collema and Leptogium lichens with some requiring expert help (the heap is growing!) but a bonny wee moss on some rock ledges was identified as being of the Encalypta group and when the expert couldn’t identify from my photos a specimen was sent.  Possibly “Encalypta

Encalypta moss leaf x40

rhaptocarpa but it doesn’t look right” and because the moss capsules were fairly immature full identification will need to await the moss growing on for another month or two when the capsules should be mature.  However, the email ended with the words “that it could be something unusual” ensuring that I don’t forget to make a return visit.  Encalypta rhaptocarpa has the wonderful common name of Ribbed Extinguisher-moss.

Jonathan & Shaila with their find

As we were just about to leave Lancashire brother John informed us that Brent would be heading north again the following week to complete work at RAF Lossiemouth and he was hoping to get a lift with him.  So, three days after we arrived home John headed north once again wondering

no doubt if it would be possible to add a few “new finds” as on his first trip back In January.  As he arrived though, I had already arranged to meet Shaila and Jonathan from the Ranger staff at NTS Mar Lodge, keen to see my local sites for the green shield-moss.  By seeing the moss and a variety of locations where it grew, they were hoping to carry out some searches on the Mar

Green shield-moss

reserve in the hope of adding the moss to the reserve list of bryophytes.  The first site was a birch log followed by an ant nest where brown shield-moss was growing in the hope that both mosses

might be found on their reserve.  Next we dropped into a Norway spruce site where, to date, the most capsules at one multi-log site had been found.  It didn’t disappoint and as well as me showing them capsules on logs they managed to find their own, adding a couple of new logs to those previously found with the moss.  A wood ant nest with the moss was visited where a third capsule was found (extra pairs of eyes) before we headed down to the River Nethy to see a fallen goat willow with 60+ capsules.  To end their visit I took them to see some alder tree sites where the moss had been recorded previously but where currently no capsules had been seen.  Shaila

Welcome back!

soon cured that by finding a capsule on an ancient lump of alder which I had hoped in the past would one day be a site.  As we wandered a little further Jonathan was walking towards us saying he had just found a knife stuck in a tree!  Well, would you believe it, the Swiss army knife I thought had dropped out of my pocket last month had actually been left stuck in an alder tree, marking the location of an old green shield-moss capsule.  Well done and thank you Jonathan! 

Next day to Tulloch with brother John parking near the old telephone box before heading off to do a circuit of the Tulloch farms.  The hazels near Easter Tulloch were hanging thick with catkins and we spent about half an hour trying to get good backlit photos as well as pictures of early bees visiting the catkins.  Fieldfares were feeding in one field as were a pair of mistle thrushes –

Female hazel flowers

the breeding season was almost upon us.  A distant calling green woodpecker was unusual, a rare bird locally.  The sun was out, it was warm and we had lunch near the Mains of Tulloch watching pied wagtails leaping about trying to catch flies.  The next surprise occurred by the outbuildings at the farm – house sparrows!  Were they always here or were they just visiting?  Having lived in Tulloch in the past I thought that all the local house sparrows had long disappeared but here we had six birds behaving as though they lived here.  One to re-check in a month or two’s time.  Flowering dove’s-foot cranesbill was photographed by a bridge and I showed John the mass of scale insects found a year earlier on an aspen whilst checking lichens.  The tarmac road lead us back along one of the sections of my annual butterfly transect before

Grianan 1977, just built

reaching Grianan, the house Janet and myself first lived in when we came to Loch Garten in 1976.  We discussed the photo of my mum with Janet and my uncle standing at the end of the

Grianan 2014. It's there somewhere!

track installed by yours truly to allow the new house to be built.  Having sorted through many of dad’s slides, added to by some I sent to him, John remembered the photo, so we did a re-take with me standing where my mum had been in the original just to show how the woodland around the house had developed in the last thirty-odd years.  What a change, with the house hardly visible now from the tarred road.  We cut back along a track from Tigh Ban towards the car when I spotted a small wood ant nest that looked interesting and providing the final find for

Brown shield-moss Buxbaumia aphylla

the day a new location for the brown shield-moss (Buxbaumia aphylla), just two capsules, but as last time, outings with John seem to turn up something new.  Something unwelcome also turned up – the first tick of the year.  Next day we headed for Abernethy Forest planning to walk the Rynettin circuit.  Heading up to Rynettin an old birch tree with a dark stain caught my eye, the stain being caused by an old sap-run.  These stains are always worth checking and as I examined the edges of the brown stain I could just make out the shape of pin-head lichens which I pointed

