First, the good news – 3 August last visit to the
radiotherapy team at Raigmore, a brilliant friendly team and I hope they all
enjoyed tucking into Janet’s amazing cake.
A big thank you for all their efforts over the 33 visits and a
realisation that there were other patients attending who were a lot worse off
than yours truly. Despite very technical
and amazing equipment it wasn’t possible to know exactly where the small area
of cancer infected tissue was, so the first 20 visits targeted the general area
and the last 13 homed in more closely to where it was thought to be. The results of the team’s efforts would be
known sometime in September.
There are lots of good things to report from the natural
history world for August so let’s get the bad news out of the way first. An email on the 17th informed me
that Ian had found lots of fungal balls on the heads of deergrass (the hybrid Trichophorum
×foersteri) by the road between Carrbridge and Furness. So, the next morning I set off early to check
the site and collect a few specimens for forwarding if necessary. Ian said there were a few but when I got to
the site almost every clump of
deergrass had the black fungal balls
present (Anthracoidea scirpi). I gave up checking after
several hundred metres and made my way back to the car, finding more fungal
balls on carnation sedge (Carex panicea) and flea sedge (Carex pulicaris). It was 9.30am and as I drove back along the
road I came to the carved stone informing me that I was entering the Cairngorms
National Park (CNP). A
bit ironic really
because I was heading home early in order to attend the Park’s planning meeting
where a decision would be made on the continuing farce proposing to build up to
1500 houses on the now infamous An Camus Mor site on Rothiemurchus Estate. As I wandered down to the Nethy Bridge Village
Hall I wondered how many of the folk on the Parks Board would know what Carex
panicea was and would they have any interest in knowing that the finding of the
fungal balls on Carex pulicaris that morning was just the tenth UK record? As I have said before the Park should be
re-named the Cairngorms Tourism and Development Park for the damaging projects
they have agreed to over the years since inception and I was in no doubt as to
what the decision would be today before
the meeting started. I arrived at the Hall to be met by several
local folk holding boards highlighting species which An Camus Mor is important
for and just in time to swell their numbers for the visiting press. Inside a big team from the Park’s planning
department were getting everything ready along with the Park Convenor and
representatives from Rothiemurchus Estate, RSPB, Badenoch and Strathspey
Conservation Group (BSCG) and Butterfly Conservation. The biggest group (apart from members of the
public) was the Park Board, assembled at great expense especially when compared
to Highland Councils local Planning Department, and to show how the board works
the following was copied from their website:-
“Board members play an important role in representing the
National Park and Park Authority by acting as ambassadors for the Park.
19 Members make up the Cairngorms National Park Authority
(CNPA) Board:
7 members appointed by Scottish Ministers, 5 members are
elected locally and 7 members are nominated by the 5 councils in the Cairngorms
National Park: Highland (2), Aberdeenshire (2), Moray (1), Angus (1), Perth
& Kinross (1).
The members normally serve between 18 months and 4 years and
are currently paid a day rate of £205.38 per day for 3 days per month. All
Board members serve on the Parks Planning Committee.”
So, the cost of just assembling the Park Board was close to
£4,000! The Parks Planner gave his
spiel, the company representing Rothiemurchus Estate did the same – limited to
10 minutes, followed by RSPB, BSCG and Save the Cairngorms Campaign who had to
squeeze their combined presentations into 10 minutes! Didn’t matter really because I knew no-one on
the Board would take much notice. The
RSPB presentation highlighted the threat to capercaillie if the development
went ahead,
particularly with Strathspey being the last remaining stronghold
for the bird. ‘Ah, but we will put plans
in place to mitigate any problems that develop re caper’ came the response from
the Park! What these people don’t see
from behind their desks is the sheer pressure our local area is under ALREADY
from the increased number of people/houses and visitors, whether walkers, dog
walkers, dog walker businesses and mountain bikers (now developing tracks off
the main tracks). Apart from Abernethy,
most of the woods used by caper are also under long-term timber
management. Johnnie Grant made a quote
after the meeting to the media where he predicted that “there will up to 5,000
people living at ACM once completed”.
5,000 people! How on earth can
the local environment cope with that number and how would the Park ‘mitigate’
problems with caper and the environment following development. Perhaps they will demolish the houses??? I departed after the presentations knowing
that discussions following over the next couple of hours would be about suitable
wi-fi, pavements and a bridge into Aviemore, and then the vote would be in
favour of the development
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| The Zoological Society of London silver medal as presented |
proceeding.
