Bog Myrtle & Peat

The frost fell with a vengeance last night, and morning came as a throbbing pain.

I headed for the hill to gather in more firewood at first light, but I could hardly resist a quick walk onto the moss to explore the work carried out a fortnight ago by the rush cutter.

A contractor comes to mow a pre-allocated area of rushes every year, and this work is undertaken to prevent the hill from becoming clogged with tired, woody old rushes. Deep stands of rushes are too thick for the sheep to navigate, and without any grazing whatsoever they soon form a kind of overgrown jungle. The problem is aggravated by the absence of cattle on this part of the hill, particularly in the winter months. Cows trample dense rushes and break them up so that sheep can poach away at the fine details – it is a nice example of cows and sheep working together to benefit the entire hill. The lack of balanced grazing, the collapse of existing drainage systems and an increasingly soggy Scotland have combined to create a time of great prosperity for rushes, and these need proactive management.

Mowing rushes is slow, arduous work, particularly on rough ground where machinery can be smashed by hidden lumps and boulders. Coming at rushes from a conservation perspective, I’m keen to see extensive areas of uniform vegetation broken up, and agricultural improvement marries nicely with the management of game and wildlife.

Longer term readers will remember (EG see here from 2013) that I’ve mowed patterns and strips into extensive areas of rushes, and I’ve tried to encourage contractors to “get creative” with their management work to create wavy lines, edges and islands in the undergrowth. This often falls on deaf ears, particularly for tractor drivers who pride themselves on straight, parallel lines – they can’t understand why large open spaces of stubbly rushes are just as bad for young curlews as dense thickets of tall stuff. My conservation plans produce scruffy, patchy habitats which don’t match the prevailing agricultural aesthetic, which generally tends towards the geometrical.

I was thrilled to find totally new areas mowed when I walked up with the dogs this morning, and ten acres of very promising ground had been cut right next to the moor. As I walked over the prickly stubble, I thought to myself that here was a fine spot for a blackcock; sheltered from the wind by the dyke; a clear view over a thousand acres of hill ground; a mess of seeds and buttercup heads to work away at – what more could a black grouse want?

As I thought these words, there was a twinkling of white in the corner of my eye; I turned to watch a fine blackcock rise up from the fallen rushes and pound away into the cold wind. He was too far away for any detail, but there was no questioning his identity.

Gratified at have been able to anticipate the situation, I hugged myself with delight all the way back to the car. There is no doubt that wildlife (and specifically black grouse) respond to change and proactive management, and alongside many other relevant drivers in their decline on farmland, we can’t ignore the influence of human abandonment. Compared to the pre-war years when black grouse were common and hill farms were viable businesses, vast areas of our uplands currently receive very little investment or work. When the landscape is expected to provide nothing more than low input/low output sheep grazing for decades at a time, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find that it has become incapable of providing anything more.