Bog Myrtle & Peat

Worth a brief update on my grey partridges, which continue to prosper. A couple of poults escaped this evening when the wind blew in their pen door, and it was a pleasure to hear them chirruping around the yard as I dismantled the dyke of hay bales and moved more of the bundled dry grass indoors. They will be easily caught again in due course, and it was nice to be around them as the sun flung a bruised, plummy light on the heather hills behind the house.

There is something extremely fitting about the sound of calling partridges – it is a perfectly natural accompaniment to life in this world of farm and rough pasture. Partridges hit an all time low when I was growing up, and I was in my teens before I heard my first greys calling. Somehow that didn’t seem to matter, and I felt as if I had known that call all my life – it had been hardwired into my DNA. I felt the same on the Isle of Scalpay when I heard my first corncrake calling through the window of my old employer’s kitchen – I was listening to an old friend that I simply hadn’t met before.

Of course partridges will occupy a great deal of my time in the next few years as this farming project takes off, and I still can’t wait to learn more about these birds.