Not one Board member objected and the decision to proceed was carried
unanimously. When you look at the background
of some of the board members you would have thought that some would have tried
to stand up for the environment – but no, there must be some very strange form
of brain-washing which takes place when you enter the realms of this national
park. Isn’t it interesting how things change. John Peter Grant of Rothiemurchus was awarded
the Zoological Society of London silver medal in 1893 in recognition of the
efforts made to protect ospreys at Loch an Eilein in the 1890s. His great-grandson Lt.-Col. J. P. Grant was
presented with the RSPB Silver Medal in 1960 for assisting RSPB wardens and
volunteers with night watches at the Loch Garten eyrie. Perhaps the current laird will be presented
with an award for causing the demise of Scotland’s capercaillie population.
Curr Wood, near Dulnain Bridge was mentioned briefly in my
June 2017 blog. At that time, a whole
host of issues turned up when local SNH staff were asked, at short notice, to
help mark populations of twinflower ahead of some pretty severe felling
operations. It became clear that when a
felling licence application was sent to Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS), its
consultation procedure failed completely and despite asking RSPB (bird
interest) and CNP (natural history interest) for any issues and concerns, when
they didn’t receive any replies they assumed they were happy with what was
proposed! The requests never arrived
with either organisation but this didn’t come to light until machinery was on
site to thin just over 50ha of the wood and to clearfell 4.13ha. Regular thinning
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| The clearfell area |
has been ongoing in this
wood since 2000 when the wood was first sold but, historically, this wood
hasn’t been subject to clearfelling, the management being aimed at thinning but
allowing Scots pine to naturally regenerate the site to produce the next
crop. Another damaging action agreed is
for the felled area to be re-planted with trees at 2-3 metres spacing, the
first nails in the coffin of this ancient wood as it heads down the road to
total commerciality. This wood is/was
home to a good population of twinflower and to the very rare pine hoverfly
(Blera fallax), currently, the only known site in the UK. As a wood, 122 ha in size, it became
established in 1796 being planted mainly with Scots pines of local
provenance. Thinning fellings started in
the 1870s with restocking being by natural regeneration. In 2014 a forest plan was circulated to
locals and the conservation bodies for comment and despite a very detailed
reply being sent from CNP, this plan has yet to see the light of day. In the
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| Twinflower growing over remains of tree stump |
meantime, with no input from
conservationists, a felling licence was granted despite there being lots of
woolly words about taking care not to damage the plants and hoverfly
interest. Sadly, when this wood first
came to the market in 2000 a bid by RSPB and Plantlife to buy it was not
successful and the wood’s natural history importance has been going downhill
ever since. Several thinnings have
opened up the wood quite dramatically and this has had a negative effect on
twinflower as it is outcompeted by the growth of other plant species. Despite lots of projects aimed at helping the
hoverfly ensuring it is still present, the loss of old, mature Scots pines
means the number of natural breeding sites (in rot-holes within the trees) is
being heavily reduced. Felling lots of
young rowan trees throughout the wood prior to this debacle has also reduced
the number of flowering trees in spring, a source of food for the
hoverfly. I had hoped a meeting
mid-month with FCS, CNP and Jim Adam from Bell Ingram might have allowed issues
and concerns to be raised, but nothing is likely to change and, within the next
30 years, the rest of the old pines will also have been clear-felled. When the wood was last sold it was bought by
Billy Martin who lives in Ireland obviously as a pure
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| Owner and manager given award for 'sympathetic management!" |
investment. He has employed Bell Ingram to manage the
site in his absence and companies like this only make money by undertaking
work. Slowly, this wood is being
converted to a fast turn-over commercial wood whose sole aim is to make money,
a sad end to what was once an important wood historically and which supported
important species. I can’t really pursue
the wood’s protection any longer as I don’t have any legal clout and this role
now has to be taken on by Park staff. Sadly,
FCS and the owner and managers don’t really seem to care so long as timber is
produced for sale, even though they are aware of its importance. Enough!
Early in the month was the time to check out the local
twayblade orchid populations so it was a big disappointment to find nothing at
the best site where they have been seen previously, where counts have been
between 60 and 120 plants. There were
also fewer at the Speyside Way site, 3 flower spikes and 2 sets of basal
leaves. An adjacent grassland has always
looked like a possible site and this year a single flower spike was found. The nicest surprise though was close to the
site badly
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| Twayblade survivors |
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| Robin's pincushion gall |
damaged by a ‘tidying up’ operation by Revack Estate in 2016, when a
bonfire had been made almost on top of where the plants grew. The site even now though is not ideal and an
extensive search had to be made in deep grass before the total count reached
15. A little more winter grazing (now
absent) by sheep would certainly help.
