New boots and ...

Buying new outdoor footware is a bit of a nightmare. Expensive and getting a comfortable fit is something of a challenge I find. It's hard to tell in the shop. My very comfortable Scapa boots are now not much good on the hill as the soles are rather like the tread on car tyres that are close to the legal limit. So a trip to Perth was required the other day. I've ended up with Scapa again, but a very modern design. So far warm and comfortable, but time will tell. Past boot experiences have not always ended well. The pair I wore for the John Muir trail ended up on the cooking fire about half way around as I developed a pathological hatred for them due to the pain they were inflicting. I continued in trainers, but the next day we had to cross snow... I'm just about to eBay my clipless Addidas mountain bike shoes (and the Shimano reversible pedals) as off the bike I might as well wear slippers. No trouble with the cleats, I quite liked them, but it's back to clips on the pedals, and I'm hoping the new Scapas will work well with that set up. Green mobility is pretty essential to all this species recording.

Birding has been interesting with another Woodcock (second patch record) and various comings and going with Fieldfares and a few Redwing. The Oystercatchers returned early, but then disappeared again with the cold snap and the snow. Mistle Thrush continue to sing and were joined by Song Thrush singing in the last few days. A Dipper was singing on the Ruchill. The kite roost has been around 90+ and Kestrel and Merlin have been seen during the counts. 

I've discovered that birding patchwork is still going and is working in a more communicative way with a blog, I might join in again. Inland Scotland would be my league. 

https://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.com/

 

Invergeldie estate, the hills across the glen have a proposal for 19 wind turbines many of which will be 200m tall. Then a second proposal a little beyond them is for 12 wind turbines up to 180m tall. Information here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/saveglenlednock 

We walked up from the very churned up "car park", I wonder if the problems have been caused by Taiga who are carrying out the ground works and deer fencing for the planting of many trees on the estate? We got up to the dam and there very distantly was a Golden Eagle. If the turbines are built the estimate is that they will kill 12 Golden Eagles over their 40 year life. I've been looking into the other impact of turbines on Golden Eagles and the implication is that they will move the Golden Eagles out of the glen as the species is intolerant of turbines. This paper is interesting - 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ibi.12996

You can read it here, but not download it without paying quite a lot of money.

There are more and more proposed wind farms for the Highlands. So much for the Scottish Government's biodiversity promises. It looks as if one of our most iconic species will be driven out, or at least the population will be significantly depleted. (I don't believe the Scottish Government really understands biodiversity, they seem to be happy to "mitigate" the adverse impacts by "increasing biodiversity" with tree growing projects etc. So iconic species are lost and replaced with a number of common species thus "increasing biodiversity". IMHO they've completely misunderstood the concept. )

The snow was quite heavy a few days previously and the view above the Hub at the community woodland was wintery.

The Hub and hills beyond, Comrie Community Woodland.
 

 The camera traps have been out at the woodland.

Somewhat tantalising as I've never seen one of these.

 Brown Hare, again

 I've been lookjng at lichens and mosses etc again. I find them hard, but bringing small samples home and putting them under the microscope improves my identification chances.

Stereocaulon, probably S. veuvianum but I didn't take a sample of this one and need to go back to check some details.

 This one was a bit easier.

Graphis scripta

Peltigera collina, which I was surprised to find I had seen previously. (note the rhizines are tufty and almost like coppiced Hazel (are these "simple?)

 I struggled to identify this, although I think it is quite distinctive. I suspect a lichenophile will have glanced at the first image above and identified this to species instantly, rather in the manner I'd pick out a Brambling from a Chaffinch flock. Thanks to CF confirming it. One of the problems with keys is that they are often pedantic and ignore how species "look" to focus on small, sometimes hard to understand, definitive features. This is a product of how keys function. Keys are often obscured by the technical language they use requiring a trip to the glossary every other sentence. Again this is understandable, technical terms are required and once learned are very helpful, just the learning for each different Order can take a while. However, it is not helpful when the key and the text are out of kilter and contradict each other. Dobson's Lichens is an amazing piece of work and my edition, 7th revised 2018, is well thumbed. Peltigera are generally considered to be a tricky genus. There is a table prior to the key that puts P. collina in the "Upper surface matt to glossy" section. The previous group of species are in the Upper surface scabrid or tomentose (at least in part), section. However, the first couplet of the key immediately following this table: 

1. Upper surface tomentose or at least scabrid in parts - 2 (tomentose = covered in fine hairs) (scabrid = rough and scurfy)

- Upper surface glossy or slightly matt, not tomentose - 9 

 And then P. collina keys out at 4!!!!

