Telfer the Tonking Terror!

Continuing on from yesterday's post, I'd joined The Telfers on an overnighter into Speyside for some seriously hardcore beetling, the likes of which I've never experienced before or since. Time spent in the field with Mark is always pretty damned hardcore, but also extraordinarily rewarding. Watching a master coleopterist in action is something to behold. Trust me, I learned more in a day than I ever would in a year by myself. It also showed me just how poor I am at natural history. Still, I did manage to find a couple of things for myself. Just a couple mind you...

30th May - Skye to Speyside

We arrived in Aviemore mid-afternoon. Jo and Bradley set up basecamp whilst Mark and I hit the forest in search of...well, anything really! First up was an extensive tract of woodland a few miles east of Loch Garten where we ambled along a snaking trail beneath lichen bedecked pines, pressing ever onwards through knee high Bilberry and Cowberry until we came across an area with some very special plants indeed

I'd spotted several of these small plants but didn't know what they were. I knew what I hoped they were, but stupidly I'd left all my plant ID guides back on Skye. Luckily Mark found a few slightly more developed plants which confirmed our suspicions

Note the paired buds at the tip of the stem

Yes! This was none other than Twinflower, or 'Twinbud' as it was quickly dubbed. It should look glorious in a fortnight or so. Sadly I was only here until tomorrow, but a Twinbud is better than no bud at all. Not too far away we found more unfamiliar plants

These are the basal leaves of Creeping Lady's-tresses

We did find a couple of Creeping Lady's-tresses that were starting to push up a flower spike, but my pics of those are blurry - low light levels were clearly to blame rather than any incompetence on my part. Yup.

Bryoria fuscescens, or horsehair lichen as I named it

A snakefly was perched out in the open, only the third or fourth I've ever encountered and always a thrill, they are such bizarre looking beasts!

Female Atlantoraphida maculicollis. Pure monster.

Back at the car, Mark wandered off down a rough track and told me to drive along behind him. I cautiously followed, wondering just how rough the track might get. I was borrowing a colleague's car and I was pretty sure he'd want it back undamaged. Soon enough though, I drove into a large clearing, the site of a disused sawmill. For many years now, I've wanted to sneak around an old sawmill, hidden deep in an ancient forest. In my mind's eye I've envisioned a high-roofed wooden mill with huge stacks of logs outside, all crawling with Giant Wood-wasps and Timbermen (both of which are very high on my Wish List) with just the calls of Parrot Crossbill and maybe a furtive Pine Marten for company. Sadly, what greeted us was a big old pile of sawdust with a few discarded offcuts and planks laying on top, all sat in the middle of maybe an acre of open space. Still, it's gotta be better than nothing and we soon set to overturning anything big enough to harbour potential goodies. Mark was muttering about it being a shadow of its former self, a tragedy, a real loss etc etc. I spotted ants under a plank - whoop. But Mark has keen eyes, he soon noticed that this ant colony comprised small black ants and larger wood ants, all mixed in together. Clearly this was a species of slavemaker ant with its slaves, and the only slavemaking wood ants in Britain are Formica sanguinea. In this instance, the slaves were the far smaller Formica lemani. Formica sanguinea typically rush around biting things in defence of their colony. Here's a slightly blurry pic of one doing just that

Blurred due to some impressive high speed running around by the ant 

Check out those mandibles, I'm glad none of them managed to latch onto us! Meanwhile, Mark was busily extracting a beetle carcass from beneath a plank of wood. He was pretty crestfallen that it was dead. Here's the pic. I'd be crestfallen too...

Cantharis obscura - not a very common beetle. Not very tickable either.

We very briefly called in to a site for Deschampsia setacea (far too early really, just a recce so I could see the site) where I spotted a bunch of what I initially thought were click beetles in grasses. A closer look revealed them to be winged males of Formica lugubris - absolutely huge, they positively dwarf the workers! Quitting the forest we detoured to a shallow sandy bay on the edge of Loch Garten itself where Mark did a bit of water beetle sampling. Happily, I spotted an elmid beetle, absolutely tiny and hence massively appealing to the mighty Telfer (the law of decreasing size equating to increasing interest levels clearly applies) and I also proffered the correct suggestion of Oreodytes for another small water beetle, one which seemingly I have as much experience of as does Mark (they aren't common in his part of the world, I have them in the local river). 

