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.