John & his Sclerophora find

out to John.  As I took a GPS reading and photo John said “there’s more round this side” and sure enough the whole side of the tree was covered in Sclerophora peronella pinheads.  Well done John.  I thought it would be worth photographing the big population also and as I went about this task John pointed down to something growing on a fallen birch branch buried a little in the ground vegetation that I had disturbed.  A small white fungus was growing out of the slightly rotten branch and when I checked it with my hand-lens I could see what looked like tiny blobs of

The dewdrop bonnet

liquid all along the stem of the fungus.  “This looks like something I’ve seen in the fungus book, possibly dew-drop fungus?” I suggested.  So, very carefully a sample was taken and packed in moss in my collecting box, trying to retain the drops of water in the stems in situ.  One for later.  Lunch was taken at Rynettin watching a few mistle thrushes feeding in the field and having a good look at the drying kiln section of the old farm building, now an archeologically important

Hemimycena tortuosa stipe hair

link with our past.  A quick scan of the mountain tops produced a distant golden eagle as we headed off down the track back to the car.  Back home a check of the fungi guide showed that I was in the right area re a name for the fungus – the dewdrop bonnet (Hemimycena tortuosa) but only fully confirmed once the spores had been checked along with spending some time finding the cork-screw hairs on the stem (stipe) of the fungus.  Another interesting link re this fungus is that the late Peter D. Orton, long-term Abernethy fungi recorder, was the first person to describe it.

This month saw the loss of support for the excellent Windows XP operating system on my laptop, and though I gather it will still work, there are likely to be problems with security.  So a new laptop arrived, complete with Windows 7 so it was goodbye to the very simple and functional XP to the most complicated set of symbols, boxes etc in Word and Excel – this, we are told, is progress.  Much faster processing yes, but why so much clutter and searching for how to carry out a simple operation like “print selection” in Excel.  One good bit of help from Microsoft was free access to PC Mover Express which, when downloaded onto old and new laptops, moved

Young aspen catkins

all the files in an operation that took 5 hours!  Having typed this blog I just hope that it will be visible on your screens once launched.  Data entering was also caught up with later in the month with a slight muscle strain after gate lifting ensuring I stayed put for a few days.  Gentle walking helped so the perfect excuse for visits to the nearby stands of aspen to see if any catkins had started to appear in what was predicted to be a good flowering year.  Scanning the trees by the play-park and football field failed to find anything and the mature trees by the village river walk were bare.  However, the old faithfuls on Dell Road by the church were showing signs of catkins  bursting forth and another couple of older trees nearer the village hall also looked promising, though all the young catkins were quite high up.  As mentioned in earlier blogs most aspens regenerate from underground suckers so are genetically the same as the mature, surrounding trees.  These stands of identical trees are then described as “clones” and by studying the clones

Older aspen catkins (female)

over the years it has been possible, at catkin/flowering time, to determine whether the clones are male trees or female trees (dioecious) and whether stands of male and female trees are close enough together to allow fertile seed to be produced.  Trees actually flowering is a rare event and, with many stands of male and female trees often far apart, the production of seed is even rarer so checking the trees through this growing season can only continue to add to our knowledge of where the two sexes are, allowing for a little bit of infill planting of males or females to help with seed production in the future. 

The statement “we have to feed a growing world population” continues to destroy habitats locally for our farmland waders and driving back from Grantown one day I could see lots of rough grassland being burnt off removing typical curlew breeding habitat and the invertebrate populations it supported.  As I crossed the Spey by Broomhill Bridge I also witnessed the final

Wader habitat goes under the plough

area of damp, rush dominated grassland being put under the plough completing the removal of all the areas at Coulnakyle Farm favoured by our “nationally” (now becoming a joke) important Strathspey wader population.  Puzzled lapwings, oystercatchers and curlews watched on.  Re-visiting a few days later a lapwing had decided to “go for it” and was preparing a nest site in amongst the plough-lines (a good nest site) unaware that within days the ploughed ground would be revisited to convert the nest site into a finer tilth ready for sowing the seeds probably for a crop of barley to continue to “feed the world”.  I thought that birds, their nests and eggs

Hey, you've missed a bit!

were protected by law, and no doubt if the farmer saw me pinching the lapwing’s eggs I would end up in court.  Should the lapwings persist with their nesting attempt, which they are likely to do, then they will need to watch out for the heavy roller that will arrive to ensure a flat field, squashed eggs but a good crop.  Am I missing something?  This will be followed by applications of fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides ensuring a nice, clean crop.  The conservation organisations continue to deliver fine words and “initiatives” whilst the annual loss of wader habitat continues apace.  Sorry… rant over!

