Bog Myrtle & Peat

I’ve been so busy slashing down sitka spruces to build my new release pen that I haven’t really had time to think about what I want to replace them with. The woodcock strip has been opened up enough over the past year so that roe deer now live in it after an absence of more than a decade. They run down the rides and secrete themselves in the knee high blaeberry patches at the fringes of the wood now that it has been brashed and dissected. It is hugely rewarding to see that I am at last making a physical difference to the Chayne, and the tangible results make the last two years totally worthwhile.

But the question remains – what should I do with the strip once it is clear? Blaeberry and heather are starting to creep through the needle mat in some of the clear felled areas, so developing a healthy understorey of plant life shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Deciduous trees like willow and birch ought to creep in bit by bit over the next few years provided that I can keep knocking back the spruces, which soak up sunlight and starve everything unfortunate enough to be shorter than they are.

After some encouraging improvements in woodcock numbers after my efforts last winter, it’s clear that the wood has potential as a game holder. If it were to be remodelled as a long narrow strip of low growing scrub, it could bring in woodcock, deer and black grouse while being useless at providing high altitude perches for crows and raptors. And here’s where my old interest in juniper comes back in. Hearing of an area of ancient juniper woodland near Tynron, I headed up yesterday to find out more about this wildlife friendly tree species.

Juniper is such an unusual  plant. It never looks happy, and occupies a space in such a fractious and gawky manner that the idea of juniper “woodland” seems like a grandiose overstatement. In fact, a collection of junipers looks less like woodland and more like a rubbish dump for malformed trees. Some junipers send up narrow, weedy stems to a height of fifteen feet, while others grow up to knee height before collapsing sadly into the ground like the skeleton of an umbrella’s frame. Beneath the sagging branches, holes, tunnels and forms beckon invitingly to passing wildlife, showing how great these plants are at providing natural cover.

In fact, the cover was so brilliant that an in depth investigation of the wood was impossible. The plants had created such a dense lattice work that I was physically unable to move. Brambles, honeysuckles and bracken helped to form a totally impenetrable wall of vegetation, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that a woodcock would seek out precisely that kind of cover. Pigeons gorged themselves on a bunch of ripe juniper berries and a jay peeped at me through the leaves of a stunted silver birch. I tried to imagine a small party of blackcock perched at head height in the junipers on a cold December morning, feasting on the bruised black berries, and I found that it was not very difficult to do.

Juniper is not pretty, but there’s no arguing with its ability to support wildlife. If I can install some of these extraordinary trees on the Chayne to fill the void left by the sitkas, I may start to see some real signs of improvement for the birds. I’m told that junipers take a long  time to grow, but if this project has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t hurry quality.

After bushwacking through the juniper for half an hour in the boiling sun, I emerged from the wood on the banks of a stunning river and plunged into the water to cool down. Up on the sandy banks below a nearby bridge, I found some fresh otter tracks and wondered if I was being watched.