Having said that the leks were dying down in a blog post earlier in the week, there was still some serious interest on the display grounds at six o’clock this morning, and one greyhen had to work very hard to get the attention she was after amidst a sea of testosterone and pouting. The cocks… Continue reading

It was a pleasant surprise to find a couple of snipe chicks on the hill this afternoon while trudging around my larsens. They can’t have been bigger than champagne corks, huddled together in a nook in the rushes, and I could have walked past them a thousand times without seeing them if the hen hadn’t… Continue reading

It was entertaining to see two cuckoos in a blizzard yesterday afternoon, and my heart went out to them as they gazed wide-eyed at the fist-sized dollops of mushy snow. Having just arrived from the Congo, the sudden snowfall must have come as something of a shock to them. I went around my larsen traps… Continue reading

A change has started to come over the grouse during the past few days, and it was interesting to compare the birds here with those further North during my tour of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire last week. The hens in Galloway are definitely down on their eggs, and when I was stalking yesterday afternoon, the only birds… Continue reading

Now that the wheatears are here, it was worth heading around to the back hill to spend an afternoon watching them last week. The sun was smarting hot on the short grass, and the blue horizon broken only its is steep monotony by snow wreaths on the highest corries and clints towards Carsphairn. Soon I had… Continue reading

Just worth noting that the leks seem to have suddenly gone off the boil in the last three or four days. Speaking to friends on Deeside, the concentrated numbers of blackcock are suddenly breaking up into smaller groups, and even in Galloway it has been harder to see greyhens than it was ten days ago. I tend… Continue reading

When a grouse enthusiast is offered the chance to tag along on a formal capercaillie lek survey, there is only one answer. More to follow when the enormity of this morning has subsided and can be viewed with sober perspective. Continue reading

I made an interesting discovery this afternoon while shooting crows on some of the in-bye. A pigeon happened to glint past in the sunshine, and I brought him down to earth with a bump. I’m a huge fan of pigeon on the table, and it has been some time since I last connected with one,… Continue reading

I often end my blog posts with “more on this to come” or “to be covered in more detail later”, and while these comments are always included with the best of intentions, they seldom come to much. I sift through such a stack of material every day and only odds and ends actually make it… Continue reading

I marked the arrival of the first cuckoo yesterday afternoon as I lay out in the sunshine trying to sketch wheatears (of which more anon). There were some very distant phrases of cuckoo music towards the West, and they returned two or three times during the six or seven hours I was on the hill. I see from my… Continue reading