Red and roe deer poo continued to test and puzzle me as more of the tiny urchin like fungi were found growing on dung deposited in the slightly damper areas.  The new finds didn’t look like the orange Lasiobolus macrotrichus fungus found last month.  One of the new ones was faintly orange whilst the other was white and under the microscope whilst the spores looked similar, the pointed hairs didn’t.  Guidance from expert Liz put me in the right direction suggesting I should also check for the species Cheilymenia as well as Lasiobolus and then everything fell into place. 

Lasiobolus ciliates (white) low left & x2 Cheilymenia fimicola right

The whitish one turned out to be Lasiobolus ciliates and the pale orange one Cheilymenia fimicola.  Sorry to go a little further along the dung line but it’s quite amazing what happens when you keep a few animal dung pellets in a wee tub with a bit of water to keep them damp.  Slowly the “bigger” species mentioned earlier (if you can class something 2mm diameter big) started to decline and I was just about to throw them out when I noticed the ideal growing conditions had brought out another tiny fungus, and unlike the other species with round discs

Coprinopsis cordispora - an inkcap about x40

with no stems (these are ascomycetes) the new fungus had a stem and a cap, a genuine Agaric-type fungus, but in miniature form.  Could I do anything with this?  Unsure, the wee tub was put to one side and forgotten about for a few days.  Eventually I remembered about the tub and contents and on removing the lid I found lots of tiny fungi some a few millimetres high just emerging and other about 2 cm tall and bent over with a few stuck to the side of the tub.  It was the latter that provided the clue that would lead to their identification, the stems of the bent

Coprinopsis cordispora spores x600

fungus and the side of the tub were covered in tiny black dots that looked a bit ink-like.  Could this be an inkcap?  So small?  The Collins photographic guide to mushrooms and toadstools didn’t help but the other Collins Fungi Guide with hand drawings but very detailed text did.  The spores also helped, and before going near the internet I had already seen that they were slightly angular (I’d thought 5 sided) and had what I called a “pip” (germ pore) and book and internet lead me to Coprinopsis cordisporus, an inkcap found on herbivore dung.  Phew!

The month ended with a trip north to the Highland Biological Recording Group’s Spring Gathering in Strathpeffer where, along with the normal business side of the meeting there were two brilliant presentations.  The first, given by Stephen Moran (a brilliant invertebrate specialist) covered the life of a past member of the group the late Philip Entwistle.  This fascinating talk covered Philips life as a leader in the field of insect pathology, working for the Government body Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), before retiring to live in the Highlands near the

The harvestman Megabunus diadema identified by Hayley

Spinningdale oakwoods in Sutherland.  Here, his passion for insects and insect breeding and recording lead to hundreds of new records, a species new to science and many papers on the species he studied.  Stephen is currently working his way through Philips insect collections, sorting and cataloguing before the whole collection is deposited with the national collections in Edinburgh.  The second talk was by Hayley Wiswell on spiders and the recently formed Highland Spider Group.  With few people recording spiders in our area Hayley was hoping that by covering some of the common and not so common species and by having a “try to find” list a few more folk might be tempted into the field of spider identification.  An inspirational talk with an outing planned for later in the year to seek out a few species.

The last big outing of the month sent me off trying to re-find a bonny wee plant called shining cranesbill (Geranium lucidum) as well as trying to get a photo of the aptly named golf club moss (Catoscopium nigritum).  The area, close to the A939 Tomintoul road has been visited by myself a few times in the past undertaking moss and lichen hunts.  As well as trying to photograph the moss I was checking to ensure I hadn’t missed a couple of other lichens found recently in other

Unidentified snails on £1 coin

lime-rich areas.  The rapid drop of 220m from road to the small burn starting point was the easy bit, with the ascent on the opposite side of the burn a climb back to the starting height.  Nothing new was found by the old lime kiln or on the surrounding rocks so I made my way to a small seepage running from the hillside where very lime-rich water runs down the hill.  The remains of tiny snails were found in the small runnels so a few were photographed to see if expert Richard could identify any.  Treading very carefully I started to look for the moss eventually finding it on the slightly drier parts of the flush.  The next tricky bit was getting a photo without getting too wet achieved by kneeling on my orange survival bag.  One target species found, one to go, though the second would be much trickier, the grid reference for the flower was pre-GPS and gave an approximate 100m square to work in.  This flower can be found in quite a few sites but

