Bog Myrtle & Peat

We shot the hill again, and in coming away from the higher ground, the gap of two weeks was clear to see. Now the asphodel is dry and red as a fox; the cowberries are thick and stem-bendingly red. High up in a distant bowl of ground, we found a hundred swallows hunting in the flossy bent, far from home and growing stronger with every cranefly and moss-bumper. Soon they’ll slide away and leave us wondering how we’ll survive the winter alone.

And there were ouzels by the path as I came home; bouncing, wily birds in the granite. A pair breeds here, but most are coming south from the Highland hills and they pass us on passage. They were as common as muck in Galloway fifty years ago, but now they bring the spring and the autumn and leave the summer quiet. One of them tasted a rowan berry and found it overly tart for his liking.

Close shoals of pipits and linnets and thistle-flicking finches, and then a dozen wheatears tight together down the dyke which, if you choose to follow it, takes you down through the drying silage to the sea and the Lake District; the first steps on the long march back to Africa.