A hill with a thousand holes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it, enjoy the read.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

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

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Late frost creates orchid disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it

All the best

Stewart & Janet

Firwood garden in full bloom

Our cottage on South Uist

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Late frost creates orchid disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it

All the best

Stewart & Janet

Is my daughter mad?

There was sad news last week when one of the Loch Garten osprey chicks died and staff on site were faced with the regular pleas to save it. A very difficult decision to make not to help out particularly when so many visitors and website visitors are seeing the chick being bullied by its larger siblings and its desperate struggle to hang on to life. In recent years this has happened twice before. On those occasions the chicks just about managed to survive but both were a week to ten days behind the stronger chick in learning to fly and even further behind when having to leave the nest to fend for themselves. They both departed the nest site but we had grave doubts about whether either survived for long after that. As we have seen on recent editions of Springwatch, nature in its rawest form can be very cruel and weakness in the fight for life often means that chicks will die. Sadly, this is what happened at the osprey site, the weakest chick being overwhelmed by its larger brothers or sisters. The two surviving chicks are doing very well and, tomorrow the chicks will be ringed and also each chick will be fitted with a satellite tracking device (left), the first time more than one chick at an osprey nest has gone through this process. Hopefully I will have a picture of the event for the next diary and in a couple of weeks you will be able to follow their progress via a dedicated website.

And, my mad daughter? On Saturday Ruth is taking on the Corrieyairick Challenge, 17 miles of walking and 26 miles of biking. See http://www.corrieyairack.org/ for what she is tackling. She is doing the event to raise money for Speyside Trust Badaguish who run a holiday centre for kids with special needs. She's looking for a bit of sponsorship so if you feel you could help go to http://www.justgiving.com/ruthtaylor3 and boost her total. She'll be on my bike so I've got the oiling and cleaning to do tomorrow before she does her last training ride. She said she would do this event so that she can fit into her wedding dress in October! There must be easier ways.

The first finishers are expected in Kincraig, just outside Aviemore from 12.30pm, just 4 hours after starting! I imagine Ruth and her team of Jo and Sarah won't arrive before 4pm. I just hope they all make it.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

It has been a good year for twinflower

All photos © Stewart Taylor

Things with long antennae

It has been an interesting but busy few weeks since the last diary entry, as the last one was penned the bird breeding season was in full swing and as I type away just now, there are young birds everywhere and for some birds the breeding season is over. Blink and you've missed it! At the Loch Garten osprey site all three eggs hatched successfully and the chicks have progressed reasonably well, though the youngest one is getting a bit of 'aggro' from it's bigger nest mates. Provided the male osprey brings in plenty of fish all should survive, though it's not unusual for some or all of a brood to be lost if insufficient food is brought in. Watch this space. By the end of the month the young ospreys will be ringed and, for the first time for the Garten chicks, fitted with satellite tracking devices. It will be very interesting to see for the first time, where the young birds get to as they start to find food for themselves in the local area, but, more interestingly, where they get to as they migrate south for the winter months.

As you will have seen by now, sections of the BBC's Springwatch programme was beamed live from Strathspey with Simon King fronting this section of the nightly programme. The BBC programme producers visited Abernethy way back in January to see what involvement the reserve should have, but from a long shopping list of needs just a few made it through to the programme. Crested tits featured regularly during the two weeks but when the nest close to Boat of Garten failed we were asked if we had anything that could act as a replacement. I had two nests which might have filled the gap but one was too far from the reserve track network and the other one was right by the road heading towards Loch Garten. The second nest was actually found by chalet guests Paul & Lesley as they walked back from the Osprey Centre and was just too public to film. Amazingly, the same Scots pine stump (right) was also used by cresties about fifteen years ago and featured on a 'live' taped interview that I did with a sound-recordist who wanted to incorporate information about the birds he was recording as well as sections of the birds calls and song. All those years ago the birds fledged young successfully but sadly this year, the nest suffered the same fate as the nest at Boat of Garten, predated by either great spotted woodpeckers, a pine marten or even a red squirrel. A day later I had another nest where the adults were feeding recently hatched young, and though the site was easily accessible, it was never filmed, the Grantown nestbox birds being the easier option to film activity inside the nest, something a little difficult to do with a natural nest site.