The golf club moss Catoscopium nigritum

not many are classed as “natural” many plants having become established from garden stock.  At this reasonably remote site and with a genuinely lime loving flora all around, the plant was classed as truly native so it would be good to know if it was still present.  Having seen the plant at its other natural site near Huntly’s Cave I had a rough idea of where to look, but after about an hour of wandering up and down rocks and scree I was thinking of making my way back to the car.  Faced with a dense stand of juniper I had to decide whether to go left by the rocks or right by the burn, I chose left.  A good decision and as I skirted the junipers I spotted the tell-tale

Shining cranesbill re-found

leaves of the cranesbill, not a lot, but enough plant leaves to know that this must by the location recorded as “in small quantity” by the late, great Mary McCallum Webster in 1974.  There was frog spawn in some of the small pools by the burn and after thanking the site for a good day out I turned for the half hour climb back to the road.  It was easier climbing through an area of birches but the route produced another small burn to cross with a moss and lichen covered rock in its middle.  Always worth a glance and as I checked the side of the rock I couldn’t believe my

Peltigera venosa lichen

eyes when the tell-tale signs of small round growths on the edge of greenish “leaves” suggested Peltigera venosa (fan lichen) something I had only seen twice before.  A very strange place to be growing on a rock in a burn, and with evidence that the rock became inundated after heavy rain, but that’s what I was looking at and, for a change, there was quite a good population rather than the tiny scraps of the lichen found previously.  A nice find and the climb back to the road didn’t seem so bad buoyed with this last find of the day.

That’s it for another month, enjoy the read.

Stewart and Janet

Bird of prey killings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-26990764 more news at bottom of the BBC webpage:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/rspb-increase-reward-to-26000-after-13-red-kites-and-four-buzzards-found-dead.1397040147?utm_source=www.heraldscotland.com&utm_medium=RSS%20Feed&utm_campaign=Scottish%20News :

http://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/269352-birds-including-a-buzzard-and-five-red-kites-found-dead-in-the-highlands/ for the start of the tragedy:

Highland Biological Recording Group

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Latest.html

and how to join HBRG

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/MainPages/joinHBRG.htm

Hayley Wiswell Spider ID chart via HBRG

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/MainPages/OrbWebSpiders.pdf

 

Robin in garden

A micro-moth Amblyptilia acanthadactyla

Grandson Harry on a roll

Photos © Stewart Taylor

Elf-cups, drumsticks and a heavenly ending with links to the BBC!

Out with Janet the other day we had two oystercatchers fly by and I saw my first inland lapwing at the end of the month.  Lots of birds are now starting to sing and the faithful great spotted woodpecker is back drumming near the house.  Despite reasonable weather through February the birds are still plentiful in the garden emptying the seed feeders each day and hammering away at the extra large fat-cakes that I make and put out on the ground.  Interestingly, the woodpigeons and pheasants have also taken a fancy to the fat-cake

Starling on fat-cake

reducing the cake to crumbs during the course of a day, often aided by visiting jackdaws and rooks.  Running out of lard for the fat-cake sent me scurrying off down to the post office only to find they don’t stock the stuff so I nipped round to Mr Mustard’s famous butchers shop and came home with a couple of tubs of dripping.  The “new” cakes are now so hard they last for days and the birds are probably getting a better source of nutrition as they dig for currants buried in the fat.  Richard and Peta rang early one morning from the chalet to report three bramblings at the chalet feeder but they didn’t stay for long.  I have also seen my first frog of the year crossing a road, and whilst visiting daughter Ruth, a toad was on the move possible

Photographers at Loch Mallachie

heading for a nearby breeding pond.  The days are lengthening and spring (hopefully) is on its way.  Despite this increase in “other” species on the go the main bread and butter species remain mosses, fungi and lichens, the latter, thankfully, changing little, despite the season and a group worthy of tempting me out to go looking.  The Loch Garten gull mystery goes on and two visits made to see if any were roosting failed to find any at all.  Perhaps the pickings at the Aviemore landfill site are just too good and the birds are staying nearer their main food supply.  On my last visit in slightly drizzly conditions I was surprised to see a gang of folk, in the

A rainy Loch Mallachie!

gathering gloom, right down at Loch Mallachie.  My hopes that they might have seen passing gulls was aimed at the wrong folk – they were there to learn all about landscape photography, but with most cameras covered with towels and poly bags and the far edge of the loch only just visible, it would have been interesting to see if anyone ended up with a memorable shot.  A pity really, because Mallachie often produces nice evening photos. 

