Snow

There had been little here, except on the hill tops until today when, just as we were heading out to Monzievaird a fair bit came down. We went out anyway and Monzievaird was a changed landscape. The loch was mostly frozen, just a small patch of open water where amongst 70 or so Mallard, 17 Little Grebes, 4 Moorhen, 2 Canada Geese and 4 Mute Swans were a pair of (new for me at this site) Gadwall. A Carrion Crow was tearing at some dead and dismembered thing in the middle of the ice. Being somewhat concerned about how good the roads would be to get home, we didn't linger long.

Photos from around Loch Monzievaird.

Overnight and during the morning I'd been trying my new camera trap. I've been using a Browning trap over the last few years and whilst I have got some decent results and it has found some interesting things, principally Water Rail and Jack Snipe in Orkney, it is a frustrating thing to use. One main problem is setting the trap in the dark, which is almost impossible because the screen is located on the front of the camera requiring a certain amount of contortion and trial and error to get it to focus on the correct area. The tripod mount has broken, which makes positioning it a pain as well. I had bought a solar panel to try to reduce battery use, but in the winter and at night it tended to be unreliable. Probably its worst feature from my point of view was the lack of decent close focus necessitating taping a close up lens to the front of it if I wanted to get images of small mammals. Browsing the Nature Spy site the other day I saw they had an interesting new camera available, and at not an extortionate price.

The Helarctos Solar trap has a wide angle lens, that focuses much closer. It also connects to my mobile phone so it is not hard to position much more accurately, even at night. I've also found that it fits really well on the Z tripod fitting I have, and used with this, and no tripod, it will sit on the ground in a stable position, ideal for small mammals and for small birds.  I've put some of my first efforts below. One position is a little too ambitious with the close focus, I should have put it a few cms further back, but otherwise the video output is pretty good. Photos are passable, but that's not how I tend to use a camera trap, although it will take one still image with a video.

 Red Squirrel, feeding finches.

How many bird species can you see?

Leucistic Chaffinch

Wood Mouse 

Bank Vole at night.

 Three Bank Voles under the feeders.

Robin

 

Bank Vole, the camera a fraction too close I think.

The Brambling is only the fourth or so in the garden, the third this autumn/winter. And the leucistic Chaffinch is the third, I didn't get images of the previous two. Today, out in The Ross there was a smart male Stonechat which is only the third record for the patch I think.

I'm currently writing up various things from 2025, and earlier; and trying to get all my records in to iRecord. The Community Woodland species total is also being worked on, currently 461 with a few mammals, reptiles and amphibians known about, but I have no dates, yet.

I attended a Biological Recording Company beginners' session on bryophytes earlier this week. I'm keen to improve my skills,and although I knew most of what was presented it was still worth attending. A new bryophyte book should be turning up shortly and I now better understand the morphology of these plants.

Happy New Year

The more confiding of our Red Squirrel visitors, the dark tailed individual, plucked up courage on Christmas morn to find their Christmas breakfast in the now, quite popular home made squirrel feeder.

Red Squirrel

Indeed this squirrel has been visiting the feeder regularly, sometimes on stealth mode it seems, as the camera trap only caught it leaving, I'd seen it sitting on the feeder platform from the house but the trap was slow to fire for some reason.

 It worked ok for these Wood Mice though.

And the Bullfinch also returned today (not camera trap).

Bullfinch female.

A Christmas gift that was most well received was Volume 1 of Beetles of Britain and Ireland recently republished by the Field Studies Council. Andrew Duff is working on a revision of this first volume I believe, but this reprint is most welcome. I am hopeful that Volume 4 may also get the reprint treatment, although, again I believe AD is also working on a revision of that episode. I have originals of Volumes 2 & 3 but these other volumes had become impossible to obtain (and Volume 3 was tricky to get when I managed to obtain a copy).

To go with my Volume 1 my working through unidentified samples produced an excellent Harpalus laevipes from the back garden. This is a really quite rare beetle and a very good discovery. 

