New for Scotland?

So I'm a little bit pissed off with myself. Well actually, I'm very bloody annoyed with myself is what I am. I'll tell you why a little later. 

My rota allowed me time off just before New Year's Eve and I had the Big Day itself off work too. Sod it, time for an impromptu roadtrip! I finished work, didn't even take a shower, slung my bag into The Gibstermobile and immediately roared off down to Ayr some 230 miles away (I'd booked a hotel room, so the shower did eventually happen later that night).

As a kid I used to live in Ayr and I know of a few 'birdy spots' that I suddenly fancied revisiting. The very first entry in my very first notebook is from Scaur-o-Doon, dated New Year's Day 1986 (I identified my first ever Curlew, Redshank and Oystercatcher). Scroll forward a mere 39 years and I wondered if I could find the exact spot and see the exact same species again. Long story short, there's a bunch of luxury houses on top of the site. Personalised number plates and an ungodly number of Porsches were hugely apparent, wading birds somewhat less so. Meh.

Undaunted, I figured the beach and river mouth at least would still be largely unaltered. Happily this proved to be the case and I spent a lovely hour or so scanning through the legions of gulls, corvids and Starlings attracted to washed up mountains of wrack. It was bloody cold though, I wished I'd thought to bring some gloves or a hat with me. I then took a wander through a marshy area, half-hoping to flush a Jack Snipe as I once had many moons ago. No luck there, though I did pull apart a couple of Typha heads and found a number of pupae within, presumably belonging to the moth Limnaecia phragmitella. 

The wrack mountain at Scaur-o-Doon

Just check out the number of Mute Swans in that image. There have been just two Mute Swans found on Skye in the eight years I've lived there. Two! And hell yeah, I successfully twitched both of them. And the Moorhen (you probably think I'm joking, right?)

My next pitstop was just a couple of miles away, right next to the cottage that Robbie Burns was born in. I've been inside the cottage a couple of times, it's pretty cool if you like that sort of thing. Across the road are some formal gardens and a large monument to Robbie. Then there's the Auld Brig which, according to the poem, saw a terrified Tam o' Shanter ride his trusty horse Meg across, with a pissed-off witch hot on his heels. If you're at all interested in Burns and his stories, you really should drop into Ayr someday.

Burns' Monument and the Auld Brig o' Doon (yes, it's a real place)

You may (quite rightly) be wondering why I'm shoving mediocre tourist pics down your throat when this is supposed to be a nature blog. Well, it all has to do with why I'm so pissed off with myself. I'll get to the point soon, don't panic.

I should probably mention this right now, I have a plan for 2025. Several plans in fact. One of these plans is to see 2500 living species throughout the course of the year. New Year's Day will always be 'kick off day' for any such endeavour; as such I was, by now, merrily year-ticking away like a complete loon. The Auld Brig proffered such lovelies as Maidenhair Spleenwort, Tutsan (sans rust, sadly), a highly vocal Nuthatch, Wall-rue and Sycamore Tarspot Fungus. By the time I quit the bridge my 2025 Yearlist was well into the seventies. 

I have ancient but fond memories of scanning through hordes of seaduck just north of Stranraer, Long-tailed Duck and scoter all over the place if memory serves. Skye is seemingly lacking any decent seaduck numbers, other than a bunch of Eider between Raasay and Skye. I quite fancied my chances pulling out a rare scoter, or maybe a Harlequin, amongst the bobbing rafts of seaduck. An hour or so later...

"It's a double rainbow..."

This rainbow over Stranraer was unbelievably vivid, the pic does it absolutely no justice whatsoever. I threw the car into the kerb and jumped out to capture the moment before it faded into oblivion. Then I thought sod it, I'll do a video clip. Which clearly was the cue for a random old lady to launch into action and 'soundbomb' my video. "Look, it's a double rainbow" she croaked. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. There's not much gets past your rheumy old eyes, huh?

  

I scanned the bay, lit as it was by the apparently double rainbow, finding several rafts of Scaup amounting to maybe 100 birds, a handful of Common Scoter, Eider and Great Crested Grebes, plus a nice close Slavonian Grebe. Lovely birds, I don't get to see Slavs very often nowadays. Actually, pretty much any grebe on Skye is noteworthy, other than Little. 

I quite like Stranraer. It's a shit tip of a town really, a bit rough around the edges I guess you could say. But the bay is superb, and in fact most of the surrounding fields held good numbers of Curlew, Lapwing or Golden Plover. And, from the road just a few miles north of it, I could see Northern Ireland sat on the horizon. A country yeartick, no less (not that I yearlist countries, you understand. But if I did...)

I was as far south as I was going to get today, Skye was still a good seven hours ahead of me. But I needed to call in to Ballantrae and check the shingle beach for signs of life. Sadly for me, there was not even a sniff of Oysterplant on the beach. I suspect it dies back to the taproot at this time of year. What I didn't expect to find were two Cabbage Palms Cordyline australis growing at the edge of a lake. Conceivably they may have been planted, but I did notice quite a few growing in surrounding gardens. Innocent until proven guilty, I say. As such they're on my PSL yearlist!  

There's a very pleasant riverside walk at Ballantrae. I've been there just once before, I was looking for a plant who's name escapes me for the moment. Anyway, I soon found myself parked up and heading for the river. To be fair, though I did see a few nice things, at this time of year it's always going to be fairly tough going. Which it definitely was.

However! 

I took a path that led back up to the road, whereupon a large Griselinia hedge caught my eye. I spent a week on the Isle of Wight with Mark Telfer last month and he showed me a microfungus that grows on fallen Griselinia leaves. Scouting around beneath the hedge, I soon had a collection of dead and dying fallen leaves. Guess what...

Do you see those tiny pale balls on a narrow stalk...

This, my dear friends, is none other than Physalacria stilboidea, a very tiny fungus that grows on decaying New Zealand Broadleaf leaves. Mark Telfer had heard of the fungus but was unfamiliar with the hostplant. In a truly bizarre quirk of fate, Mark mentioned it to me about 20 seconds after we'd driven past a patch of the hostplant. A quick bit of reversing later and we added the fungus to our PSLs. Now, some 600 miles further north, I'd essentially done the same again - spotted the hostplant and checked the fallen leaves. Bingo! 

As far as I'm aware, this may well represent the first Scottish record for the fungus. Edit: nope, there's an Outer Hebs record from 2015. Meh.

Sometime between finding this fungus and reaching Skye several hours later, I lost my camera. I think I know what happened. A few weeks back I broke the zip on my waterproof jacket and handed it in to be mended here in Broadford village. This being Broadford village, I fully expect it to be repaired by about February. Of next year. In the meantime I've been wearing a different coat, one with fewer pockets. The pocket housing my camera also housed my notebook. My assumption is that, whilst oiking the notebook out of the pocket, I accidentally snagged the camera and oiked that out too. Thanks to the rain, I had my hood up for much of the time and clearly didn't hear the thud as the camera hit the ground by my feet. I strongly suspect that it's currently laying in a ditch somewhere near Ballantrae. I do know that it's not in my car, my bag or my coat. I really do suffer the absolute worst of luck with these Olympus Tough cameras. I now need to buy my fourth Tough camera in somewhat less than ten years. Utterly ridiculous, and it's not as though I can easily afford to throw good money on a replacement. 

Anyway, all of the fabulous nature pics you've been waiting to see were on the Olympus. Hence the mediocre touristy shite above. I'm just glad I took a few phone snaps of the Physalacria! So my next move, I guess, is to try and figure out where to pick up a 'cheap' Olympus TG-7. Wish me luck.