Bog Myrtle & Peat

The Chayne – Parish of Kirkpatrick Durham – 1/4/20

The hill is hard and powdery. A wind hangs in the north and brings us nothing but cold. It’s hard to tell how the returning curlews have fared because they hate the windchill and the dryness. I see them sometimes, but they are wary and cool in the middle distance. I walk near them and find their white rumps coasting above the deep grass like strangers. They should be displaying by now, but the days are grey and we are all trapped together in stasis.

A month ago, the hill was loud with the din of drumming snipe. The dryness and mud-crunch has reduced those birds to a skeleton crew, and it’s strange to ponder what impact this weather will have had on those birds which chose to breed early. In previous years I have found snipe chicks in the first week of April, but I would not fancy the chances of chicks which emerge onto this parched hill. Under normal circumstances, snipe gather steady steam from March to June and reach a peak in mild showers and the powers of forget-me-not. But this year gulled them with the promise of wetness and mud before turning traitor. Many birds will have started a process which they now can’t finish, and perhaps early nests have been abandoned as the adult birds head away to find softer ground. If it rains, they’ll be back – but these second-chance springs are never so productive as those which sweep in a continuous play of warmth and moisture.

Of blackgame there is no news. It is too early to say how many cocks we will have this year, although the chances are that it will be none again. Greyhens have passed all winter, but nothing grand and blue to shout about. I would feel despondent, but I am often stunned by the way blackcock seem to appear as if from nowhere in the last week in April. So against the odds, I will keep my fingers crossed.