October 2012
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Where Did You Come From?
Bit by bit, my general ignorance is being broken up. I always used to wonder how small, isolated populations of red grouse avoided becoming inbred and genetically unviable – my birds being a great example. Surrounded on three sides by commercial forestry, my farm is about a third of a 4,000 acre square of viable… Continue reading
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Grey Partridges at 20 Weeks
Just a brief update on the grey partridges which have now been up on the hill for two months. Although it’s risking every cynical twist of fate to say it aloud, I haven’t lost a single one since I got them in July, and they are pretty well settled in the game cover. Since I… Continue reading
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Sealiness
Perhaps a little bit late on parade with this, but I’ve just come across BBC news coverage of a dog which was killed by a seal while swimming in the North Sea. It emerged that the dog was actually a black labrador, and it was swimming because it had been sent to retrieve a duck… Continue reading
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October Frost
A few successive mornings of good frost is always enough to set the juices going, and this morning I headed up the hill about half an hour before the sun was due to rise over the Solway. When God built the grey partridge, he intended it to be seen shortly before dawn on a frosty… Continue reading
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Fruitless Stalking
It was a fine evening for a stalk over the ground which was burnt this spring, and now that so much fresh green undergrowth is coming through, the deer seem to be the first to bounce back. There are quite a few lying up by day in the remaining stands of heather, and I headed… Continue reading
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Ferrets 2012
Just worth recording that today was the official opening of the ferreting season for my four little terrorists. It hasn’t been a great year for rabbits in my usual haunts this year, so I’m going at it with a sedate pace and trying to make the little I have last as long as possible. Within… Continue reading
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Flightpond
After a second fine night on the flight pond by the Solway during which I missed three or four fine mallard and had my hair parted by a low flying lapwing, I feel like the world of wildfowling is knocking on the door and trying to get in. And who am I to ignore the… Continue reading
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Fox “Fox” Peat
You cut the peat and you stack it so that it dries. A fox comes along and covers your peat stacks in shit. As if I needed another excuse to kill foxes on the Chayne, I need look no further than the string of grey hairy sausages that has been laid over the top of… Continue reading
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Langholm Regeneration
More on this will come soon, but just wanted to mention my day yesterday at the Heather Trust’s AGM meeting at the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project. The rushes on the Chayne have just been cut with a standard chain flail as they are every year (and more on this too, to come), but as part… Continue reading
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More Kites
There has recently been some form of muted backlash to the ever growing population of red kites in Galloway, and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association appear to be looking into claims that they have taken pheasant poults. I really doubt that a kite would take pheasant poults beyond a few weeks old, but it will be… Continue reading
About
“Shout on, Morgan. You’ll be nothing tomorrow”
Swn y galon fach yn torri, 1952
Also at: https://andtheyellowale.substack.com
Bog Myrtle & Peat 