End of the Blog

This blog has now been deactivated.

Many thanks to all who have contributed over the past five years.  

Layne Staley

It's probably not on too many folks' radar, but today would have been Layne Staley's 54th birthday. Layne hit stardom as the lead vocalist for Alice in Chains (along with the truly marvellous Jerry Cantrell who is still very much active today). Layne took vocal fry and word-bending to new heights and his is one of those instantly recognisable voices. I failed to fully appreciate his amazing talent at the time, but this past year or so I've been enjoying a bit of a revival with Alice in Chains (the old stuff, I mean) and they are on various of my Youtube playlists, hence I hear them most evenings now. 

More and more I find myself listening to artists that are no longer with us. Some simply grew old and passed away, whilst others died tragically young. Layne was one of the latter, he died in 2002 aged just 34. I won't go on, I'll just throw you some of their music. 

If you don't fancy listening to any of these, well I guess that's fine. But the final song is simply stunning and showcases some very heavy talent from all band members. The lyrics are all about his addiction to drugs and the realisation that he's not able to break his habit. It's a momentous song for many reasons. 

Hope you enjoy, it'll be back to wildlife in the next post.

And a couple from the Mad Season project

Diligently Faffing

Today, the third day into our adventure, was the first day without rain. And yet we both managed to get pretty wet. We had good gen for a suite of plants that grew in an expansive area of bog. As everybody knows, bogs tend to be wet places full of biting insects, hence nobody in their right mind would stand in the middle of one for hours on end. Sadly neither The Ghost or myself are in our right mind and, a whole week later, I'm still scratching at the last few remaining lumps on my arms where the mosquitos mauled me.  

Our first area of exploration was Dunachton Fen, which could well have been a fen, or a bog, or maybe a mire or a swamp. I really ought to get to grips with habitats one day. It was a wide open area with big skies, largely lacked trees apart from around the edges and ranged from being damp underfoot through to standing water deeper than the height of a welly, as we both discovered. The birder in me was instantly excited for one good reason - we were in definite Moorhen habbo! 

I moved to Skye towards the end of 2016. In all of that time there has been just ONE sighting of a Moorhen up here. And hell yeah I twitched it. Successfully too, you'll be glad to hear. It was a first winter jobbie and I had it all to myself. And don't even think about questioning my sanity, or lack thereof - it's a proper mega up this way. Coot is mythical, Mute Swan almost so. 

We were walking a raised track towards a certain pool when I heard bird noise coming from a watery area. "Moorhen!" I exclaimed before wondering if it might actually be a Coot I was hearing. No, it was a Moorhen - right? Shit, I wasn't sure!! How could I not know whether it was a Coot or Moorhen making the little noises I could hear. Fooksakes man! The Ghost just stared at me, waving my arms in the air whilst babbling on about Moorhens and Coots, and said nothing. Ah, could it be a Water Rail?? No, Moorhen! Bloody hell, what had gone wrong with my birding skillz??? I never saw the bird in question, but I settled on Moorhen. Then three of them spooked at our approach and dashed into cover. And they were definitely Moorhens. Apparently. I was looking the other way and saw nothing... 

But what I did see was a clump of bright pink flowers poking up through marginal vegetation near a pond edge. My first thought was Red Valerian, but my mouth knew better and what I actually said was, "That's Orpine! Bloody hell, that's a lifer for me!!" and within moments I'd worked my way down the bank for a closer look. 

Orpine - what a complete stunner

This was the only Orpine we encountered on our trip, a lucky find for me! Continuing on towards the small pool mentioned in our info, I missed a possible Mandarin that flew away whilst I was scanning the water surface for water-lily flowers. Not exactly having much luck with birds today, was I? I even called a female Mallard that was actually a female Wigeon. I had a bit of a better time with the water-lilies though

Hell yeah! 