The Speyside Way outing produced a nice surprise, a robin’s pincushion
gall on a rose bush. The gall is caused
by the larva of a tiny gall wasp, Dipoloepis rosae, and despite the books
saying common, this is the first one I’ve seen locally. Whether this is linked to the good number of
flowers on the rose plants this year I’m not sure but currently there are lots
of rose hips available to anything that eats them. The important fence to protect aspen suckers
mentioned last month got underway early in the month and was completed in three
days, a brilliant
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| Davies tractor and new deer fence |
job and very professionally done. This increase in fence height covers about a
third of the length of a stock fence installed about 15 years ago to exclude
grazing stock to encourage new aspen growth.
In about a third of the fenced area quite a bit of new growth has been
achieved over the years and it was to this area attention was turned early in
the month – moth trapping. Several sites
in Strathspey, where young aspens have become established in the last decade or
so, have been checked in recent
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| Dark bordered beauty moth and caterpillar |
years for a very rare moth, the dark bordered
beauty. In recent years the moth has
appeared at RSPB Insh Marshes and in years gone by I’ve seen it at another site
near Grantown on Spey. However, it would
be a real bonus to find it at a new site so I managed to tempt Tom Prescott
from Butterfly Conservation, Gabrielle and Mike to try a night’s trapping at my
fenced site. Despite a good catch, the
dark bordered beauty didn’t turn up so Mike offered to do a second trap night
and on this occasion traps were also installed in a second area of good sucker
regeneration. In all, 4 traps were set
out, all
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| Moth trap and cousin german moth |
lit up by 10pm. We returned the
next morning at 6.30am and worked our way through the sections of egg-boxes
which the moths rest on once inside the traps.
Over the two nights 145 moth species were recorded but sadly, no DBBs
but cousin german (Protolampra sobrina) a Red Data Book 3 species was a good
find. Having run a moth trap for 2 years
on the Isle of Rum and for 5 years later after arriving at Loch Garten it was
nice to catch up with a few of the regular species like dotted carpet (Alcis
jubata). Whilst checking out the sites
for possible additional moth trapping I came across
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| Eriophyes diversipunctatus gall on aspen leaf |
several aspens with low
branches and this allowed me to check the leaves for galls. I wasn’t disappointed and found the red Harmandiola
tremulae galls on the leaf blades and Eriophyes diversipunctatus, comprising two
galls at the joint between leaf stem and leaf.
I enjoyed meeting up with someone committed to doing
something positive. Bill Bowman, North
East Scotland List MSP is the species champion for twinflower and following an
invite from Gus and Tessa of BSCG, he came over to Nethy Bridge to see the
plant and the type of woodland habitat it occupies. Accompanying him was his Organising Secretary
Victoria Ramsey. Our first visit was to
a nearby population of twinflower where it can be seen growing in its typical
forest habitat comprising a fairly closed canopy stand of Scots pine with a
nice mossy understorey. At this site,
there has also
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| The group in Curr Wood |
be a bit of experimentation taking place where cuttings of
plants from other populations had been planted to try and assist cross-pollination
allowing the plants to produce more seeds.
As a comparison, we made our second site visit to Curr Wood to let him
see the effect recent tree fellings were having on the plants. At this site, we had a job to find the plant
under deepening heather and at one site could actually see the plant dying out
due to the intense competition. We hope he found the visit informative and able
to fight the plants corner a little more when populations come under threat.
The butterfly survey took a bit of completing this month and
was only achieved on the third visit, the other two having to be aborted due to
a change of weather after arriving on site.
The weather has been highly changeable with warm sun one minute and
heavy downpours the next. One of the
aborted visits though did produce something special only because I was hanging
around waiting for
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| Hare's ear fungus top and soggy green shield moss botom |
the sun to re-appear.
Having walked this transect for a number of years now I have been
telling myself that I need to make a repeat visit to check the areas of Norway
spruce for my favourite green shield-moss.
Looking into the trees from the track the under-storey looked very
similar to a small area of woodland in the Dell Wood NNR – shallow plough-lines
with the raised tree roots covered in mossy peat where the moss has been
growing. I first found a few small fungi
similar to Dell Wood; hare’s ear (Otidea onotica) and Cudonia circinans. A good start.
