Speyside winter scene

The snow has been here for a week now in the Knockando area with about 8″ lying this morning, further east it appears to be a lot worse. Quite normal winter conditions on Speyside with hopefully lots more in the hills. I am in the office most of the time at the moment working on reports etc. I have just about finished the report on the invasive weeds survey carried out last summer and with a meeting on Ranunculus due later this week I am reading the many files on the subject.

I am also looking at historic and recent invertebrate data from the Spey. SEPA kindly made a lot of their data available so there are no shortage of results for comparison with new samples.  It is common to hear those that have known the river for a long time say that the fly life isn’t what it used to be, often followed by the comment that the river is too clean now that all the farm and distillery effluent has been cleared up. Not so sure about that but it will be very interesting to try and compare existing invertebrate surveys with those recorded in the past. Incidentally I see that SEPA recorded Ephemera danica, the large anglers mayfly in the Grantown area occasionally, mainly in the 80s. I’d be interested to hear of any recent sightings of this fly on the river.

Winter scene on the Spey at Knockando