This is Least Water-lily, a rare plant that in Britain is almost entirely restricted to Scotland. I was pleased to note several flowerheads, though they were well past their best. It can be a shy flowerer some years and I wasn't sure it would be safely identifiable from the floating leaves. In actual matter of fact, the leaves were far smaller than the nearby White Water-lilies and quite a distinctive shape too, but it was good to have the flowers present to confirm the ID. 

It was whilst standing in marginal vegetation, taking images of the Least Water-lilies that the first few female mosquitos landed on my exposed arms to feed. I brushed them away without much thought. I live on Skye - home of the midge. Mere mozzies wouldn't cause me any problems. I potted three anyway, they are currently sat on pins awaiting formal identification. 

We wandered along the riverside before angling our way into the thick of the fen/swamp/mire thing. I could see tall, reedy-looking stuff growing a few hundred metres ahead of us and I had a good idea what it was. Not reeds, that was for sure. But first we entered the wet stuff, fearless explorers in our wellies. What could possibly go wrong...

We had gen for String Sedge, a rare plant known from only a few sites in Britain, all in this part of Scotland. It's doing very well for itself where it does occur, our immediate issue was finding one of the spots it grows. We carefully high-stepped/shlurped our way through the vegetation, finding lots of Marsh Cinquefoil, Water Horsetail, Bogbean and Sphagnum; all of which form the plant community which the String Sedge calls home. In fact it typically grows up through the wet Sphagnum hummocks. 

There were quite a few Black Darters in this area

Ghostie had found himself a patch of higher ground on the edge of the bog and seemed content to stay there whilst advising me to 'stop faffing around out there'. Bloody cheek, I preferred to think of it as diligently searching. Admittedly I was moving quite slowly, but mainly due to the fact that I was standing on tiptoe with water slowly trickling over the tops of my wellies, all the time wondering if I'd slowly sink out of sight if I dared to stop moving. I saw a large patch of Sharp-flowered Rush and decided to (very slowly) head for it. Drowning man and straws etc... Rather bizarrely a skein of Barnacle Geese flew low overhead, soon followed by several more skeins. A total of maybe a hundred in all, heading north but surely feral birds rather than the real deal. 

My temporary haven!

The water here was just a few inches deep, I was on safe ground for now, though a sizeable chunk of it moved and quaked quite delightfully when I bounced up and down on it. The Sphagnum here had formed extensive low hummocks with Marsh Cinquefoil and Water Horsetail all around. I definitely felt that I was 'In The Zone' so very slowly and carefully did a full survey of the immediate area. Faffing, as some might say. However, "Got the String Sedge!!" I yelled across to The Ghost. "You sure?" he asked. I wasn't, but he needed to come see what I'd found in case it actually was our target plant. A while later he was by my side and scrutinising the plants in question. 

Not the best pic, but those heads look pretty convincing to me!

I had a copy of the BSBI's Sedges of the British Isles in my rucksack, it's fair to say that it hadn't seen a huge amount of action since I bought it a couple of years back. Well, it's definitely seen some action now. After quite a bit of flicking back and forth through the pages, we decided that we really were looking at String Sedge - get the hell in! Obviously I took pics. Naturally they all turned out awful. 

Well, at least the handbook is in focus.......

 

String Sedge in all of its, er, glory

There were several features that needed scrutinising, but everything seemed to fit very nicely. All that remained was to tiptoe my way back out of the swamp/fen/mire/bog thing without falling over. Sadly, from The Ghost's point of view at least, after quite a lot of wavering and wibbling around on the edge of a deep channel (faffing, in fact), I finally scrambled out of danger and made it to the safety of higher ground without falling over. Sweet! 

