Bog Myrtle & Peat

The blackcock has moved house into the windbreak above the farm buildings… The same windbreak that I have been busily felling. The shepherd has heard him calling at last light from the surviving hemlock trees, and it now seems silly to carry on knocking down the little wood that he calls home. While he continues to lurk in the windbreak, I have to turn my destructive attentions elsewhere.

The woodcock strip has borne the brunt of all chainsaw activity since February, and having a friend down to visit from Glasgow was a perfect opportunity to start a new project in it. All are agreed that a four hundred yard long strip of twenty five year old sitka spruces has long outlived its usefulness as a refuge for black grouse, so the past seven months have been spent dissecting it, thinning it out and making it altogether more wildlife friendly.

The new project involves removing a wide section of the wood altogether, stacking the brash in walls perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind and replanting it with nicer trees in the spring. Given that the existing crop of sitka spruces was never thinned out or maintained, work is painfully slow. Every 14″ tree I cut only allows a small window of light to reach the undergrowth, and after four hours hard labour, my friend and I had only cleared about 30 sq. yds. At least I have all winter to keep chipping away at it…

The great incentive to push on was the fact that each tree we cut down revealed a little more of the stunning view to the west: to the Rhinns of Kells, Cairnsmore of Carsphairn and the Garryhorn. Each branch opened up another sweeping vista of chocolate brown hillsides and shattered peat haggs. The sun in ragged windows raced over the distant ground, and it was hard not to stop every five minutes to take it all in.

I read in the Shooting Times that Scottish Natural Heritage are currently working themselves into a lather about juniper and how rare it has become in some parts of Scotland. Juniper is very popular with black grouse, and if it is now an endangered species as well, I can take this opportunity to promote both by planting some of the trees in the newly cleared space. I put in some low-growing junipers this spring, and they appear to have done rather well, but the vertical trees are the next experiment. Mix some in with silver birches and I could be looking at a recipe for success.