Ray Collier Country Diary- Horse Chestnuts

4th August 2008 - Horse Chestnuts

At this time of the year in the Highlands the horse chestnut trees add their own particular colour to the Autumn tints as the very large leaves turn yellow and gold. Each leaf has seven large, thick, stalkless leaflets with pronounced veins and a long, tapering base. The tree can reach 35 metres and the arching branches are usually turned up at the ends. The spiny fruit are green and contain one or more nuts that are a glossy, rich brown with a whitish round patch at the top. The trunk of the tree is in itself attractive as when old it is red-brown and scaly. The size, autumn colours and the large showy white flowers of spring are the reason for the tree’s popularity as it has been extensively planted as an ornamental tree.
Horse chestnut trees were introduced from the Balkans around 1614 and soon became popular and it was first recorded in the wild by 1870. It is widespread in the Highlands although there are some large gaps in parts such as the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland. It has been planted in parkland, large gardens and estates, churchyards, urban streets and village greens. There are many fine specimens in and around Inverness and the photograph of leaves and the nuts was taken on the banks of Loch Farr just south of Inverness. Considering how long it took for the tree to become widespread it has made a remarkable contribution to popular culture. For example the sticky buds, sometimes called "cackey monkeys", are put into vases in the spring. Then later the huge candelabra and white blossoms are the decorative flowers of May. There was even a 1930s dance craze based on the song "Underneath the spreading chestnut tree". Of all the contributions the tree makes perhaps it is the chestnuts or conkers that have been the most significant and widespread. These nuts have developed a folk lore of their own and apart from the commonest name, conkers, they are called conquerors, cheggies and obbly obbly onkers. The last name gave rise to the short rhyme "obbly obbly onker, my first conker".
Seeing children in and around Inverness these days collecting conkers by various means including throwing pieces of wood into the tree to dislodge them, it is difficult to imagine when it first began. Before conkers were used shells and hazel nuts were used and the first recorded game of conkers using horse chestnuts was on the Isle of Wight in 1848. The idea is to thread a conker on a length of string and hit someone else’s conker until one breaks when the owner gains a point and so on. It was, and still is , very much a children’s game but then things changed in 1965 when the first World Conker championship was set up at Ashton in Northamptonshire. In October last year were 256 players in the Men’s’ Competition and 64 in the Ladies’ Competition. Competitors come from all over the world and places have to be booked for each of these competitions but Juniors can turn up and play on the day.
Whatever level you play conkers there has always been the challenge of making your conker harder than any others and over the years various methods have been worked out. Some keep a conker for a year or more which makes them harder whilst others have soaked them or boiled them in vinegar. To solve all these factors in the World Conker Championship you are not allowed to take your own but have to play with those provided.

Ray Collier Country Diary- Oystercatchers

28th July 2008 - Oystercatchers

There are a number of wading birds that are associated with farmland and they can often be seen in fields or rough pasture just by driving around the straths and glens and using the car as a hide. As long as you do not get out of the vehicle the birds accept you and carry on with their business be it displaying, feeding or sleeping. At this time of the year some will still be looking after their chicks although others, such as the curlews, have already left for the coast and better feeding. The birds tend to behave in different ways and one of the most conspicuous is the curlew whose long somewhat mournful calls epitomise the rough grassland or moorland on which they breed. In contrast if you listen on an evening you may well hear the bleating notes of the common snipe. This really does sound like a lamb bleating and for a long time it was thought to be vocal but a closer look revealed that when the bird is diving through the sky two of its tail feathers are spread out and it is the wind rushing through these that makes the curious sound. During the day if the snipe are alarmed then will sit on fence posts and chack away. Lapwings are very colourful birds if you get close to them and not the black and white image they project as they carry out their acrobatic flights. The other conspicuous bird is the black and white oystercatcher whose plumage is set off by the long orange red beak and the reddish-pink legs. When they are on their breeding grounds in the straths and glens they will call throughout the day and night. They mostly nest on the ground but occasionally they nest in some surprising places. The flat tops of buildings such as schools are sometimes used and this is possible by the way they chicks are fed. For most waders the chicks start to feed themselves at a very early stage. With the oystercatcher the adults bring food to the young which is just as well as there is not much food to be found on the top of a building. They have also been known to nest on the top of an old tree stump and one pair near Inverness regularly nesting in the hollow at the top of a stout fence post. The bird on the nest in the photograph was so close to the road she was photographed out of a car window. One pair of oystercatchers nested so close to a road running alongside the River Findhorn that it was only about eighteen inches from the tarmac on the road surface. Another characteristic of oystercatchers is that they are comparatively long lived. One bird that hatched in 1976 was ringed in Inverness in 1978 then re-ringed at Alterlie Point a few miles east of Inverness in 1991. It was found injured at Farr a few miles south of Inverness in 2004. It had to be put down but had lived for 28 years. The record for an oystercatcher is 36 years. The oystercatchers breeding in the straths and glens move from the coast to the breeding sites in the spring and then move back to the coast once the young are free flying. Some stay on the coast for the winter whilst others move south to France, Spain and Portugal. The winter numbers are boosted by Iceland birds that visit the western parts of Britain whilst the Norwegian birds winter in the eastern parts of Britain.