After an ever so slight misunderstanding regards that evening's dinner arrangements, we skulked off to the local takeaway for grub before quickly returned to basecamp. I think I added about 300 species to my PSL that afternoon.

Mark promised me that tomorrow was going to be awesome (though today was hardly dross). I kipped soundly and awoke with a sense of anticipation. And a need to pee.

31st May - Glenmore Forest - hell yeah!

I had the car, Mark was leaving his campervan in the prison campsite, so I drove off and parked up at the end of a long loop through the hills and walked back to the campsite where the Telfers were just about ready for a day on the trail. Mark had a hand axe. He looked as though he meant business. He also had beating tray, pooter, pots, pockets bulging full of kit. I had a butterfly net and 15 pots. Epic fail. To make things worse, my camera battery died. Thankfully Mark had a spare battery, what a guy. 

We began by heading up the wrong track. Happily Jo, at least, knew the correct way. Mark mumbled something about us not being lost already, secret shortcuts, etc etc before falling into line with the rest of us. Bradley was an absolute star, pointing out the coloured posts we were meant to be following (takes after his mom, that boy) and never once flagging on the upward yomp into the trees. 

It wasn't long before Mark started pointing out beetles. Weevils on the birches (various Phyllobius, all new for me), Pine Weevils on fence posts and fallen logs. One large felled pine held a couple of smart longhorns

Loads of Phyllobius weevils, all new for me (didn't have the book last time I encountered them)

Rhagium bifasciatum - a very smart beast indeed

Beneath the loose bark we found pupal chambers of Rhagium inquisitor, though sadly not the beast itself. 

The 'palisade' edging is apparently diagnostic of Rhagium inquisitor

We then had a fun twenty minutes or so wheedling bark from a huge fallen pine. My fault, in a way, because I spotted this

See that pile of fresh frass poking out from beneath the bark...

Mark suddenly unlimbered his axe and put it to work ever so carefully slicing away at a piece of bark in a determined effort to find the beetle below. It looked quite easy, but I think I would have lost at least one finger if I'd tried it. A short while later and we had one in a tube (the beetle, I mean - not one of my fingers), soon followed by two others (again, beetles...)

Tomicus sp. - 3mm of sheer excitement!

Mark wasn't sure, but felt that we may have stumbled across Tomicus minor. He then quietly announced that he wasn't aware of any living coleopterist that had seen this species in Britain. Shit a brick, pass me that tube! (Sadly, so to speak, they were later determined as Tomicus piniperda). Still, can't say I've ever witnessed a 3mm long beetle being extracted (still intact) with an axe!

We'd temporarily lost Jo and Bradley, but we could hear Bradley somewhere up ahead. We caught them up and took a lunch stop beneath a particularly awesome, craggy old Scots Pine. Several broken boughs were dead, dead and within reach of Mark's axe... "Have you ever tonked a tree before, Seth?" he casually asked. I briefly worried that I'd been lured into the back end of nowhere to perform some weird sexual perversions upon a tree, thankfully (for the tree) I was mistaken. Here's Mark 'tonking' a tree with the blunt end of his axe. Turn the volume up, or better still listen with headphones. Definitely a decent "tonk" going on there! 

A multitude of tiny brown bodies littered the beating tray, the larger measuring maybe 3mm. All disappeared up the spout of Mark's pooter. In some areas the tree bark had fallen away, revealing many distinctive feeding galleries. Each gallery originated from a very shallow Y-shape and immediately branching out horizontally (circumferentially as Mark said it) across the diameter of the branch. Paralleling these linear galleries were a series of holes. All in all a highly distinctive mine! And, without a doubt, belonging to the near-mythical Tomicus minor that I mentioned earlier. The obvious snag being, by the time one finds the galleries the beetle has long departed. Randomised bark removal of very freshly damaged boughs may be the best bet of finding this beetle in the flesh, certainly it is here!  

You can clearly see the shallow Y-shape in the centre of one gallery (2nd from right)

Typical size of some of the stuff Mark was pootering up. I was a bit flabbergasted at the time, but have since successfully carded these myself. 2mm of perfection, more or less. 

One that I took away and successfully carded. And this is one of the larger ones....