Our next target plant was the tall reedy-looking stuff that we'd spotted earlier. We walked the riverbank until we were just a couple of hundred feet from a large patch of the tall stuff. I took a pic, this is highly cropped

It's the tall stuff that isn't trees

We continued onwards some more, by now we were just a hundred feet from the plant. We could see that it was a small-reed species, our gen told us it was Scandinavian Small Reed Calamagrostis purpurea. But we needed a bit in our hands so we could key it through. Ghostie led the way across a shallow water-filled channel, up a small bank, down to another shallow water-filled channel...oops! Haha, turns out this channel wasn't quite as shallow as the first. I do believe Ghostie may have uttered 'a few' swear words in all of the excitement, most uncharacteristic for sure. Still, it could have been a lot worse - it could have been me leading the way. Being the gung-ho (if rather wet) type, he still managed to successfully grab a bit of the plant which we duly pored over using Stace 4 to key it through. 

The Calamagrostis key in Stace 4 was actually a bit shit and took us to Wood Small-reed, which doesn't occur in the area. For once, the Collins key outshone Stace and correctly took us to Scandinavian Small-reed, the only Calamagrostis known in Dunachton Fen. Narrow Small-reed occurs a mile or so away in an out-of-bounds part of Insh Marshes RSPB, but it isn't known from here. 

I was pretty pleased with my Orpine, Least Water-lily, String Sedge and Scandinavian Small-reed clean sweep. Less pleased with the number of mozzie bites on my arms, and obviously still smarting about missing the Moorhens, but all in all it had been a morning well spent. 

Talking of well spent, he certainly was!

Excessive keying of Rosa specimens can quickly lead to brain fatigue and maybe even death

Quitting Dunachton Fen, we headed across the valley to Insh Marshes RSPB. I hoped for a second attempt at Dark Bordered Beauty, but I'm not sure we were in quite the right area. We abandoned plans to target specific plants and just had a wander through the woodland and open heathland, sweeping through grasses and swiping at flies. After all, there's so much more to Speyside than just plants. 

This short clip provides some idea of the sheer abundance of insect life in these woods. These are Twin-spot Carpets, flying low over the Bilberry dominated slopes. We must have walked through hundreds upon hundreds of them, flitting and swooping across the lightly wooded hillsides all around. Truly magical to behold and one of the strongest memories I've taken away from the trip. 

Scotch Argus - a common butterfly throughout lowland Speyside at this time of year

Ghostie called the next butterfly, then fell about in amazed laughter as I went into panic mode trying to grab a record pic of it

This is the first Ringlet I've seen in years! 

It may be bashed and worn to heck, but I was thrilled to creep up on this individual. I've always really liked Ringlets, I've seen quite a few ab.arete over the years and would absolutely love to see ab.lanceolata before I die. Sadly, no Ringlets of any form or aberration occur on Skye (I'm afraid I just don't believe this Skye record on the NBN Atlas). Anyway, if you think that Ringlet is worn, you should have seen the state of the second one we found, it was almost cream-coloured it had so few scales left on the wings!

We spent quite a bit of time amongst the Aspens once more, just on the off-chance of bumping into a Dark Bordered Beauty. No luck on that front, but again the Aspens provided interest in other ways

Galls of Phyllocoptes tremulae - a mite 

Galls of Harmandiola populi - a gall midge

Galls of Harmandiola globuli - another gall midge

Both Harmandoila galls side by side - note the differences in attachment point

Ghostie swept and potted a small moth. I had no clue what it was (looked like a Eudonia to me, which used to be a pyralid when I was last into moths, though it could be a crambid nowadays I guess?) Luckily, he's pretty shit hot at moth IDs and confidently named it as Scoparia ancipitella, despite it being all but scaleless. He's taken it away to gen det, but he's probably right anyway.

Carlsberg don't do moths, but if they did it would look a lot better than this!

Petty Whin - one of my favourite plants and one I see flowering very infrequently indeed

By now we were hungry and ready to head back to the digs in Kingussie. And hell yeah, I went straight back to the Chinese takeaway! Get it while you can, I say. Back at the b+b Ghostie nipped out to the car and found yet more goodies

The mildew Erysiphe berberidis var berberidis on Berberis thunbergi (in a garden)

Galls on Flowering Currant caused by the aphid Cryptomyzus ribis

Solomon's Seal Sawfly larva on a heavily chomped bit of Solomon's Seal

I chipped in my tuppence-worth with the mighty Erysiphe symphoricarpae on Snowberry leaves

Stunner....

