Bog Myrtle & Peat

What with the most appalling bad weather over the past 24 hours, it is hardly surprising that some damage should have been caused. Driving onto the Chayne this afternoon, I spotted a beam of wood resting on the stones beneath the old bridge. Getting out of the car to investigate, I found that it was was part of one of my weasel bridge traps, which had been washed six hundred yards down the stream overnight. The placid burn looked harmless, but mats of dead rushes showed how the water level had been over two feet higher last night.

Following the burn up the hill, I found that two of my bridge traps had been so badly smashed that only splinters remained. The traps, which were firmly bound to chicken wire frames, had vanished, and it will be some time before the water level is low enough for me to stand a chance of finding them again. Given the fact that the trap I did find was six hundred yards away from where I had left it, these loose traps could be some way downstream, sprung, harmless and wasted.

Up on the hill, the wind was impossible. Carrying a bag full of scraps and meat for the two remaining larsen trap call birds, I was nearly blown over three or four times as sudden gusts leaped out of the moss and punched me backwards. Down at the woodcock strip, a line of trees has fallen down over the fence, and a party of good for nothing sterky bullocks were nosing around the gaps in the wire with obvious ill intent. I will have to head back tomorrow with the chainsaw and tidy up the damage before one of those great gits is able to lumber through the fence and destroy the blaeberry.

Once I had made it back down to the inbye fields, I accidentally flushed the blackcock from the shelter of a bending ash tree. He was reluctant to go, and he only took to the wing when I appeared less than thirty yards away. In order to keep out of the wind, he flew in the shelter of the drystone dyke at a height of maybe three or four feet. I watched as he flew away, only to be catapulted vertically into the air by an unexpectedly violent gust of wind coming through a gateway. He shot upwards, then turned his head and looked sulkily at me as the wind carried him far into the distance.