Once again the garage visit for car servicing paid dividends.  Leaving the car I headed off down the River Spey, knowing roughly where I would be going but with little knowledge of what would be found along the way in this seldom visited area.  I had just reached the path along the bank of the river when my first stop was made to photo and GPS the location of an unusual fungus growing on a fallen Scots pine branch.  Initially, this fungus resembled those of a jelly/brain type which featured in the last blog, but despite this one having a jelly like appearance on the outside,  its inner core is very white and quite hard.  It does though look enough like a brain for me to have nicknamed it “pine brain” it’s  common name

Tremella encephala cut in half

however is trembling brain.  This one is Tremella encephala (encephala I gather means brain) and is most often found on dead conifer branches.  These branches often play host to another common fungus Stereum sanguinolentum and my pine brain is a parasite of this fungus, often completely covering it host species.  Cutting it in half helps identify it, the hard white inner contrasting markedly with the brownish/pink gelatinous outer.  A good start to the walk.  Further down river I started to notice quite a few aspens mixed in with mainly birches so of course a visit was needed to see if any had anything unusual growing on them.  Too open, too dry, a bit young, not sure but very little of note was found apart from the regular lichens.  Heading up from the river past a very posh fishing hut (the reason I could now see, why hundreds of metres of the

A brilliant display of Peltigera britannica

river bank had been mown!) I reached the end of a track which would lead me back towards the garage.  A series of old quarry-like hollows just off the track tempted me in in the hope that there would be something unusual in the moss or lichen groups but nothing of note was found.  A small track lead away from the quarries and into quite a dense stand of junipers, heading I was hoping, towards one of the main tracks in the Anagach Community wood.  Just then my mobile rang with the man at the garage checking what needed to be done and whilst on the phone I had a look into one of the juniper bushes and found it had a good population of the lichen Nephroma parile on its main branches.  Phone call finished I delved a bit more and other interesting lichens were found on the juniper – time for a more serious look, so it was trouser legs to the outside of my wellies and jacket hood over my head as I pushed my way into the thicket of junipers. 

Lasiobolus macrotrichus on roe deer droppings

Despite these precautions some juniper needles found their way up my sleeves and occasionally penetrated my trousers, but overall it wasn’t too bad.  I was just hoping that no one was watching!  Quite quickly my journey into the junipers paid off when I found a tiny patch of Peltigera britannica and the more I searched the more I found, some growing from juniper branches and some growing up from the ground in leafy prominence.  What an unusual location for this lichen, but then how many folk have shoved their way into

Lasiobolus macrotrichus hairs x600

juniper bushes to have a look… more about that anon.  With a bit of care, it was possible to pick a route through the bushes to the next gap and it was fairly obvious that roe deer are just as daft as I am, as indicated by their droppings.  If you are not into droppings – look away now!  On one set of droppings I could see the oval pellets were covered in tiny white spots and when I checked a pellet with my hand-lens I

Lasiobolus macrotrichus asci & spores x1000

could see that the spots belonged to a tiny fungus, a bit like mini sea urchins.  So camera out, photo taken, and several pellets popped into a tube for checking later.  Back home the roe pellets were wetted a little and covered so the fungus wouldn’t dry out and once under the microscope I was able to see the real beauty of this dung-munching fungus.  Each fruiting body was about 1mm in diameter and the hairs growing out from the main body were up to 0.8mm in length.  Once a bit was “squashed”, lots of spores were found, time to put my most recent purchase into action – Ascomycetes in Colour by Peter I. Thompson.  Despite the book I was still left with a choice of Lasiobolus ciliatus or macrotrichus, so a bit of help was needed from expert

Emerging from the Degelia plumbea juniper bush

Liz who confirmed the latter, with few records locally.  More juniper bush delving lead to a find of more Nephroma lichens but also Degelia plumbea in Abernethy, the second time I have found this rare lichen locally on juniper in Abernethy.  Other searches though cost me my brilliant Swiss army knife, as it slid out of my pocket whilst crawling through more bushes in Abernethy.  Must learn to zip up ALL pockets whilst undertaking future bush crawling!