Additionally, in the species description P. collina - Lower surface almost white with light tan veins and simple rhizines. On my specimen the "light tan veins" were very, very hard to see. And are those rhizines "simple"?

 The new Introductory guide to Lichens does not really get you to species very easily, but the top tips for identification ae handy and the photographs are often larger and generally clearer. Dobson is still an amazing piece of work, the new book Yahr and Stoakley is a very useful addition to the lichen hunter's library. Used with the various websites and FB Groups you will eventually get there (and Observation.org can be very helpful if you are prepared to use AI), but along with the need to carry caustic chemicals around the countryside (I don't) there seem to be a lot of barriers to lichen proficiency.

And mosses - 

Racomitrium lanuginosum
 

Best I don't get into how tricky I find these.... Give me a Bembidion or a Stenus (genera of carabid  and staphilinid beetles well know for being tricky) any day! But I am continuing to attempt identifications....

This post interrupted: Tae sup  wi' a Fifer - 

James and guests were, as in a previous incarnation, excellent.

I put out a single Heath trap with a blue LED two nights ago. It was raining a bit but the temperature had increased, it seemed worth a try.

Chestnut (2)

March Moth

Pale Brindled Beauty (10)

Spring Harbinger.
 

 Next trapping should be at the community woodland, just waiting for the right conditions = not so much rain.

Wandering (from 24 September 2025)

I've deleted my Substack account, I'd only posted on it once in any case. Substack has been found to be making money from Nazi and far right subscriptions. Whilst all platforms have their issues, it appears that Substack are reacting quite slowly to doing much about what has been revealed by The Atlantic and then by The Guardian. The Atlantic said, 

"The newsletter-hosting site Substack advertises itself as the last, best hope for civility on the internet—and aspires to a bigger role in politics in 2024. But just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them." 

The Atlantic posted this in late 2023. The Guardian has reported on the issue recently, apparently nothing much has changed. Not a place I want to be...

 

So I've copied and re-posted my one post there, here.

 

Wandering

Walking slowly, looking, noticing

Alastair Forsyth

Sep 24, 2025

This is how you immerse yourself in your environment. Wherever you are.

This morning, for various reasons, I was in Stirling, near to the city centre with an hour to kill. I’ve been taking part in an activity, an iRecord Activity, but it also exists as a Facebook Group, to record the wildlife of cemeteries and kirk yards across the UK. This is a handy distraction in a city or urban area if you have to be there but are uninterested in the shops or other attractions. (Currently, Stirling has a wonderful exhibition in the Tolbooth of art by Ron O’Donnell, but that’s another story.) There is nearly always a nearby kirk yard or a cemetery in an urban area.

In Stirling I’ve been visiting Allan Park South Church.

This is not an active place of worship. It seems abandoned, closed and beginning to decay. The grounds are used in part as a car park. At some time in the past, perhaps not so long ago, someone planted some fruit trees at the back, and there are the remains of a roadside garden along the front.

To the wandering pan-species lister (and recorder) the place is a potential bonanza. (Pan-species listing is finding, identifying, recording and listing all the living, or having been alive, things that you find.)

This was my third visit and during these visits, over recent weeks, I must have found about twenty species that I had never previously recorded. These things have included fungi, plant galls, insects and plants. Many of these species are tiny, just a few millimetres in length.

Above is the Lime Aphid Eucallipterus tiliae a very distinctive, but quite tiny insect. This was new to me (NTM) on my previous visit.

There are some tiny sapling oak trees in the grounds and looking carefully under the leaves I have found a few galls. Plant galls may be caused by a variety of insects, in this case by a hymenopteran.

Neuroterus albipes f agamic Smooth Spangle Gall on oak Quercus sp. The f agamic means that the gall is formed by the laying of an egg by an unfertilised female insect. The insect injects hormones into the plant which cause it to grow abnormally, forming the gall, which the developing larva feeds on once it has hatched from the egg.

Of course I’ve found other, larger and more obvious insects as well, species that I am more familiar with. Today, by looking carefully in amongst leaves and branches I found Hawthorn Shieldbug Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale.