One pinewood speciality that did find favour however, was the timberman beetle, involving Rab and his forest based sawmill. I checked out the site and sure enough, there were several pairs of beetles visiting the uncut logs and the next day cameraman John Aitchieson and his assistant Sean Dugan were on site by early afternoon. Mating beetles were located and several single males and females were also on the logs. The timberman appeared in last year's diary (see "Rab and the timberman" 30 April 07). These spectacular beetles belong to the longhorn group of beetles with the timberman out-doing all the rest of the group by having enormously long antennae. In the male (right) the antennae can be up to six inches from tip to tip attached to a body that is only about an inch long, whilst in the female the antennae are about half that size. If you saw Springwatch then of course you will know all this! John filmed mating pairs, females laying their eggs under the pine logs bark and spectacular males wandering along the top of the logs. Simon appeared a few days later to do his bit to camera and of course, show a male beetle wandering across his hand - the only way to show just how big the beetles antennae actually are. Rab remains the star but sadly he didn't feature in the programme. He does though appear in my picture left. Thank you Rab.

Another insect has been in my thoughts during the last few weeks as the warmer weather of June started to develop - the large pinewood hoverfly Blera fallax. Sadly few pictures of the hoverfly are available so go to http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/species/casestudies/pinehoverfly.asp to see what it looks like. One day I would love to get the chance to photograph this fly but first I have to confirm that it still resides in the Abernethy pinewoods and then the difficult bit would be actually seeing an adult on the wing and getting close enough to it to take its picture! In earlier diaries I have covered some of the work I have been involved in by providing potential breeding 'pots' for the fly to use for egg-laying and larval rearing. To date none of the pots have been used so I moved on to the "Mark 3" breeding pot, well box actually. In the earlier 'pots' plastic containers have been used to hold the pinewood chips (being made left) and water that the hoverfly requires as a breeding site, the pot then being covered with a lid but with a hole for rainwater to enter to continue to maintain a pool of water over the chips. A few Scots pine stumps have also been hollowed out and filled with chips to try and create the same habitat. At the two sites in Strathspey where the hoverfly has been recorded in recent years, the latter artificial breeding hole has been used successfully (see http://www.mallochsociety.org.uk/blera-2003). So, my aim this time round, was to make a wooden 'pot', mimicking as closely as possible the pine stump site and similar to what the fly would use in the wild. Sadly, I still need a small amount of plastic film in the make up of the box (right), to ensure water is retained, but hopefully the sheer amount of wood will overcome any problems the small amount of plastic might create. Time will tell. A bit of June sun wouldn't go amiss either! When the sun has shone patches of bird's-foot trefoil have been visited to see if the small solitary bee Osmia uncinata is still with us on the reserve. It is, and so far it has been seen at three sites.

The 1st June was the time to start the second round of BTO Breeding Bird Atlas visits, the first ones having been completed during April and May. I didn't hang about and by 6th June all five tetrads had been re-visited for the required two hours and the data forwarded to BTO. I continue to record birds seen anywhere else via the roving records database. One such visit walking from Firwood, along the B970 and back through Mondhuie Wood (Speyside Way) produced a list of 57 bird species and all within about a mile of the house. Whooper swan and raven were the more unusual species but it was nice to see a few more swifts and house martins flying overhead and a couple of sedge warblers chattering away. The second visit was also made to the BTO breeding bird square close to Grantown on Spey. The lack of birds on the moorland site is more than made up for by the wonderful patches of pink coloured sphagnum moss dotted with the leaves of cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) above. A meadow pipit erupting from your feet always indicates a nest and on this occasion the nest contained four eggs. The survey site is also a maintained grouse moor and evidence of predator control is regularly encountered. Legal methods of predator control include Larsen traps for crows, fox snares and fen traps in rocks, boxes etc to trap small mammals. So it was encouraging to see the latter method correctly used when on my last visit, even though to many people the method still causes offence. On this occasion the fen trap was installed on a log across a ditch and covered with weld mesh to ensure that birds and non-target species couldn't land on the trap. You do have to hope though that the springing of the trap kills the animal outright otherwise it suffers a long and lingering death hanging upside down, in the trap, suspended from the pole.