Harpalus laevipes

 

I've also been working on some diptera from 2024, Muscidae and the blow fly families. The excellent key to the blow flies by Olga Sivell is a such a useful book for learning about diptera morphology. The blow flies themselves are tricky to ID. I may have found Bellardia bayeri in the garden, but as good as the key is, it is easy to make mistakes and I need to re-key this before submitting to iRecord. I also need to re-photograph some important bits.

A wander around the patch yesterday included a visit to the fish farm where there were 22 Teal, three Mutes and a Moorhen. On the river nearby there was a pair of Goosander with the resident Mallard.

Mute Swan and Teal (now Green-winged Teal, but Anas crecca ref AviBase).

  

Christmas 2025

 Happy Christmas readers!

Photographed a couple of days ago through the front window as I was identifying a few diptera specimens and glanced out. The Himalyan Honeysuckle Leycesteria formosa is very popular with all sorts of species and this Bullfinch was tucking in. 

Bullfinch

Leycesteria formosa can be invasive I believe, but doesn't seem to be a problem here in Perthshire, I have only found it wild once, growing in the wall of a cemetery.

 

A wee early Christmas present was finding an Ichneumon corpse in the bottom of a tube in which I had a couple of Coleophora larvae. The Coleophora were either alticolella or glaucicolella, I hadn't got around to investigating them, but the wasp was NFM Scambus brevicornis, a known parasitoid of these two species.

 

Scambus brevicornis

 

It was a community  woodland day yesterday. I managed to add a few species to the CCW list and two to my own.

 

Heteromyza commixta, common enough but under recorded and NFM

 

Byssomerulius corium, the white fungi here, also NFM

The Heteromyza was hard to identify, despite the excellent key by Sivell, Stubbs and Andrews. Hopefully, I have got it correctly. I might need to take some of the photos again. And the fungi was very striking as I wandered around the CCW reservoir.

 

I went up to the reservoir after working with others on one of the butterfly orchid sites on the CCW. A place where both species occur but was getting overcome with rank vegetation. Unfortunately trees had been planted on this spot also. I dug up and moved some Scots Pine to a more suitable spot, and others scythed and raked. There's still a bit more tree work to do.

 

The wander around the reservoir also added Alder, the only place on the site where it naturally occurs, I must have walked right by it many times. The same with the single Norway Spruce, close by. I also added Sylvicola fenestralis, several were taking advantage of the pastries left on the bench for the volunteers.

 

Flamminula velutipes s.l. a fungi that I've seen here several times before.

Norway Spruce

Writing this late in the evening with a snoring dog at my feet and both Barn Owl and Tawny Owl audible from the kitchen. Season's Greetings! 

Rain

Rain, a Beatles song I like, covered in an exemplary manner by Todd Rundgren, and a different song by Martin Stephenson and the Daintees, which Martin and the band played the other week when I went to see them. (The gig full of old men!)

To get to the point it has been raining here quite a bit and our village floods. Thus the £45m flood prevention scheme that is being constructed. Our house has never flooded, but with the ground so saturated we are having a few water issues. Hopefully we will be able to resolve them, although as long as things don't worsen a bit of awareness and management is what is required.

Here's the River Earn doing its thing.

The issue for the village, down stream from here, is that the Earn is joined by the Ruchill and the Lednock in the village. As I've previously mentioned the Ruchill can become a raging torrent in moments due to the deforestation and erosion upstream. 

Just to follow up on a bit of a rant from an earlier post on Glen Lednock and its imminent destruction by a proposed wind turbine development, it appears that sense has prevailed. The UK Government has done something excellent. The NESO website is a bit difficult to comprehend but expert advice indicates that this scheme will not be built before 2035 and quite likely will never be built. https://www.neso.energy/industry-information/connections-reform/connections-reform-results?