Followed mere moments later with this mildew on vetch leaves

Piss-poor pic of Erysiphe pisi var pisi

Tomorrow would bring a very definite change of pace, we were heading back up a mountain! Personally, though I do love a nice woodland (or bog/marsh/fen/mire thingy), I'd much rather be up a mountain given the choice. Proper adventuring, proper effort required, proper plants and a proper chance of getting lost in fog, if memory serves.... 

Less chance of getting our wellies full of swamp water too. 

Taking it Easy

After yesterday's adventures up Ben Lawers, I was pleased to find that I could still walk. Not so Ghostie, who was hobbling around the room like a broken thing. My suggestion that we return to the summit of Ben Lawers elicited a particularly withering death stare. Guess not then... My second suggestion that we keep to level terrain was met with a more favourable response. We had gen for quite a few plants along the Ben Lawers road, we would try for a number of these before wending our way northwards to Kingussie, which would be our base for the next two nights. 

Our room was on the third floor. Heading down was easy enough, but I could definitely feel it in my legs heading back up again. I've never in my life experienced leg fatigue that lasted through to the next day, I guess I really must be getting old. But a quick wander around our first destination soon sorted out any residual aches and from that point onwards I was fine for the rest of the week. Just as well really, because several more mountains were very definitely on the agenda.

I should mention that this is going to be another plant-heavy post, apologies if plants aren't your thing.

What started as a roadside twitch for Tuberous Comfrey set a trend that would last the duration of our adventure. We couldn't find the target plant, but ended up finding lots of other goodies instead, something we repeated several times more. And when I say 'goodies', what I actually mean is 'stuff I don't see on Skye'. Like this lot, all from one small site

Buddleja, Blackcurrant and Marjoram - which kinda sounds like a swishy posh jam flavour

I had to ask The Ghost to confirm the Marjoram, it's been that long since I last saw the stuff! There were several more dross plants to be found including a couple that were new to Ghostie. First up was this patch of pure garbage

Lesser Knotweed. Yawn.....

A somewhat better lifer for him, seeing as it's a proper native and hence was on his list of target plants, were the several patches of Northern Bedstraw that we found growing on a woodland edge

Poor photo of Northern Bedstraw - it's actually a very nice plant in real life

I spotted a patch of robust-looking Hypericum growing alongside the Northern Bedstraw. A quick check of the leaves with my handlens revealed a complete lack of perforations. "This must be Imperforate St John's-wort, I need that!" I excitedly exclaimed, but Ghostie was having none of it. He opened the key and we duly worked through the couplets, it ran to species very easily. And what was it? Imperforate St John's-wort, of course! There are quite a few 'common' plants that I've somehow missed/overlooked and this was one of them so, for me at least, it was a pleasing and rather satisfying find. Doubly so when I learned that Ghostie didn't need it, those are the absolute best ones! Naturally I took lots of pics, but they were all crap. Here's one showing the rounded sepals and clasping stem leaves

Imperforate St John's-wort. Trust me, the rest of the pics are even worse!

We found a large Euphorbia that we haven't yet managed to identify, but had to admit defeat with the Tuberous Comfrey. Our next port of call was Weem Woods which has a naturalised population of Chinese Ragwort somewhere near the car park. Twenty minutes later and...

Chinese Ragwort as seen from afar

It took all of about five seconds to find the Chinese Ragwort growing just outside the car park, and then a couple more minutes to decide that neither of us could in any way be arsed to push through the thickets of brambles and nettles between us and it. Unenthusiastic sums it up. Anyway, job done - plastic dross ticked without any effort or skill required on our part. It all seemed a bit daft, really. After yesterday's botanical adventures at high altitude, ticking this alien plant by a car park seemed somehow pleasureless and lame. But fuckit, in the murky underworld of pan-species listing, a tick is a tick and that's all that counts (I jest, that's not at all what pan-species listing is about. Clearly the real objective is to see more species than your friends have...)

