Bog Myrtle & Peat

I need to get into the mindset whereby I look at the Chayne as somewhere to offer sport. Having spent the last year working to develop habitat for wild game birds on the farm, I have put the prospect of actually pulling the trigger to the back of my mind. On the spur of the moment yesterday afternoon, I set off up the hill with the shotgun to see what could be seen.

Within fifty yards of the car, I had shot a red legged partridge and was so delighted that I then passed up a fine opportunity to shoot a pigeon. The partridge’s crop was stuffed with the maize I have been spreading out through the wood, so perhaps there is a future to that project after all. I have no idea where it came from, but it’s going into the oven…

Once up on the moor, a dense fog collapsed down to limit visibility to less than sixty yards. It was still good enough for a grouse if one happened to get up, and given that I was all alone, safety was not really an issue. I pushed about a mile up the hill, then turned in a large loop to come back down again, soaking in the brilliantly silent experience of being the only person within two miles.

Down at my feet, I spotted what I thought was a perfect little grouse dropping, and I bent down to inspect it. I had been mistaken. It was a small burgundy coloured cherry, lying mysteriously on the moss. Trying to pick it up, I found that it was attached to the ground. Closer inspection revealed an amazingly fragile strand of vegetation which was linking it to the soil. Small red, yellow and green leaves were visible, but it was such an extraordinary spectacle that it was hard to know what to make of it. I now know that it was wild cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos), and I’m delighted to think that it is still on the moor. I can only assume that it provides food for red grouse, and given the size and colouring of the berry, if I had been any more certain as to its identity, I would have eaten it myself.

It never occurred to me that I could lose my way, but when the fog finally cleared a little, I found that my simple loop had become a vast “&-shape”, and that I was heading in entirely the wrong direction. The spot where I had found the cranberry suddenly became a total mystery, because although I had recorded its position according to where I thought I was, it had turned out that I was at least half a mile wrong. Nothing could matter less as I altered my course and flushed a snipe from a thicket twenty yards away. Two shots and a clean miss were followed ten minutes later by a running rabbit sent tumbling to a standstill on my experimental oat patch. All the work I have been doing appears to be paying off…