I lost my temper on Saturday, and I took it out on some sitka spruces. For three years, I’ve been experimenting with ways of making mature sitkas a little more amenable to black grouse. My experiments have been based in a five hundred yard long windbreak which, at its widest, is just over thirty yards. Continue reading

Again, my hereditary loyalty to farmers is being tested. I don’t want to stir the pot too briskly, but having just spent ten minutes reading a press release from the RSPB website, I feel sufficient steam coming out of my ears to pass comment on an ongoing initiative to help farmers manage their land to Continue reading

Just worth recognising the fact that summer is almost over. We’re certainly not in the autumn yet, but this is now the dead water between the seasons. The bracken has gone back, the rowans are coming on and the heather flowers are just turning. In a few weeks, the pinkfoot geese will be here, followed Continue reading

My earliest memory is of sitting on the Chayne watching my parents cut peat. I must have been around three or four years old, and I remember the way the peats used to smell when I sat with them in the back of an old Land Rover on the way off the hill. Bit by Continue reading

I don’t want to rave on relentlessly about how interesting I’ve found my game crop this year, but it is worth mentioning that the turnips have actually done pretty well. There aren’t many of them, but the few plants have produced turnips that are now about the size of large duck eggs. Sadly, if there’s Continue reading

This year’s game cover mix is turning out to be the gift that just keeps on giving. All very well, the radishes bolted and most of the kale seems to have washed away, but each step along the way has brought benefits to the hill. At the moment, the most obvious benefit is the amount Continue reading

I was woken up on Friday morning by a helicopter swooping over the roof of the house as it sprayed bracken. It was an unpleasant reminder of last year’s arm-aching days spraying Asulox from a leaking knapsack sprayer. The time is fast approaching for me to get started on this year’s spraying regime, so I Continue reading

Coming from a farming family, I suppose that I have a certain reluctance to criticise agriculture and its part in the ongoing destruction of the countryside. Only after four years of working with and writing about wildlife am I beginning to look with a critical eye at farmers, and there is plenty to look at. Continue reading

Two months after the game cover crop went in, some odd things have happened. One species from the kale/turnip/radish mix has done brilliantly well and some of the shoots are now almost three feet tall, with small clusters of white and pinkish flowers at the end of each stem. The only problem is that I’m Continue reading

Twenty three days after the game crop was drilled, there has been some serious progress. The field is now covered with rapidly expanding little plants, and despite the fact that I still can’t tell a turnip from a radish, it’s very exciting indeed. It’s interesting that the local wildlife has shown such little interest in Continue reading