I pulled back a bit of loose bark and found myself eyeballing a small, elongate weevil. "Mark, I've got a weevil, looks like a short, fat Euophryum confine but with a blunter rostrum" I threw at him. "That'll be Rhyncolus ater, I ticked it here last year" was the immediate response. And it was too, impressive recognition or impressive description? I suspect the former. 

Rhyncolus ater, exactly like an obese Euophryum confine. Though much scarcer

Bradley was busily telling off some fast disappearing cyclists (we were on a no cycling trail) when Mark and I found a freshly fallen pine bough. The scent of resin was heavy in the air and incoming saproxylic beetles could be seen winging their way through the tree trunks! I had an Otiorhynchus scaber land on a trunk beside me and other beetles quickly disappeared into the freshly fallen branches. We started potting up specimens, more arriving as we did so. Our timing was perfect, the beetles were assembling before our very eyes, species after species was called out and identified, I've never experienced anything like it before. Mark dubbed it the tree that kept on giving, and indeed as soon as we thought we were done something else would crash land into the branches and another species would be added to the tally. A small selection: Polydrusus pilosus (landed on me), Otiorhynchus singularis, Otiorhynchus scaber (several), Strophosoma melanogrammum, Rhizophagus depressus, Quedionuchus plagiatus, Oulema melanopus, Ampedus nigrinus, Meligethes aeneus ("like finding a rat turd in your packet of chocolate buttons"!), Gastrophysa viridula, Magdalis duplicata and Magdalis phlegmatica. Plus other, commoner stuff we'd already seen. A Juniper Pug larva was noted, there was also a dogshit moment that is probably best not talked about. I was commended on my ability to keep a straight face and not take the piss. First time for everything.

Eventually we caught up with Jo and Bradley by a blue lochan. Starting our return towards the car we entered a heathy area. Mark was soon pointing out a foraging Bilberry Bumblebee, one I've not seen before. Somehow he tempted it onto his hand for photo opportunities

And this from a man who reacts badly to bee stings! 

By now we were almost out of the forest and back to the car. Last stop though was a large Scots Pine in an open area of grass and scrub. A couple of years back, a rare beetle was found here. Word obviously spread because some dolt had recently been here ahead of us and ragged the shit out of all the loose bark, There were great piles of it beneath the branches. I can't say that I blame Mark for being dismayed when we discovered this, not because it meant we now had little chance of finding the beetle for ourselves, but because the rare beetle's habitat had been utterly trashed.

I guess if you've travelled a long way to see something, you really don't want to leave until you've seen it. Leave no stone unturned, or loose bark unpeeled in this particular instance. But surely common sense would tell you that enough is enough at some point (ie before you run out of loose bark to peel away)? Obviously not. I can sympathise, and I hope the chap did get his beetle, but he's still a fucktard whichever way you look at it.

However, this is an exceptional area of Caledonian pinewood and a bit of peeled away bark could not lessen that. We managed several really decent species from this one pine including my only arachnid lifer of the day (well, that I could identify).

Salticus cingulatus - cousin of the more familiar Zebra Spider

Plus a selection of beetles typical of this part of the world. Almost all lifers for me, obviously.

Cimberis attelaboides - ignore the antennae, it really is a weevil! 

Anthonomus phyllocola - pretending to be a seed head perhaps?

And I almost forgot to include this bad boy from near the start of the trail, the spectacular Ant Beetle trying to take a large chunk out of Mark's finger

Thanasimus formicarius - gorgeous but with a bit of an attitude problem

I needed to hustle my way back to Skye for work in the morning, so had to quit Speyside early. A short detour to Carrbridge allowed me to claw back Fairy Foxglove from myself. Let me explain - I'd last visited Carrbridge maybe 15 years back, which was long before I knew about the existence of a thing called Fairy Foxglove. I went in the summertime, so there's no way I would have missed seeing this exotic plant (it's all over the bridge!) yet I have no actual recollection of seeing it. So a return unblocking visit was required. I just took a long time doing so. But I have now, and a lovely wee flower it is too.

I can't recall what time I eventually fell into bed that evening, but I'm pretty certain my dreams were filled with beetles, the smell of resin and the sound of an axe tonking into tree trunks. Many, many thanks to Mark for showing me just how exciting beetling in a prime Caledonian pinewood can be. Cheers buddy, you're one heck of a guy.