Ray Collier Country Diary- Great Black backed Gulls

21st July 2008 - Great Black backed Gulls

When the tide was going out in the Beauly Firth one day last week there was an assortment of birds on a small mud and sand bank near South Kessock. There were about forty birds in all, mainly lapwings and redshank but there were a few oystercatchers and a single turnstone. Some of the oystercatchers were juveniles and they had probably been bred this year in the straths around Inverness although the numbers had been adversely affected by the poor weather. Of the fifteen redshank no juveniles could be seen so perhaps the weather had also affected these chicks. These waders are uncommon breeding birds in the Highlands although good numbers nest on the RSPB reserve at Insh Marshes near Kingussie. The odd bird out, the turnstone, does not nest in the Highlands so it could have been from Scandinavia or beyond. Many of the waders were looking for food on the edge of the receding water whilst others were asleep. Suddenly the redshank started calling and all the birds suddenly took flight and flew towards the Kessock bridge obviously in disarray.
One of the reasons for such frantic behaviour is often a peregrine falcon and some of these magnificent birds of prey will stay along the coast until next spring before retuning inland to breed. There are rich pickings for these birds and the prey depends on whether the bird is male or female. As with most falcons and hawks the female is considerably larger than the male so whilst the male may go for small waders such as dunlin or redshank the female will take ducks such as teal and even larger species. On this occasion the disturbance was not a peregrine but a single great black-backed gull that flew low over the water and mud obviously looking for food. Fear of this bird is readily apparent as it is the largest gull in the world and one of the most impressive of seabirds. The chest is deep and the massive head has a heavy hook tipped beak. The black wings have a spread of five feet
The last Highland Bird Report states that this gull is a "common breeder; uncommon far inland". They nest on rocky outcrops, sometimes on moorland and even buildings and they are commonly seem around Inverness and will wander a short way inland to feed on carrion such as fish and dead lambs and sheep. In the last few years they have suffered in the same way as other seabirds because of the shortage of fish and offal from fishing boats. This has led to some local colonies not bringing off any chicks but there is another serious side. Lack of fish had forced these large gulls to seek other food and the colonies of sea birds such as on the North Sutor near Cromarty have been targeted. In some years the gulls have killed large numbers of shags, guillemots and kittiwakes and with some species both adults and chicks being taken. What is surprising about the current success of this gull is that it almost became extinct in the latter part of the 19th century. Victorians shot them and mounted them on walls as trophies but the biggest losses came from farmers who shot, trapped and poisoned them because of their liking for lambs and injured or cornered sheep.
Local names for great black backed gulls include goose gull, carrion gull and greater saddleback whilst the Scots names include baukie, gull maw and swarbie. One of the three Gaelic names is Faoil-mhor which means great seagull.

Ray Collier Country Diary- Dragonflies

14th July 2008 - Dragonflies

Lochs, lochans and other water bodies are the key to dragonflies as they can spend as much as 95% of their life cycle under water. The females lay their eggs in or near water and they usually hatch after a few weeks although the eggs of some species lie dormant over winter. The life history of the dragonfly in the photograph is a good example. This is a close up of the golden ringed dragonfly and they are, as the name suggests, black and gold all over except for the green eyes. They are the longest, eight centimetres, of the dragonflies in Britain with a wing span of nine centimetres and if they buzz around you after insects they can be intimidating. They are common around Inverness and are one of the very small numbers of dragonfly that spend their lives in or over flowing water such as burns or rivers. The adults are on the wing, sometimes far from water, from between early June to mid-September which may seem a long time but they have already spent up to five years under water as nymphs.
Underwater it is like a battle field as the nymphs prey on other small water animals whilst they in turn are predated by fish, large water beetles, birds, etc. The nymphs must have cover during the day to avoid some predators but there must be aquatic, floating and emergent plants to support a rich supply of insects. Then when the time has come to emerge it helps to have shallow water which heats up in the sun and emergent plants for the nymph to crawl up and finally emerge as an adult.
There are a number of excellent sites for dragonflies and damselflies round Inverness and elsewhere in the Highlands. We tend to think that all of the best sites have only been "discovered" in recent times but this is not always the case. In the book "British Dragonflies" by W.J.Lucas published in 1900 there are dragonfly records for Aviemore, Insh, Strathglass and Loch-an-Eilan which would have been made long before the book was published. A few years ago the finding of the attractive dragonfly called the brilliant emerald in Strathglass was hailed as a new and important record until it was realised that a Dr Buchanan White found it there in 1869! Other good sites include Loch Bran, Beinn Eighe and Glen Affric.