It's over. A month of walking tracks, searching old quarries and seeking out the old tracks that run through the reserve ended yesterday. My survey of tooth fungi is done and just as well it was completed yesterday, Saturday was wet but nothing like as wet as today. My soggy walk along the shore of Loch Garten produced just three more records, all of Hydnellum peckii, the blood oozing Devils's Tooth, which you should all know off by heart now, so no pictures! Mark's survey last year produced nearly 300 tooth fungi locations, and as my survey progressed it looked like 500 might be possible. After my visit to Loch Garten I nipped into Garten Wood and a further four locations pushed my total to 502 - enough! So not many pictures for the diary during this period, that is unless all you want to hear about is tooth fungi! It has been a great few weeks though, and I have learnt a tremendous amount about this group of important fungi, where they like to grow, wee quirks that help with identification and t
he hot tongue that helps to sort out two closely related species. More importantly, I might have found a species which is new to Britain. So attuned do you get to the normal appearance of what you are seeing that when I bumped into an odd ochre coloured species (right) in the Garten woods, I thought I should seek professional help from Ern, a local mycologist and fellow aspen enthusiast. "I am fairly certain that you have found Hydnellum gracilipes" can the reply, " and it's probably new to Britain". Phew!! A second opinion will be sought and if it turns out to be new, then this would make 2007 one of the best years for "finds" in my natural history career. They do say the older you get the dafter you get, as anyone seeing me crawling around in the forest will confirm.
So, for the first time since 28 August I said hello to the "real" camera again yesterday and went off to try to remember how to use it. The partnership is back. The camera bag with tripod is just too heavy to carry when wandering tracks for hours on end, so some of the pictures in this weeks diary came from my dinky Nikon P5000, which fits neatly into my shirt pocket, and takes some amazing pictures, as you will see. I now never leave the house without it. We will see how long the knees and back cope with carrying the full kit. One thing about walking along looking intently at the ground is that you see many other things of 
interest. At this time of year, as well as in the spring, the caterpillars of the northern eggar moth are on the go. Many caterpillars feed up just now, hibernate for the winter and continue feeding up in the spring before turning into chrysalises and then moths during May and June. A picture of the moth should have appeared in an earlier 
diary but didn't make it so is included here to let you see the whole sequence. The chrysalis case is quite a hard shell affair, often found by birds which love to feed on the contents which is what appears to have happened to this one. The caterpillar/chrysalis is often the host for ichneumon flies, interesting insects which lay their eggs inside the host where they hatch into larvae, devouring the host as they grow! Fast food in the forest.
Spending so much time wandering through deep vegetation has its own hazards though and my legs, arms, belly and back have wee red dots to prove it. The midges have been unpleasant on still days when I've been fairly static trying to take pictures of fungi finds. These are easy to deal with with a bit of midge spray though I can't recommend the Avon 
product 'Skin So Soft',which has become the 'in' repellent of recent years. The bigger problem linked to the red dots is the tick, big ones and little ones but all looking for that all important feed of blood to enable breeding to take place. Removing the half buried tick isn't really a problem and I tend to give them a liberal dose of TCP first - you can actually see them squirming once applied - give them a minute or two to suffer and then pull them out between finger and thumb-nail, and giving the spot another dose of TCP. However, it's the Lyme Disease that some ticks carry that you have to be aware of, particularly if the bite area starts to develop an expanding red dot. A dose of antibiotics usually cures the problem, but some people, like Janet, do seem to take a heck of a while to get over it. More fast food in the forest! Sticking to tracks usually keeps you out of tick range. I visited the dragonfly viewing boardwalk a 
week ago on a sunny day and was once again amazed by the sight of dragonflies all over the structure. It really is worth a visit if you are in the area during the summer months. On this occasion the hand-rails were full of black darters Sympetrum danae, enjoying the sun and almost oblivious to my presence. As well as single dragons many were "in tandem" i.e. the mating position and rather than trying to explain this strange ritual as in an earlier diary piece, I can actually now show you a picture. The male is black and is the one holding the female, round her 'neck' with his claspers. The female is yellow and black and can be seen curling up under the male to fertilise her eggs from the males 'sperm pad'. The male had charged this 'pad' with sperm before attaching to the female. In the picture you can actually see the eggs at the tip of the females 
abdomen, something I've never seen before. This picture was taken with the wee digital camera - good isn't it! The pair will eventually fly off and, still in tandem, the female will lay her eggs by flicking her abdomen at the surface of the surrounding pool. Amazing. For noisy love-making though, a pair of hoverflies (left) I came across, take the biscuit. From the loud buzzing noise that I heard I was sure I was going to find fighting insects or something caught in a spiders web. However, once the source was located I found a pair of mating hoverflies, biggish hoverflies about the size of small bees. Some hoverflies are perfect bee mimics and are often responsible for that static buzz, nearby, that you can never locate.On my fungi wanderings I also visited the memorial which 'Mem
orial Wood', by the track from Forest Lodge to Ryvoan and Glenmore, is named after. A few local folk maintain the access to the memorial free of tree growth and, to my surprise, the memorial is known to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as the encapsulated notice at the site informed me. The site below gives details. The memorial is at NJ0113 and is shown on the map.
orial Wood', by the track from Forest Lodge to Ryvoan and Glenmore, is named after. A few local folk maintain the access to the memorial free of tree growth and, to my surprise, the memorial is known to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as the encapsulated notice at the site informed me. The site below gives details. The memorial is at NJ0113 and is shown on the map.In the diary of 30 June I mentioned the tremendous thunderstorm that pounded Forest Lodge and the surrounding forest on 21 June. I included a picture of a tree that had been struck by lightening. Well, I have had a chance to see more of the devastation that occurred on that day.
I found a second tree that had been struck by lightening, perhaps more impressive devastation than the first one with shards of timber spread over a wide area. The main feature of the day was the sheer quantity of rain that fell, probably several inches in about an hour, causing problems for one farm downstream of the Faesheallach Burn. The bulk of the rain fell in the catchment of the Faesheallach Burn, fed as it is by several small streams flowing from surrounding boggy hill ground.I visited one of these "small" streams and was astounded by the devastation. Trees, hundreds of years old had been 
flattened and a bank on the edge of the stream had been scoured out to a depth of several metres. The "wee burn" is shown as it normally is in the picture right, you could hop over it. Boulders that had lain undisturbed since the Ice Age were unearthed and rolled down the stream bed. Nature in all its natural fury and the day certainly created many new habitats along the sides of the streams involved.
flattened and a bank on the edge of the stream had been scoured out to a depth of several metres. The "wee burn" is shown as it normally is in the picture right, you could hop over it. Boulders that had lain undisturbed since the Ice Age were unearthed and rolled down the stream bed. Nature in all its natural fury and the day certainly created many new habitats along the sides of the streams involved.
In the wider countryside the water flowing off one of the hills caused a huge landslip, again creating new habitats for nature to exploit over the next few years. It is easy to see what happened in Boscastle in 2004.
That's it for this week, happy reading
Stewart & Janet
aspen leaves are starting to fall
All photos © Stewart Taylor
