Bog Myrtle & Peat

Having waited for snow for more than a month, it arrived at a bad moment. I spent the weekend in east Yorkshire and was away from the Chayne when the first snow fell, but driving back through the hills of Teesdale this evening, I was treated to some great short eared owl action as flurries of snow whirled across the road. Two birds were chasing each other and squabbling on the low ground where the big black grouse leks were taking place in the spring, and it was great to see one flying just a few feet away from the car as I pushed through the snow.

A pack of thirty black grouse were hunched miserably in the inbye fields of an abandoned farm, and I must have seen more than seventy birds in a short car journey.  It’s always great to spend time in the hills of County Durham, not only because of the abundance of black grouse, but also because of the huge variety of other bird species on display. Up on the hill tops, red grouse were bumbling through the snow, tumbling through the drifts in the most ungainly fashion. I had always imagined that they would take snow in their stride, but when it has fallen in soft and powdery drifts, even the hardest grouse cock has to throw his dignity to the wind and struggle around like a novice.