And as I walked along the front of the church, in amongst the old borders now becoming overwhelmed by less arranged and more natural vegetation a Hummingbird Hawk-moth powered by, pausing briefly to nectar at the Red Valerian, before disappearing high over the church and away.

 

I think I've managed to now clear out the Substack links and other paraphernalia.

Clumping

I've done a bit of clumping in the past, it's always productive and it always produces something of interest. What is clumping? Place of interest (in my case the community woodland), you'll need a sharp knife, a pooter, some plastic bags, some tubes, a sorting tray (I use a white umbrella, compact to carry and works well as a beating tray as well (not always easy to get one that is white inside these days).

So along to the community woodland where I am trying to build a comprehensive species list. Find some Juncus clumps on the bank of the burn. Open the umbrella, get the pooter ready and the macro camera. A head torch is handy late in the afternoon. Cut a bit of a Juncus clump from as low down in the clump as I can get and beat and bash over the umbrella. Start pooting!

The clump was full of beetles, mostly Stenus, the alien looking Staphylinid beetles that I like to identify, but they are tricky.

Stenus bimaculatus, only a few species have pale dots on the elytra, so this is a relatively easy one to ID.

 

Stenus nitidiusculus, less easy, but it has dents in the elytra that are helpful.

In the end I had six Stenus species in the clump, they took me a good few hours to sort out, and that included mis-identifications that I corrected. I often find it helpful with tricky things like these to take another look at them and check the IDs again the next day, or some hours later. Two of these species were new to me, so that was a bonus. 

I also cut a second clump and put it in a plastic bag. I brought this home and it is currently in the fridge. The inhabitants will stay alive in the fridge until I get around to sorting through the clump. One way to sort this material is to use sieves and a bowl, but I prefer to use the pooter method. I might sieve the retained clump after I've looked through it. There's usually something extra revealed. However, we don't have a conservatory or a greenhouse here in Perthshire. (Main purpose of a greenhouse is as a large insect trap or for sorting catches, plant growing.... Well ok, my collected seeds for wilding the lawn go well in a greenhouse.)

There was also Tachyporus atriceps and Bradycellus verbasci in the beetles collected, I ignored a few tiny Aleocharines. 

A new bug for me was Drymus ryei, I caught three. 

I also caught a spider that was NFM and identifiable, Neriene clathrata, two opiliones, a collembola (I ignored the tiny ones), another bug species and perhaps star of the show an Ichneumon that was identifiable.

Drymus ryei, no long hairs erect on the tibia, all black thorax dorsally.

 Ichneumons have a weird fascination for me. They are so hard to identify, but if you can get them to species there is a real sense of achievement. There are hardly any records on the NBN so it is a good route to a new species for the vice county, if not for Scotland.

My approach with Ichneumons is to first run them through Observation.org. Whilst it might not give the correct answer, it can be a short cut to getting to family. In this case it initially came up with something feasible, but wrong. There is a fabulous web resource for Ichneumons, just google the species name followed by bioimages and you come to Malcolm Storey's brilliant images. In this case MS's images helped to rule out the "wrong" species, but then helped with Obsi's second idea which was family Phaeogenini. I looked through a lot of images and compared them with my own. I was on the right track I was sure but which genus? At this point I put my images on FB with various measurements and antennae segment counts. MS quickly suggested a genus and then I found the appropriate keys. On this occasion it was a choice between two species, and my existing images gave a strong clue, but I took a few more pictures to confirm the identification.

 

This image of the propedeum nails the ID, this being a female, Colpognathus divisus. Data - Forewing 4.4mm, body 7.5mm and antennae 20 (22).

There are just two accepted Scottish records on NBN. One of these records is a bit anonymous, but the other has been verified by a well known expert. Hopefully, when I put mine on iRecord it will be positively verified. I'm intending to take some specimens along to the National Museum of Scotland in the next few months, I will include this specimen. It is a bit of a palaver giving material to the museum, but very worthwhile as the collected specimens then have a longer term value. I don't do this enough to be honest (in fact barely at all, once previously, a situation I intend to correct). Although I have sent specimens for research and for reference to others.

Overnight on 1st February I put a light trap out. When I got home from the community woodland the temperature on the car thermometer said 6C and when I went to the garage later, wearing a head torch, a small moth flapped around my face.  Out went the Heath trap with an LED.

