Just a quick note to record my first half-successful attempt at taxidermy; a greyhen that has been lurking in my freezer since September. I spent a considerable amount of time removing all the flesh and bone marrow from this bird according to directions I gleaned online and from a Taxidermy book I bought a few Continue reading

Also worth mentioning in very brief that there is a small gang of greyhens down in the old hayfields which have been eating the remnants of the sheep nuts. I last saw these birds in the autumn, and I think that some of them came out of the brood I found on the bog in August. Continue reading

I enjoyed a grand reunion with an old friend on Saturday afternoon. Spying for a fox on the high ground (on which more to come), my eye was caught by a black shape against a drift of snow. Assuming it was a raven, I scanned the binoculars along the crest of the hill and only Continue reading

Worth a moment’s explanation for why this blog has been so quiet over the past week – alongside moving house, I have also been getting married. Huge thanks to all friends and contacts from this blog who sent on words of encouragement on Saturday, and now that the job is done, “my wife and I” Continue reading

  Of course it’s worth commemorating the eve of the grouse season, particularly after so many people have tried to denigrate the occasion over the past few weeks by dubbing it the “inglorious” twelfth and by launching an assault on the entire sport. This is not the time or place to defend grouse shooting yet again, Continue reading

Having looked at the prospects for red grouse, it is of significantly more value that I keep an eye on the local blackgame. I am generally a bit edgy about counting grouse in July in areas where there are blackgame , if only because broods of the latter can be surprisingly small and vulnerable on all Continue reading

Having found time in the past few days to do some exploratory sweeps into grouseland, I am quite encouraged by all that I have found. There are some good coveys up on the high ground, and the majority of the poults appear to be well advanced. I have only found one covey of squeakers in Continue reading

There cannot have been many storms of emotive, knee-jerk lunacy to match that which currently swirls around online on the subject of driven grouse. But put aside the misleading source material on peat formation, water purity and thinly veiled fury over a class system which favours some over others and you are actually left with Continue reading

As June progresses, so too does the blackcock’s moult. I found an immaculate half black, half white secondary feather blowing about on the moss the other day, and the birds themselves are looking more and more tatty as the days go by. As July approaches, these birds will vanish altogether into the ragged robin. Their Continue reading

Disappointing but not altogether surprising to find that the local forest managers have yet again chosen the end of May and the beginning of June to ramp up their clear-felling exercises in the heart of a marginal population of black grouse. Since the middle of May, three clear-felling operations have started within a mile of Continue reading