The last few weeks have seen all the puddles on the roads and the edges of the lochs turn an odd shade of yellow as the male pollen from the Scots pine trees has started to waft around the forest in search of flowers to fertilise. The general stillness of the weather has meant that this period has been a bit extended and on days when the wind did blow a little you would have thought parts of the forest were on fire as clouds of pollen was blown up above the trees looking a bit like smoke. As this has been happening the flowers from last year have been developing into new cones to provide the seed for regeneration, and for crossbill and squirrel food early next year. I couldn't resist a photo of one of the trees in all its energetic splendour.

As the BBC Springwatch team arrived in the area Janet and myself welcomed two great friends, Hugh and Sue Miles, back to the area where they had spent many happy but long hours working in the 1970s. When I joined the RSPB full-time in 1976, the RSPB ran a very successful films unit backed up by a great stills photo unit. Mike Richards was the stills camera man and Hugh was the film camera man. In the mid-1970s the Society embarked on a three year project to film the osprey in both its Scottish breeding sites and in the wintering area in north-west Africa and to ensure he was close to the action at all times Hugh, Sue and their family moved to Scotland for the duration of the filming period. There was great fun building high, no very high pylon hides to actually get close to the nesting ospreys and locating good fishing spots so that attempts could be made to film the birds actually catching fish. The latter efforts produced some of the most memorable footage ever of ospreys fishing and tested out the fairly new high-speed camera equipment to the limit, so that every movement was captured in superb "slow-mo". Everybody does it now, but at the time this was cutting edge stuff and developed Hugh's reputation as a cool, professional cameraman, always looking for the best angle or technique to show the animal being filmed at its absolute best. Following the success of the osprey film Hugh went freelance and went on to film locally, "The Great Wood of Caledon" where finding cresties, crossbills, insects and plants tested skills to the limit, again producing a superb film about the ancient Caledonian pinewood, its ecology and natural history. The book which accompanied the film is well worth buying if you ever come across one. Filming otters in Shetland, polar bears in the arctic and snow leopards in the Himalayas followed, and who can ever forget the haunting Latin American folk music that accompanied "The Flight of the Condor". To see a list of some of Hugh's classics, visit http://www.wildfilmhistory.org/person/115/Hugh+Miles.html. The visit to Scotland on this occasion was to film salmon fishing on the River Spey for an eight part series to be titled, "Catching the Impossible", but as usual lots of other local wildlife was filmed as well, all with a part to play in the finished films. While Hugh is out filming and editing films in the studio Sue keeps the business side of the Miles film enterprise in order. For all Hugh and Sue's current projects see http://www.passionforangling.info/index.html.
PS Guess who took Simon King out to introduce him to film making?

Mike Richards hasn't been taking it easy either since he left the RSPB, filming chimpanzees hunting other monkeys in the Tai jungle in Africa in 1992 to his most recent film on Tigers in Pench National Park in India, just a couple from a long series of award winning films that he has been involved in.

