Bog Myrtle & Peat

Having enjoyed such a resoundingly successful dawn fox patrol last week, I was desperate to follow it up with another. The Chayne’s boundary takes around two hours to walk, and the fact that the farm is surrounded on three sides by thick pine forestry makes encountering foxes far more likely on the fenceline. With silver birch whips and scots pine saplings waiting to be planted, it is probably a good idea to keep an eye on where deer are moving at the moment as well, and as my friend Richard and I stepped out into the clear, mild morning, it was impossible to tell what we might find.

A short strip of boggy ground leads up to the grouse moor, and as soon as we set foot on the heather, the first rays of the sun flooded the hillside all around us. It was as if the stage was being set. A distant swarm of crows lifted off the bog five hundred yards ahead, but they are now getting so nervous of any humans that they will have to wait for the larsen trap. Skylarks in cheerful abundance soared out of the long grass to twitter for a moment before parachuting back down to earth on vibrating wings. It was fast becoming a stunning spring morning.

Reaching the summit of the farm’s highest hill, we changed direction and worked down a corrie on its far side towards the boundary fence, hoping to intercept anything sliding out of the tussocky grass and back into the forestry. Moving as silently as we could through the dry moss, Richard’s dog Bliss began to wag her tail frantically, sniffing the breeze. Two hundred yards ahead, a roe doe stood up from a collapsed stand of bracken. She looked very small through the telescopic sight, and taking advantage of the presence of my stalking mentor, I asked Richard if she was in range. As I asked, a yearling doe stood up behind its mother and they turned their ears in the sunshine. They must have heard us, because in the instant that it took for Richard to tell me that they were in range and that I should take the yearling, we had been rumbled. The two deer sprung into the air, flicking their heels in the sunlight and gliding silently over the boundary fence and into the pines.

We paused for a moment to watch the distant Pentlands hills as the pink light picked out their snowy peaks, then pushed on. By this point, the morning had reached the stage at which wildlife begins to quieten down, and we followed a narrow circular track in the heather all the way back to the car. Off in the distance, a large bird of prey quartered the ground with long, lazy wingbeats. Snatching the binoculars out of my pocket, I was delighted to identify it as a short eared owl. We both wished him better luck with his hunting than we had had.