Having spoken to the keeper on some neighbouring ground, I picked up some worrying information about a new enemy. I was told that mink appear here and there on his moor, and given that much of the low ground on the Chayne is criss-crossed with ditches and streams, it seems more than possible that there Continue reading

The number of stoats and weasels I have been catching has risen sharply over the last fortnight, and I’m sure that it has something to do with the changing seasons. Coming into some money over the weekend, I bought a few more Mk.4 spring traps on Tuesday in an attempt to make as much of Continue reading

The shepherd drives around the farm every day on the quad bike. She is a familiar and harmless sight to all of the wildlife on the farm, and they take the sound of the bike as part of life on the hill. By contrast, I do all my work on the hill on foot, and Continue reading

Although I had read it in books and online, I was never entirely sure what weasels actually ate. It wasn’t until a weasel carried his dinner directly into one of my spring traps that I knew for certain. Checking my pitifully small arrangement of traps this afternoon, I peered into the recesses of the tunnel Continue reading

My spring traps have been ticking over for the past few months, and although I am regularly catching weasels, stoats are proving rather harder to tackle. A collapse in the rabbit cycle over the past two years has meant that there is little to eat for the larger predators, and the few of them moving Continue reading

One of the main features of Langholm was the abundance of letterbox traps. It sometimes seemed like there were traps on every hill, and watching one through a pair of binoculars, I saw three crows poised sulkily on the top beam as a call bird flickered and fluttered around inside. Nearby, a blackcock wandered through Continue reading

This rather grisly article came into my possession today after it was found on the Langholm Demonstration Moor (more on this presently). It is the skull of a stoat, and it shows the incredible dental formula of my favourite wild mammal. The photograph above shows the skull beside a 1 pence piece, and it is Continue reading

Fox numbers on the Chayne are often dictated by season, but a relatively high number of red offenders can be found all year round on the hill and in the rushy lower ground. Over the last fortnight, though, the number of visible foxes has absolutely skyrocketed. No doubt they were getting hungry during the month Continue reading

Every well managed grouse moor has spring traps over every stream and above every break in a wall, and in an effort to put the black grouse bog on vermin lockdown, I have borrowed some important tips from the experts. Over the next few days, I will be establishing stoat and weasel traps along a Continue reading

After Christmas away from the Chayne, I headed up this morning to inspect the damage caused by more than a month’s uninterrupted snow cover. The ground is still as hard as a board beneath half an inch of slushy mud, but the grass is looking decidedly fresh and invigorated after a month free from grazing. Continue reading