Early in the month I attended my first meeting of the Highland Biological Recording Group as a committee member, quite interesting to see how this very active group operates.  Main commitment was to organise a tooth fungus outing in September so just have to hope we get enough, but not too much rain, in July and August to ensure a better fruiting season than 2013.  Perhaps the most unusual outing for me was

Waiting for the doors to open

accompanying Janet to Johnstons of Elgin for their annual tweed/fabric sale and as we queued waiting for the doors to open, I wondered what I had let myself in for.  The doors opened and in we went, Janet collecting rolls and pieces of tweed and me following Sherpa-like, carrying the chosen items.  Job done, material purchased for Janet’s tweed crafts, and time for a well deserved coffee before heading off, back down the road.  A trip up the road to Carrbridge to check the recently closed sawmill for any bargain basement fence posts turned out to be a failure in that respect but quite useful in another.  Finding the sawmill now completely closed I drove on to the end of the road at Dalnahaitnach and spent a useful hour on the huge river sand and shingle deposits along the edge of the River Dulnain.  It was obviously a Peltigera month because in several places P. leucophlebia was found, one patch in identical leafy prominence just like

Peltigera leucophlebia another great display

its close relative found in the Grantown woods.  As I arrived back home for lunch Janet informed me that the Strathspey Railway had just been on the Scottish news, showing the main sections of the new bridge over the River Dulnain being lifted into place.  This bridge is the current major project being undertaken by the railway staff and volunteers. The railway continues to replace the rails and infrastructure required as it makes its way to its final destination in Grantown on Spey, with the crossing of the A95 trunk road still to be finally worked out.  I hadn’t heard about the railway bridge being ready to lift into place so had missed the opportunity to

Installing the bridge over the River Dulnain

photo the biggest girders being lifted. Knowing the site it seemed fairly obvious that the crane and workmen would be there for the day if not more, so the camera gear was packed in the car and with lunch in hand I headed for the work-site.  Lots of people had had the same thoughts as me, probably after seeing the lunch-time news, and the roadside verge and adjacent field had lots of parked cars.  As I made my way down to the railway line I could see that the most enormous rail-mounted crane was still in place, lifting in the other sections of the bridge, along with lots of workmen in their bright orange jackets and overalls.  Over the next half hour the bridge, crane and workmen were photographed from all angles, recording the latest hurdle to be crossed by the railway company as the line makes its way slowly towards Grantown.  A few days later we both headed north for a day out at Nairn, stopping along the way for a bite to eat at a garden centre on the outskirts of the town.  As we approached the lunch stop Janet pointed out a footpath sign by a bridge crossing the River Nairn indicating a riverside path running the three or four miles to Cawdor, perhaps worth checking out later.  Lunch over we debated whether to buy our seed potatoes now or next month and in the end came away with just a packet of parsnip seeds.  We parked up by the bridge and made our way onto the riverside path wandering through an amazing mix of trees, mostly quite old Poplars, possibly black poplar (Populus x Canadensis).  The first flowers to greet us were masses of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), naturalised escapees and from what we could see there were two varieties, the usual form and the double petalled ‘flore pleno’ variety, all quite a bit ahead of our own flowers in the garden.  Wandering off the path a little to look at a fallen log I came across the most amazing sight, a fallen tree covered in lots of brilliantly red fruiting bodies of the scarlet elf-cup fungus, a species I had only seen a couple of times before.  Previously I had found up to ten fruiting bodies but on this log, and on other logs nearby there were masses, certainly several hundred – an amazing sight.  From earlier finds I was aware that there is the possibility of two species of scarlet elf-cup locally, neither common, so a specimen would have to be taken home to check.  Under the microscope lots of spores were found but the critical feature was the type of “hairs” on the under-side of the cup, straight hairs and it would be Sarcoscypha coccinea (ruby elf-cup), curly hairs and it would be S. austriaca.  It turned out to be the latter with the bonus being some of the spores had “budded” lots of secondary spores, a confusing find until I managed to find a reference to this occurrence in the Collins Fungi Guide.