Now would be a good time to make mention of a few non-plant species, though technically plants are still quite heavily involved. First up, I found lots of these distinctive spots on a patch of Upland Enchanter's Nightshade

A quick look at the underside of the leaves revealed the fruiting bodies of Puccinia circaeae

Nearby we found a sapling Alder that had many inflated leaves, these also caused by a fungus

These blister galls are caused by Taphrina tosquinetii, a widespread fungus of Alder

We headed eastwards to pick up the northbound A9 into Speyside, which is where we planned to spend the rest of our trip. En route we called in at Logierait for a delightful plant that grows in one small area

This is Motherwort, a fantastic looking beast of a plant

Ghostie had never seen this plant before, whereas I've seen it here a couple of times already, so it was nice to be able to lead him straight to it. We soon noticed a few of these flymines on the leaves

Amauromyza labiatarum - note the diffuse greenish frass

There are several species of agromyzids that mine Motherwort, but I was fairly confident this would be Amauromyza labiatarum, a species I ordinarily find on Hedge Woundwort on Skye. I popped the image onto iRecord where Barry Warrington, the agromyzid national scheme recorder, soon verified the ID.

Ghostie had gen for a plant neither of us had seen before, somewhere just over the river. The directions mentioned a wooden bridge - I knew exactly where that lay, so we set off on a new twitch. Within minutes we were across the bridge and closing in on our next lifer

This is Pontic Blue-sowthistle, a bit of a mouthful and a bit of a beast of a plant too! It towered above the roadside Bracken, reaching a height of maybe seven or eight feet tall. Unlike some other Blue-sowthistles, this species isn't rhizomatous, a quick look downwards proved that this was one multi-stemmed plant and not a clump of several plants. The gen we were using is from quite a few years back, I wondered how long these plants survive before dying. Above the Pontic Blue-sowthistle were oaks. I don't get to see oaks very often on Skye, and a sneaky peek upwards added a nice fungus to my yearlist. Oh, did I mention that The Ghost challenged me to see who can achieve the highest PSL for the year? No? Well he did, I probably ought to have mentioned the mildew all over the oak leaves, but....

Erysiphe alphitoides - Oak Mildew. I bet he never even noticed it....with luck

You'll notice in the images above that the sun was shining. Well that sure didn't last. The clouds rolled in and the rain it did fall. We took shelter beneath the wooden bridge, which kinda worked until the rain became so heavy that we were soon being soaked by huge drops of water leaking through the wooden slats above. Ghostie reached for his trusty umbrella whilst I stood there, in a t-shirt, getting thoroughly sodden. Maybe he'd noticed me sneakily checking out the oak mildew after all? Despite the grim conditions, we soon realised that the carpet of umbellifers all around us were a little different to Cow Parsley, which is what I'd already dismissed it as being. Luckily, The Ghost was paying attention and realised the seedpods were all wrong for that

I plucked the tip of a frond and rubbed it between my fingertips. One quick sniff - phew! Yep, it smelled very strongly of aniseed, not one of my favourite smells, but diagnostic of Sweet Cicely - which just so happened to be a new plant for The Ghost. Blimey, he was properly racking up the lifers so far this trip, probably three times as many as I was attaining. I spied a few leaf mines on Himalayan Balsam, which proved to be the first record of Phytoliriomyza melampyga for the vice county (I forgot to say that we found mines of Agromyza alnivora on Alder at the base of Ben Lawers yesterday - also a VC first. Clearly lots of room for improvement in East Perthshire!) 

It's not a shit shot, it's 'art'.....