After checking several typical roots, a group of eight green shield-moss
capsules were found, followed by a couple more a few metres away, my hunch was
right and with little chance of the sun appearing it was time to drive the 9
miles back home. The next day, after
checking for tooth fungi at the An Camus Mor development site (2 species) I
called in to the ex-arboretum by the B970 to see how this year’s population of
heath cudweed plants had performed.
During the winter part of this site had been used as a repository for
power pylons being taken down after the cables were re-routed underground. The pylons were
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| Heath cudweed top and field digger wasp bottom |
‘chopped up’ to make them
easier to transport away but this meant that some of the site would have been
quite heavily disturbed, not a bad thing for the plant in the long-term. With tally counter in hand I worked my way
around the site arriving at a figure of 2900 plants, several hundred more than
2016. A forestry track just outside the ex-arboretum
produced another 300, so not a bad overall total for this nationally declining
plant. At the far end of the site a
group of sand based ant nests caught my eye so a single sample was captured to
be sent for identification turning out to be Lasius niger, the small black ant
and only the second record for this 10km grid square. A digger wasp nearby was identified
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| Bankera violascens - just one group |
as the field
digger wasp (Mellinus arvensis). The
annual count of Bankera violascens (spruce tooth fungus) was also made the next
day and once again the plantation site near Forres produced a huge population -
2500 fruiting bodies. This compared with
1800 in 2016, 2015 no count, 95 in 2014, 10 in 2013 and 1170 in 2012 when first
found. A map with count details was sent
to the Estate the next day. It will be
interesting to see what turns up at the Deeside site.
Following the publication of a joint article on the black
fungal balls on sedges at the end of the 2016 recording season I thought a bit
of targeted searching might be beneficial this year. In producing the article lots of information
came to light about other finds, mostly from the distant past, and using this
information I thought I would target the estuarine
sedge (Carex recta) and dioecious sedge (Carex dioica). The best population of the estuarine sedge is
way up in Wick, 130 miles away so I opted for a smaller known population about
45 miles away on the Beauly Firth. As
its name implies, this sedge grows in areas where rivers run into the sea and
is influenced by fresh and salt water, so with just a couple of grid references
to work with, I headed north. I parked
up just by Beauly Priory, and made
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| River Beauly |
my way through a gate onto the riverbank but
onto a ‘path’ that was seldom used! After
recent rain on went the waterproof trousers, an essential item as I pushed my
way through tall grasses, bracken and broom.
One very positive bit of work had been undertaken by evidence of lots of
‘dead bodies’ of giant hogweed, but the mass of japanese knotweed would take a
lot more effort to eradicate. Purple
loosestrife and sea aster flowers provided lots of colour as did speckled wood,
peacock and red admiral butterflies. The
first location was reached after about one-kilometre but, whether affected by
the tide I’m not sure, to get from the river bank to the sedge and Phragmites
area by the water’s
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| Speckled wood |
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| Knopper gall on acorn |
edge took quite a bit of negotiating and the water was
almost over the tops of my wellies a few times.
A fleeing water vole must have wondered who this madman was. The sedge population was quite small and even
worse, only two sedges had flowerheads reducing to zero the chance of finding
the fungus. Time to check out the second
site but with dwindling confidence.
Quite a few oak trees were passed along the river bank and nearly all of
them had good populations of acorns. Many of these were topped by the hat-like
knopper galls. A calling bird passing
overhead allowed osprey to be added to the species list. Bracken and broom started to get so dense
that I thought I was going to
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| Osprey overhead |
have to turn back but eventually I reached the
second site where a couple of crack willow trees had leaves covered in galls –
one to ID once home (Pontania proxima the willow redgall sawfly). Despite my information telling me there were
‘thousands’ of estuarine sedges, the site was impossible to access due to a
very high water level. Time to battle my
way back to the road via a farm track – once reached, and then to walk back
into Beauly. Along the edge of the
pavement there was a row of ancient oak trees and on the ground below the trees
were more knopper galls and quite a few oak apples (Biorhiza pallida). Some ‘hairy’ unformed acorns had me
scratching my head but these were from a turkey oak (Quercus cerris), and were
the normal form for these acorns.
The second outing took me over the mountains to Deeside to
the Morrone Birkwood in Braemar to the dioecious sedge site. It was here that Dave Batty had found the
sedge/fungus combination twice in 1980.