The work with the two mosses continues. The Dicranum bergeri (Waved fork-moss) work turned from just trying to re-find a couple of previous locations to carrying out a full survey of one of the bog sites that I had looked at. Why? Well, as is usual with me, when I go looking for these mosses, things don't always seem as they should be, and so it was at one of the sites. Within Abernethy reserve we already had the largest known UK population where, on one bog twenty four hummocks had been found by Gordon Rothero and Andy Amphlett in 2004. Having seen this site a hummock seemed to like growing on a damp sections of the bog. When I when to one site to re-find one of David Wood's records from 1991, the hummocks that he had found were in this sort of habitat. However, as I walked off the bog I found another hummock growing in what looked like less typical habitat, a bit drier, more heather and generally more vegetated. I took a GPS reading so that I could return the next day. One, two, three more hummocks...six, seven eight, hmm I thought, Taylor's going to be getting a reputation as the non-expert who finds rare mosses! Armed with a couple of bits of red and white tape, I systematically work my way back and forth across the bog, finding more and more hummocks. At each site a small sample of the moss had to be taken so that it could be checked under the microscope (above), so getting back from the bog late in the evening meant checking through the fresh material until about midnight. On 31 May the transects were complete, each sample had been initially checked by me and confirmed by Andy and out of the 68 collections made, only two were mis-identified by myself. The site had produced an amazing 66 hummocks, the best in Britain!

The green shield-moss (Buxbaumia viridis) growing season is drawing to a close and all the logs and ant nests have been re-visited twice since the last diary. At all the sites, the capsules have gone from being bright green and upright to brown and tipped over to an angle of forty-five degrees. From late-May the capsules started to 'peel' (left) and on a visit in early June my photographs showed the capsules and surrounding mosses covered in tiny white specks of dust which I assume to be gatherings of spores. I await confirmation of this. So capsules which first appeared in late October early November have had to survive until now to reproduce - a whole eight months. It isn't surprising then that just over forty-percent of them have been predated. Interestingly, a couple of capsules that have been knocked over recently, have also seemed to produce spores and the poor old capsule featured in the last diary has had yet more problems. On my last check the whole log on which the moss divot with capsule had been returned to following its last 'kicking' by sheep, had been completely destroyed by red deer, and once again the divot, complete with its capsule, was found upside down next to the devastated log. The capsule however, still seems to be producing spores so it was replaced, yet again, on a part of the log that hadn't been damaged! Watch this space. Whilst checking one of the other logs there had been an emergence of flying queen wood ants during the day and the log was covered in them. Most of them still had their wings but one ant, as I watched it through my camera lense, started to remove its wings by bending sidewards and back and biting off the wings at their base. The picture shows the ant in the last stages of this operation and it still has one wing to bite off though this did seem to be posing a bit of a problem. There is a second queen ant in the picture which has already lost its wings. This is something I have never witnessed before.

It has been a good month for flowers. Whilst listening for a grasshopper warbler in Mondhuie I came across some of the tallest lesser twayblades I have seen on the reserve (left), at least six inches tall rather than the normal one to two inches. Just off the reserve I also came across an, as yet to open, spike of common twayblade, the relocation of a plant last recorded at this site by the late Mary McCallum-Webster in 1975. Amazing!

A little further afield there were seven spikes of bird's nest orchid (right) and even further afield (nr Keith) a show of hundreds of herb paris flowers (below) growing in a damp piece of woodland. The last time I saw this plant was when we were employed on the Hawsewater golden eagle project in 1973 and a few flowers were found in Naddle Wood. Well worth the miles and a very unusual flower when seen in such quantity.

Currently a little time is being spent looking for coralroot orchid at a site where it was last recorded in 1995, a green orchid in green grass growing in amongst green sphagnum moss. No problem then!

Whilst checking out the bird's-foot trefoil patches for Osmia bees I was lucky enough to come across a narrow bordered bee hawk moth which was hovering in front of the flowers and using its long proboscis to reach the nectar. A couple of days later we had one feeding on phlox flowers in the garden. This moth has fairly long antennae but it doesn't come into the league of the wee micro-moth that has been very abundant this year throughout the pinewoods. This is possibly Adela cuprella, one of the long-horn moths, appropriately named as with the timberman beetle.

That's it for another couple of weeks.

Best wishes

Stewart & Janet

A back-lit patch of "hare's tail" cotton grass just for Hugh & Sue!

and just for the record, a picture of the "other" cotton grass

All photos © Stewart Taylor