Bog Myrtle & Peat

A cold north easterly wind has crushed everything into silence. We are a fortnight behind our usual calendar of events, and although we now have swallows and willow warblers, it’s hard to believe that cuckoos will be here in the next week.

I have held off visiting the leks because many of the sites I monitor are becoming quieter as black grouse continue to decline in Galloway. Perhaps I’m getting lazy, but I am inclined to wait until the weather is warm before trekking off into the back country at dawn. A cold morning could suppress the excitement of displaying birds, and I would be left high and dry without an accurate idea of numbers or distribution. Things usually hot up at the leks around the third week in April, so there is still plenty of time to get out and see what is happening.

In the meantime, I have been casting a keen eye round some “old favourite” lek sites for signs of returning birds. The black grouse are currently gorging on the moss crop, which means their turds are large, yellow and extremely easy to identify. I’ve written about this before, but I can’t resist mentioning that one bird on the Chayne seems to have returned to his old patch for the fifth year in a row.

I found some familiar droppings last week, and noted that they lie within a few inches of where they have been found every year since 2013. I went up for a quick look around this morning at 5:30am, but the cold wind kept everything down and despite a glorious sunrise, the only birds I saw were curlews and a few snipe.