The grid references were at 100m scale so there was a search area rather
than a specific location to search so it would be a case of searching along
small runnels of water bent over quite a way to try and find this small
sedge. The fungus was found on glaucous
sedge (Carex flacca) in a
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| Carex dioica sedge |
couple of places but the hoped for big population of
the dioecious sedge failed to materialise and just small populations of the
sedge were found but sadly no fungal balls.
A plant not seen very often turned up (minus flowers now long gone)
Scottish asphodel. After several hours
of bending over staring at the ground I decided not to visit the second
potential site, that will have to wait for another time. As I left Deeside light rain started to fall
and driving over the tops wasn’t too bad, but the rain after Tomintoul back to
Nethy Bridge was horrendous and had all the cars driving along at about 20
miles an hour, particularly through the impressive streams running down the
road at Bridge of Brown.
As I type autumn is upon us, the robins are having one last
session of singing and currently, the last of the willow warblers seem to have
gone. My last couple of curlews passed
overhead on 20 August and throughout August the multi-coloured blackbirds
(moulting adults and youngsters) arrived in numbers when Janet put out a few
tasty raisins. The pine martens though
have been very scarce. As flowers reach
the end of their growing season attention turns to the fungus season and, with
a fairly damp summer, lots have been appearing.
Chanterelles have been popping up all over the place and
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| Devil's tooth fungus (Hydnellum peckii) |
the tooth fungi
have also appeared in good numbers. A
visit to one of the local aspen woods produced a very nice surprise due to its
sheer size and this involved the giant funnel (Leucopaxillus giganteus) a
fungus growing to a size I’ve not seen before.
Initially I thought I was looking at a group of white polybags and it
was only as I walked over to them that I realised they were fungi. Having taken a few photos I realised that
there were more a few metres away and yet more even further away and it was only
as I walked up a slope in the rough grazing field to look down on them I
realised they were part of a very large ‘ring’.
After taking lots of photos I paced out the distance
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| The giant funnel fungus with the half circle in bottom photo from the ones at bottom of photo to right and beyond telegraph pole |
across the ring and
found that it was about 60 metres, though only half of the ring remained, a bit
of ground disturbance and tree growth possibly having affected the other
half. I can only assume that this is
quite an ancient site for the fungus and when I mentioned them to the farmer he
said that they appeared every year. When
close up, wee beasties could be seen on some of the fungi the tiny flies
probably the appropriately named fungus gnats a group responsible for laying
their eggs in the caps and stems of fungi resulting in lots of larvae hatching
out surrounded by a plentiful food supply.
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| Fungus gnat |
Nearby a group of wood ant nests
were checked to see if the tiny guest ant was in residence ahead of trying to
show it to folk as part of a rare invertebrate project being run jointly by
RSPB and Buglife so fingers crossed I find something in time for next month.
I also managed to make a second visit to the small cow-wheat
site to see if the plants were producing seeds after the guidance covered in
the last blog. I wasn’t disappointed and
whilst some plants still had flowers, most had seeds or had already ‘dropped’
them. A few plants had also disappeared
probably due to deer grazing. By the
track in the now felled plantation next door I had seen a small
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| Small cow-wheat flowers, seeds and wood ants and seed |
but active wood
ant nest and out of interest I thought it would be good to see how the ants
reacted if a couple of seeds were placed on the nest, so a couple were
‘borrowed’. Initially, one or two ants
checked out the new arrivals but within a short time lots of ants were
‘attacking’ the seed (I could see their jaws working on the white part of the
seed) or possible they were trying to pick it up to carry into the nest. The white bit of the seed is known as the elaiosome and to quote from the SNH Small
Cow-wheat paper “the elaiosome is rich in fat and protein, which provides a
reward for ants that carry the seeds back to their nests. The ants remove the
elaiosomes, then take the seeds from the nest and deposit them intact as refuse.“ I stayed with the ants and seeds for about 15
minutes watching very similar behaviour and confirming that they were
interested/attracted to the seeds which is all I could do in the time
available, so I left the seeds with them in the hope that something good would
come from the encounter. What an amazing
symbiotic relationship.
That’s it for another month enjoy the read.
Stewart and Janet
An Camus Mor
CNPA Board Members
Curr Wood
Parkswatch
Small cow-wheat species framework document
Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group
Mapmate recording database
Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI)
BSBI – Botanical Society of the British Isles
Highland Biological Recording Group (HBRG)
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| Another photo made it to BBC Weatherwatchers |
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| One man and his dog! |
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| Janet's amazing crop of onoins |