Although there was some rain overnight, it stayed relatively warm and this resulted in ten Pale Brindled Beauty and a couple of Winter Moths.

 

 

Pale Brindled Beauty, this last one rather plain.

  

Redpoll numbers in the garden reached 22 yesterday. Chaffinch numbers hover around the 30 mark but there has been a marked decline in Coal Tits, the black sunflower seed feeder is taking much longer to empty.

 

A quick wander around the fish farm produced only the second ever Goldeneye, a 1st winter drake, and 20 Teal. 

 

The rain continues. 

Rain

It is raining. It rained all night. It might stop tomorrow afternoon, for a bit... As I write the rescue helicopter is clattering over the house, and there are a lot of sirens in the distance apparently. Fortunately our bit of the village is quieter.

It's a good chance to catch up with records, I'm a bit behind. I always find when I've not put data into iRecord there and then that there will be some missing photographs or info and I'll have to scrap a few things. I always tell myself I'll get everything entered at the time, but somehow I never do. 

I put a moth trap out the other evening, Monday, just a single Heath trap with an LED. No moths but two diptera. I'm really not very good at diptera but Obsidentify is surprisingly excellent at them, sometimes! Anyway on this occasion it came up with two 100% identifications. One was of Scathophaga furcata, a species I saw for the first time quite recently and managed, with a little help to identify from field photos. This time I took the specimen and ran it through Stuart Ball's key. It keyed out nicely confirming the Obsidentify 100%

Scathophaga furcata, a male.

The photos show the pale antenna with an arista that has very fine short hairs. Thorax has fine acrostichal hairs, and the humerus is the same colour as the rest of the thorax. The wings have fairly discrete smudges on the cross veins. 

The other fly was a Heleomyzidae. Tephrochlamys rufiventris was the species that Obsidentify came up with. At the time I thought I hadn't seen this before so I was keen to prove it. There's a new key to this family available online by Sivell, Stubbs and Andrews (Jan 2025).

Anterior bristle in the middle of the mid femur, tiny but fairly easy to see.

Sub-costal cell clear and of uniform colour (the pale orange cell here).

 When I tried to add the species to my life list the website told me I'd already added it, and sure enough I had found one in Orkney previously. However, both Tephrochlamys rufiventris and Scathophaga furcata are new for the garden, so well worth taking the time to identify them.

I set both my camera traps at the community woodland on Saturday afternoon. There are no actual records of Field Vole Microtus agrestis, despite there being evidence of their activity everywhere so I decided I would obtain a record. A bit of baiting for a couple of days with carrot, apple and sunflower seeds,  a feast for a Field Vole, at a couple of spots where they were obviously busy. The other trap was set on a path, hoping for Pine Marten.

 

The first fires of the trap captured Wood Mouse, a half expected bonus species which also had not been recorded previously.

Field Vole.

The Browning trap was set for bigger game on a footpath. It captured an early walker with their dog, but also a brief clip of Brown Hare which I've not seen on the site directly, although there are previous records from the sightings board.

 Brown Hare

 The other mammal recorded on the day was Mole, of which there was considerable evidence.

Mole hill.

A few days before Louise and I had looked at this poo. I photographed it and compared online. I'm pretty sure it's Pine Marten scat. I really would love to see one - instead of just its poo.

Pine Marten scat, Martes martes

Whilst I tick moths on seeing their leaf mines, I really don't want to tick Pine Marten from its poo. Inconsistent criteria...

Other than a few trips to the community woodland, where I also managed to add Herring Gull to the list as one was with the Common Gulls as they went to roost, and they all circled over the CCW I've not being doing that much. Walks around the patch, one visit to the White Church graveyard and watching birds from the warm kitchen have really been the limit of my field expeditions.

I'm hopeful this is the moss Brachythecium rutabulum, which would be NFM.

Cladonia fimbriata

The springtail Entomobrya nivalis.

The River Earn today. Flooded pony fields in the foreground, then the river, then a new river, the A road, so full of water that it's broken the stone dyke so that the water can into the Earn.

The Ruchill looking very bad tempered.

The River Lednock was also seriously fierce.

I almost forgot that I'd photographed these Bank Voles Clethrionomys glareolus in the garden the other day. There is a small colony that live in the wall by our bird feeders, we can watch them from the kitchen window.

 So despite the weather a bit of a mammal watching week.