Bog Myrtle & Peat

Steeped in lamlac and pecked apart by furious broody hens, I decided to finish a long day with a moment’s pleasure. Walking uphill beneath a veil of fresh larch needles, I knew precisely where to sit for the performance, which began at precisely 10pm on the verge of falling darkness. Within a moment or two of my arrival, something like a two-stroke engine cranked into action; a whirring drone which sapped up from the heather beyond the brow of the hill. This is thick, lonely country on the edge of the open hill, and I was jostling for space in a crowd of scrubby trees and ankle-high fiddleheads. The drone tried a few gears before it found one it liked, then settled into a casual, breathless hum.

Nightjars are scarce in this part of Galloway, but this bird is as reliable as clockwork – he calls from the same perch throughout the summer. Some miraculous quirk of skill or instinct has spirited this creature back from the Dark Continent yet again, and this was the first time that stirring call had filled this lonely corner of the forest in 2017. A fug of fresh blossom gave the stillness a treacly sweetness, and midges worked earnestly to dismantle my ears. A late cuckoo chimed, and a grasshopper warbler reeled away in the midst of the myrtle. The air was thick was moths and the dull commute of mechanical beetles.

Out in the long grass amongst a half-seen web of brambles and honeysuckle, a barn owl was hunting. Long, rasping calls slipped up through the larch trees and onto my lap. After a very slow start, summer has finally arrived.