A walk in Glenmore and bloody lichens!

 Success! The rabbit was tempted by some cauliflower leaves and has now been relocated to Glen Banchor, no doubt to its relief as it will no longer be on its own, and definitely to mine as I can now get on with planting out  the flowers I have been nurturing all winter.

Rabbit awaiting relocation

The sunny weather has been perfect for tackling the overgrown areas of the garden and as I have been digging, I am finding buried hazelnuts in their shells.  As there are no hazel trees nearby, I assume that someone is feeding the squirrels and then they are burying the nuts in my garden.

One sunny day, we went to Glenmore and had a walk up a forest track.  There were several wood ant nests which look like mounds of pine needles.  Scotland has its own species of wood ant which is not found elsewhere in the UK. The ants were gathered in groups on the surface of the nest presumably absorbing the warmth of the sun, as on the way back we noticed they had moved further round their mound to keep in the sunshine.  Like all insects, ants are cold-blooded and cannot generate their own body heat.

Alongside the track was a dead Scots pine, a granny pine which had grown in its natural shape rather than the straight up and down trunks that you get in a plantation.

There was a lichen on one of the branches, a white background with black spots,

This turned out to be the Bloody Heart lichen (Mycoblastus sanguinarius) as when you scratch off the black spot ( apothecium) there is a red colour underneath.  Here is a thin section of one of the apothecia, in water so these are the natural colours.

This lichen also grows on the birch trees in Glen Banchor. You can see the red colour peeking through.

There is another lichen in Glen Banchor that grows on the rocks - the Blood Spot lichen.  This time it is the apothecia that are red. Given the shape, maybe this one deserves the name of Bloody Heart lichen!