Rationalising wind energy demands and distribution is a very sensible step and will have positive impacts for wildlife. In another positive outcome in Scotland the most damaging section of the Natural Environment Scotland Bill was defeated. Many thanks to Mark Ruskell for working to make this change to the Bill and other MSPs for voting against this terrible piece of legislation which would have given future Scottish Governments free reign to destroy some of our most important wild places. Mark also managed to get the "Swift bricks" amendment through, despite an initial hiccup!

In a dry moment the other day I took some bird pics in the garden. 

Redpoll Acanthis flammea, this bird would have previously been called Lesser Redpoll Acanthis caberet

Yes, the AviBase bird list has been adopted by BOU and those three species are now one. Goodbye Acanthis hornemanni and Acanthis caberet, Arctic and Lesser Redpoll are no more. Hooded Crow has also gone, not surprisingly in my view, however the ridiculous notion of Scottish Crossbill Loxia scotica remains. This so-called species is unidentifiable in the field, even on call so I understand - see here https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0798/2235/6763/files/sbrc-position-on-scottish-crossbill.pdf?v=1706189991. I have seen a lot of crossbills in Scotland, I've never had a single one that gave me "different" vibes, well ok one but I was not convinced. They've either been Common Crossbill Loxia curvirostra or rarely, Parrot Crossbill Loxia pytyopsittacus. How anyone can still have this species on their list, other than by geographical assumption (and given Parrot and Common Crossbill distribution that's a dodgy call) I do not know. The alternative position is that there are 6.2 million micro-species of crossbill, so Loxia scotica does exist somewhere in that melange, equally it would be unidentifiable in the field. Bit of a rant, and to be fair, some of my fungi "identifications" probably fall into the same fold, but I am blissfully unaware of the taxonomic ebb and flow in fungi-world, other than knowing that possibly only 75% of UK species have actually been determined (15,000 species), with 2,000 of those recorded but once and an estimate of 20,000 UK species being quite probably somewhat conservative. For more info on what now constitutes a British bird species look here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.70009  - although personally I find this report pretty confusing. Perhaps the saddest species loss for me is the lumping of Teal and Green-winged Teal, now all Anas crecca, but with the vernacular of Green-winged Teal. 

 

Fortunately all of the above are untouched by taxonomic changes. Note the Blue Tit enjoying the "squirrel" feeder and the Coal Tits, of which I counted 26 around one feeder the other day. 

A trip out to the community woodland the other day added a few species to that list, which is becoming my list of most interest. There are two additions to make, botanical information received about two species, although without dates unfortunately. So Grass of Parnassus and Alder Alnus glutinosa may be added to bring the list to 450 species. A focus on botany, some more light trapping and actually accepting the spider challenge might make 1,000 species possible by the end of next year (that's a pretty big ask, 600 might be more realistic).

Chelicerae of Drassodes cupreus, the position and size of the teeth are diagnostic.

Drassodes cupreus, a common species but tricky to get to species.

 

Thanks to IA for helping me with yet another tricky dipteran.  Interestingly, AI nearly got this correctly initially. However, because I knew it was wrong, antennae colour, I went off at a tangent looking at other families. I should have stuck with Scathophaga. IA got me back on track and then Stuart Ball's very handy key and Steven Falk's images supported the suggested ID.

Scathophaga furcata

I also managed to add a couple of beetles, one of which was found dead and in pieces in a moss sample but I managed the jigsaw to identify it. And here's a favourite, which is tiny and hard to see.

Megabunus diadema

A bit of an exchange with a P-SLer the other day who was close to outraged that I use AI. I am aware there are serious issues with AI, world economy issues may soon become apparent with AI gobbling available investment - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7vrd8k4eo

If we all removed the clutter of data we have backed up in the cloud, that would go some way to relieving the carbon pollution issues of AI. I have started the long job of deleting unnecessary files, photos in particular which are very data hungry. 

The garden list is a bit stagnant, but I've decided to add species that are blown in, sometimes in bits - Norway Maple leaves and seeds and the lichen Evernia prunastri. A bit skinny maybe....

On the full P-SL list I'm not making much progress at the moment, and have slid out of the top 100. The rain has kept me out of the field and I'm busy entering data not creating it.