Sarcoscypha coccinea on deadwood

Sarcoscypha coccinea spore & secondary spores

Event of the month, year, decade, displayed itself on the 27 February.  A few nights earlier daughter Laura had phoned to say that there were reports of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) being seen in some areas in northern Scotland and that someone had posted a picture of a faint glow in the northern skies somewhere close to Boat of Garten, just up the road.  A similar call the following night tempted me to dash to the lower car park on Cairngorm but all to no avail.  The phone call on the evening of 27^th though was very different – “It’s happening now, it’s amazing, wow, go out asap to see it….” and within minutes I was in the car

The best part of the Aurora Borealis display

complete with camera and tripod, heading out of Nethybridge so as to lose the street lights and to get a better view of the northern sky.  Before I had stopped I could see the vivid greens of the Aurora very clearly and something I had tried hard for years to see was there before me shimmering brilliantly over the low hills to the north.  Car parked, lights off, camera out and pointing north, then north-west then north-east, pointing the camera to where the most vivid colours were occurring.  The predominant colour was green with the occasional addition of red, the semi-circular display being topped by a reddish glow.  At 8.15pm the colours

The main Aurora display

became very bright and to the north-east a lot of red started to appear.  A few folk had stopped their car in a lay-by on the other side of the road and all you could hear was “Amazing, Wow, Look at That” as the reds and greens became ever more vivid.  Pictures were being recorded by the camera every 15 to 20 seconds, the time it was taking to make each exposure, and looking at the camera screen it was obvious that it was recording much more colour than was obvious to the naked eye.  By 8.30pm the red colour was less intense and by 8.45 the Aurora was predominantly green with faint redness still visible above the outer arc of the display.  The lights of a house at the end of the track on which I had parked made a nice focal point as I tried to continue to capture the most intense areas of the display, and the glow of light from Grantown helped to distinguish the contour of the hills.  By 9.15 I had just about exhausted the photo options and with the Aurora starting to fade I thought it time to nip back home to see what the photos looked like just in case I needed to go back out to take more.  The 8.15 photos were the most vivid and colourful and whilst still viewing them

Martine Croxall about to announce the "stunning photo"

on my laptop I decided to email a couple off to BBC Pictures just to see if I could emulate Laura who managed to get a snow drift photo onto their gallery a year or so ago.  Job done, or so I thought until the phone rang, with a lady from the BBC asking for a little more information about the location of the photo, whether genuine (not photo-shopped) etc, and it was only when I had put the phone down that I realised I hadn’t asked where the photo might be shown.  The 10-o’clock news was just ending so I thought it might be shown to introduce the weather forecast, and whilst the Aurora was mentioned the photo wasn’t shown.  It would probably be on the viewers’ gallery so I let Laura know what had happened.  She emailed back to say that my photo had been “tweeted” by BBC News and that by 10.30pm 1450 folk had seen it and re-tweeted it (though not too sure what all that means!).  Perhaps it would be on the weather forecast on BBC News 24, so whilst sorting out  a couple of fungi from earlier in the day I had the news on in the

The "stunning photo from Nethybridge" on TV

background.  And then it happened...  In the background I could hear Martine Croxall mention that the Beeb was getting lots of reports about the evening’s Aurora Borealis and here were a few photos sent in by viewers.  I think there were five in all and the last one was “this stunning photo from Nethybridge”!  I just failed to get my camera operating in time to capture the event from the TV screen, so I carried on working away until at half twelve the Aurora was mentioned again and this time I was ready.  I set the camera to Auto and fired off a couple of practice shots of Martine and as she said for the second time “this stunning photo from Nethybridge” I pressed the button and had my photo – of “the stunning photo”!  Amazingly the BBC News photo was re-tweeted 3151 times and was 1845 folks favourite.  What an evening and thank you Laura.

That’s it for another month, enjoy the read.  Hopefully everything will go okay, but with the ending of Windows XP everything currently is being moved to a new laptop where we will learn all about Windows 7 – fingers crossed for the next blog!  Sorry about the strange location of the scarlet elf-cup photos - beyond my control!

Stewart and Janet

Highland Biological Recording Group

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/Latest.html

and how to join HBRG

http://www.hbrg.org.uk/MainPages/joinHBRG.htm

Ascomycetes in Colour by Peter Thompson

http://www.thompson-ascomycetes.com/

Strathspey Railway

http://www.strathspeyrailway.co.uk/dnn/

 

Sparrowhawk in garden

Hazel catkins and pollen

A flooded Insh Marshes from Inshriach forest

They're back - Metacoleroa dickiei fungus on twinflower leaves

Drumsticks moss (Aulacomnium androgynum) on rotting wood

Photos © Stewart Taylor