Bog Myrtle & Peat

After last summer’s soaking wet snipe bonanza, where birds were rising in even the most unlikely spots, this year has been an odd one. There’s no doubt that the birds were present on the Chayne in some quantity from March until May, when the drumming was almost incessant twenty four hours a day, but the fiercely dry June and July seems to have driven the huge majority of birds away. In one field where I am used to seeing the mud finely riddled by long, thin beaks, the exposed soil has been dried into a cracked biscuit. Even with some good falls of rain, this peaty crust still hasn’t totally relented. I would usually see dozens of young snipe during July on the hill, and yet this year there have been almost none.

About a week ago, I started to see adult birds again out in some of the ditches and drains on the open hill, and a friend rang from a moss down by the Solway to tell me that he put up a whisp of twelve birds in a wet field last week. I can only assume that normal breeding behaviour was interrupted by the dry weather, forcing birds away to try a second brood elsewhere. Now that the autumn is starting to show signs of progress, other birds are coming to Galloway as they usually would, only to find that the fields and drains that they will occupy all winter have been lying dry and vacant all summer.

As with woodcock, snipe have extraordinarily mysterious ways. I remember three years ago lying in bed with the window open and listening to dozens of skreiking snipe flying over the house throughout the night. When I woke in the morning and went out into the yard, the procession was still going on, with birds in ones and twos flying high up in a straight line due south. With the 12th August approaching and some of the bogs on the Chayne and elsewhere starting to look very promising, I hope that the new arrivals will be able to provide some sport before too long.