To finish here are some photos from around the patch, on a rare nice day.

 

 

Feeder

 I made a Red Squirrel feeder (may also double as a Pine Marten lure, the mammal that lives all around us but I've never seen). The Red Squirrels that come in to our garden every morning don't like my feeder much. Skip along the back wall, past the feeder, shin up the Wych Hazel, decide they don't like Nyjer seed having had a peek at that feeder. Down the Wych Hazel, past the squirrel feeder, rummage around in the grass.

 It's all a bit disappointing....

The addition of the camera trap, some jam sandwiches (at night only, apparently Pine Martens love them) and some bits of carrot and sweetcorn might help, anyway the birds enjoy the peanuts etc.

Moth lights are out, despite the rain. It's not supposed to be raining, just as earlier it was supposed to be raining and wasn't, but forecasting here will be confused by the hills for sure. (This was written some days ago, subsequently Storm Bram has provided some entertainment water-wise.)

December Moth, there were seven between the two traps, again more in the LED.

Winter Moth, this one on the kitchen window but there were five around the synergetic trap.

Spruce Carpet

There were also two crane flies, a Tipula rufina and, new for the garden Trichocera major, with a wing length of 8.5mm out of the range of the other species in this genus, and the cerci shape looks good too.

Trichocera major

 I've been working on compiling the species list for the community woodland. https://www.cultybraggancamp.uk/community-woodland The site is 18 hectares and was MoD land, connected to the Cultybraggan prisoner of war camp. Once the MoD pulled out, but still owned the land, it was apparently used as rough grazing for sheep for many years with little or no use of chemicals. The site is a north facing bank near the lower end of Glen Artney, it sits above the Ruchill, a river that due to the lack of trees, through over-grazing and land management for "sporting" purposes can turn into a dangerous torrent in just a few moments. 

Anyway, prior to my turning up here there had been no great efforts to find out that much about the wild species present, except for birds which have been monitored and more obvious and larger insects like butterflies. A few botanical visits had discovered butterfly orchid, fragrant orchid and various Dactylhoriza species, without getting fully accurate determinations to species. Quite a few common plants had been identified though and a few less obvious insects had been photographed and identified. There is a sightings board, and I still need to obtain the lists from that board. Anyway to cut a long story somewhat short, with compiling other folks' sightings and with my own moseying about I've now got the list to 442 species. (This link might get you there... https://panspecieslisting.com/my-lists.html ) - initial target 1,000 species for the site. Currently the list doesn't include Pine Marten, which I know has occurred but I've not seen a record, Short-tailed Field Vole and Slow Worm likewise.

Here are the photos of one of the fallen but still alive Goat Willow Salix caprea on the site, photos I meant to put in the previous post.

Goat Willow Salix caprea - I bet a litter sample here would reveal a few interesting things...

Next year's project is to  get to grips properly with the botany of the site. And run light traps more often. I'm making a start this winter working on bryophytes and lichens. In the last week or so I've added a few of these.

I've identified this as Cephalozia bicuspidata, but I might need to review that ID, I'm not entirely convinced I've got this correctly.

I'm a more convinced by this, Lophocolia bidentata, another liverwort.

 

It's a slow job finding these, often hidden in samples of moss and only revealed once under the microscope, and then identifying them. For a group of only 72 species liverworts are pretty tricky. I'm also working on mosses, rather a lot more species.... AI is no help with bryophytes I find, however, it is much more helpful with lichens.

Hypnogymium physodes

Phlyctis argena

However, these Cladonia species required a more traditional approach. I'm fairly happy with these identifications.

Cladonia coniocraea I think

Cladonia fibriata

Hopefully someone will put me right if I've got any of these incorrectly.

I'm being encouraged, and thinking I might enroll on a BSBI course next year to develop my botanical skills. I think it would help me improve my rather lacklustre skills. I used the BSBI botanical skills ladder and place myself on just their second step, oh dear! Improvement required I think.