Finally the rain passed, we made a dash for the car and were soon heading northwards up the A9. I'd booked us a room for two nights in Kingussie, followed by two nights in Grantown-on-Spey. We weren't expected until early evening, so had a good few hours to kill before needing to check in. Despite having info for a bucketload of plants between here and Kingussie, we skipped past most of them and just stormed northwards. Our target was Invertromie, near Insh Marshes RSPB. The Aspen woodlands here hold Dark Bordered Beauty, a rare moth that I'd never seen. Apparently all we needed to do was 'walk around' and they were easy. We 'walked around'. No sign, damnit. However, true to form, we found stuff regardless. And, staying true to form, The Ghost scooped a shedload of lifers against my handful. However, hats off to him, he emerged grinning from scrub with something cupped in his hands (I hope that doesn't read too wrong, lol) 

Oooooh, wissit?

It's a bit of a lump, eh!

And placed on a slightly more photogenic leaf

Ghostie reckoned it was Agapanthia villosoviridescens, the Golden-bloomed Longhorn. I disagreed. I scanned around, not a Hogweed in sight, a bit like the 'golden bloom' which also was not in sight. But I didn't know what else it could be. I knew there was a similar species recently arrived in southern England that bored into thistles, but that seemed pretty damn unlikely up here in Speyside. I took a video of it, just in case it was something significantly awesome. 

I don't know why my camera produces that creaking noise, and I certainly can't remember hearing it at the time. I think it is more apparent when I'm zoomed in. Annoying, whatever it is.

Anyway, we sussed the identity of the beetle later that night. It's the Aspen feeding Saperda carcharias and is well-known from the area. Got there in the end...

Whilst looking for day-disturbed Dark Bordered Beauties, I stumbled across a patch of Chickweed-wintergreen, it being yet another plant which was new to Ghostie. They'd finished flowering some time back, but the resulting seed pod is just amazing! It looks like a cross between a tiny football and an alien's face!!

The Aspens here are big, mature buggers and, along with Downy Birch, they cover quite an extensive area. The really good news is that there's masses of young growth coming up beneath them and all around the edges, which is the reason the Dark Bordered Beauty is here; the larvae feed on Aspen suckers. Despite not finding the moth, we did find other Aspen-related things of interest

We found good numbers of the Aspen Bracket Phellinus tremulae on larger Aspen tunks

 

Small Chocolate-tip larva on Aspen, an unexpected lifer for me

The Marsh Snipefly Rhagio tringarius, another lifer for me

These snipeflies were quite commonly encountered beneath the Aspens, though not actually associated directly with them as such. I also noted a few Rhagio lineola on the Aspen leaves, a fly I've previously encountered just a couple of times, here on Skye. I watched one 'sweeping' a leaf with its forelegs, presumably using them to locate food (honeydew perhaps?) which it then bowed forward to imbibe. Facsinating stuff!

We undertook a brief skirmish into a wet area in search of String Sedge. The results were inconclusive, we decided to tackle that particular plant at another site tomorrow. What we did conclusively find were Mountain Pansies, not what I was expecting to find at a lowland site, but The Ghost had insider info that told him we were in a good area for them. Weird. Even more weird was the fact that we walked right past a whole load of them on the way out but didn't notice them until we were heading back to the car park a couple of hours later!

Mountain Pansy - other colours are available

Eventually we quit and headed into Kingussie and our b+b. Our host was Batty Bernie, within the space of two minutes he'd sussed we were lepidopterists (keep taking the medicine, he advised!), told us that Diapensia grew on the local hilltops and that forestry workers are so pissed off being attacked by rogue Capercaillies that they swing chainsaws at them, decapitating the birds in one foul swoop. Ghostie cast me a glance, yep our host for the next two nights was a complete and utter nutter. Still, as long as the breakfast was huge I didn't care. We settled in before heading out for food. I homed in on the Chinese takeaway, damnit but I miss a greasy chow mein with burnt rice. Kingussie did not disappoint, I wolfed my food down with gusto. Hell yeah, this is what the mainland is all about. Uig desperately needs a Chinese takeaway, I may start a petition.