The Answers to Tilly’s Quiz!

Back in August we posted a blog with some quiz questions, from the quiz I ran for the staff here at Reindeer House towards the end of the (first!) lockdown, when the restrictions were starting to lift. So here are the long awaited answers! If you had a go then hopefully you have come up with the answers and they are similar to mine!

1: An old term for a stag?

‘Hart’ is an old English term for a Red stag. I grew up in the village of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire and the local Pub was called The White Hart.

One of the red deer stags at our hill farm (the second site for the reindeer herd). Photo: Alex Smith

2: Name the three types of Scottish heather, and in which order do they flower?

‘Bell’ heather is first to flower and is a very bright purple, generally growing in distinct patches on dry moorland heath. The ‘crossed leaved heath’ is a close second, much paler purple in colour, it prefers wetter, boggier ground. Then finally the ‘ling’ heather, which clothes the Scottish hillsides with the wonderful purple hue and this year we had one of the best ever flowering of the ling!

The bright pink/purple of the bell heather, with the paler ling heather amongst it

3: The Scottish name for a woodlouse?

A ‘slater’. They are very small terrestrial crustaceans, which I often find under stones (so not sure where the name ‘woodlouse’ comes from!). When we named the reindeer calves in 2010 on a Bugs and Beasties theme, one of the male calves was called Slater. Sadly he’s no longer with us but we still have some of them from that year, including Spider, Beastie, Lace and Caterpillar.

4: What are the colour of the following berries?

Bearberry is bright red and has a sharp taste.

Crowberry is black, only grows high on the mountain and provides an important source of autumn and winter food for Ptarmigan.

Cowberry is red like the bearberry – in fact it’s easy to confuse the two. They grow at similar altitudes on the moorland but the cowberry is an upright plant whereas the bearberry is prostrate, growing along the ground often on stony ridges.

Cloudberry when ripe is orange/peach colour and grows in wet mossy areas.

And finally blaeberry is blue/black, called ‘bilberry’ in England and is very tasty.

5: Loch Morlich is a glacial feature, but what type?

A Kettle Hole, which is formed by a ‘plug of  glacial ice’, which was been left behind after the ice retreated and gouged out a depression.

Mozzarella looking rather gormless, but more importantly with the giant kettle hole of Loch Morlich behind!

6: Name the mythical creature of Ben Macdui. It has to be exact!

The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui.

7: In which coire in the Cairngorms does snow linger the longest? indeed some years it doesn’t melt at all.

An Garbh Choire which is between the Braeriach plateau and the Lairig Ghru.

8: Name the two insectivorous plants that grow in boggy ground?

Butterwort and Sundew. They both have ‘sticky leaves’ which attract the small insects (like midges) which then get stuck on the leaf. The plant then ‘digests’ the insects by injecting enzymes into it. Sounds like something out of science fiction!!

Both insectivorous plants in the UK in the same photo! Butterwort (top) and Sundew (bottom).

9: Who was the first pure white reindeer to be born in the Cairngorm herd?

Snowflake was born in 1966? and Mr Utsi was very pleased to have a pure white calf in the Cairngorm herd. Many of the reindeer herding people hold white reindeer in high esteem and are regarded as very special.  Indeed Mr Utsi always claimed that more white reindeer were born in areas where there was a lot of white rocks and to encourage more white reindeer to be born he painted some of the rocks white!

Snowflake with one of her calves in the early 70s, in the Reindeer House garden!

10: What are the full titles and subtitles of the three books I’ve written?  

Velvet Antlers Velvet Noses: The Story of a Reindeer Family 1995

The Real Rudolph: A Natural History of Reindeer 2006

Reindeer: An Arctic Life 2016 Available on our website now!

11: In the foreword to ‘The Living Mountain’ by Nan Shepherd she describes reindeer as ‘no longer experimental but ……….’?

Settlers

12: Name 3 countries or islands ( other than Scotland ) where reindeer have been introduced in the past?

Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, South Georgia. There are other smaller arctic islands off the north coast of Russia.

Reindeer in the mountains in Eastern Iceland

Tilly

Tilly’s quiz

During lockdown it seems that all the rage was quiz nights on Zoom. I was party to a couple of these and I have to confess I did quite enjoy them. However I wasn’t over enthusiastic about gazing into a computer screen of faces, all at slightly odd angles with various pictures, bookshelves and miscellanea in the background. I was also useless at all the questions about music, TV and films.

So with these thoughts in mind and once there was some relaxation of the lockdown rules I decided I would make up a ‘Tilly Quiz’ of my interests and we would all sit outside in household teams, suitably socially distanced, for a quiz afternoon. In fact it was a lovely sunny day and we ended up in the empty reindeer Paddocks beside the Centre.

Quiz teams nicely spaced out and all set to go. Note the cut hay drying – not something possible in the Paddocks in a normal year!

It was great fun and I confess some of the questions were quite quirky and nobody got the answers, but there was a winning team (only by one point ) by the end and they chose a bottle of Kendricks gin for their first prize. A bottle of single malt Balvenie Double Wood was snapped up by the runners up.

Thankfully it was sunny enough that the midges weren’t around!

Anyway that was a fun day for us herders during late lockdown once restrictions had started to lift, and it occured to me that some of the questions could form a blog for our website, since my 3 areas of interest are (strangely enough): Reindeer, The Natural World and The Great Outdoors .

So why not give the following quiz a go and see how many questions you can answer without instantly referring to Google. Indeed even Google may not come up with the answers!

Here goes with just some of the questions from my quiz that day:

1. An old term for a red deer stag?

2. Name the 3 species of Scottish heather and in what order do they flower?

3. The Scottish name for a woodlouse?

4. What is the colour of the following berries: Bearberry, Crowberry, Cowberry, Cloudberry and Blaeberry? They are all found in the Cairngorms.

5. Loch Morlich (in Glenmore where the Reindeer Centre is) is a glacial feature. What type?

Wapiti, Ladybird and Addax up on the mountains with Loch Morlich in the background

6. Name the mythical creature of Ben Macdui? (Editor’s note: Tilly was very strict about us getting this name exactly right!)

7. In which coire in the Cairngorms does snow linger the longest? Indeed some years it doesn’t melt at all. (A ‘coire’ is a hollow in the mountainside formed by glaciation).

8. Name the UK’s only two insectivorous plants, both of which grow here in the Cairngorms?

9. Who was the first pure white reindeer to be born in the Cairngorm herd? (Pretty sure Google definitely won’t help with this one!)

10. What are the full titles and sub titles of my 3 books about reindeer?

11. In the foreword to ‘The Living Mountain’ by Nan Shepherd she describes the reindeer herd in Scotland ‘as no longer experimental but ………….’?

 

Nan Shephard now graces the Royal Bank of Scotland’s £5 note

12. Name 3 other places (countries, islands or states), other than Scotland where reindeer have been introduced to in the past?

The answers are here!

Tilly

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