Our thanks go to the Grampian Fungus Group, whose visit to Windyhills on 21 August, 2005 led by Liz Holden, yielded some interesting findings. Liz sent us the following report.
(These are the group's interim findings. We will update this page when more details come in.)

There was a good range of woodland fungi, with associates of both broadleaved and coniferous trees. Of particular interest were those species that I normally associate with native pine woodland or at least a site where there has been some continuity of pine woodland or where the trees are of native pinewood provenance eg Russula paludosa, Cortinarius scaurus, C. gentilis and C. mucifluus. These species do occasionally crop up elsewhere but appearing together like this suggests an interesting site which would benefit from further surveying for the fungi.

I should stress that the list from Saturday only represents what we found fruiting on the day of the visit - this is one of the difficulties of working with the fungi - next week could give us a list of species with many additional names! The mineral soil present on the site would make it a potential site for the BAP species of 'tooth' fungi - our look yesterday did not find any but they cannot be ruled out because they were not present at one visit. I think that it would be well worth coming back to the site next year, maybe a little later.