Crows become extremely territorial during the breeding season. They attack buzzards or sparrowhawks when they come too near their nest at this time of the year, and sometimes those aerial skirmishes can be a thrilling sight. Buzzards allow the marauding crows to come in extremely close, flicking their thick wings at the last moment to Continue reading

Country tradition has it that the best call bird for a Larsen trap is an unfamiliar crow who has been brought in from elsewhere. Other crows are so enraged by the presence of the newcomer that they cannot resist attacking it, becoming captured themselves in due course. I should have put more thought into where Continue reading

Five days have passed since I declared war on the fox responsible for killing a snipe. The grudge match did not last long. Lamping doesn’t really seem to be working on the Chayne. There is no cover on the farm, so foxes are spotted at ranges of six and seven hundred yards, well beyond the Continue reading

We have got another trouble maker. A fox lives somewhere in the woodcock strip and he has been making his presence felt over the past few days. First, he stole a rabbit leg from a fencepost above the Multi Larsen Trap while I was building a fence a few hundred yards away. Most galling of Continue reading

Having found a good site for my Multi Larsen trap and left it to acclimatise for a few days, the next step is to catch a call bird. I have learned from bitter experience how potentially difficult this first stage can be, so I have been calling on every piece of advice to carry it Continue reading

Foxes must be on the farm all the time. The sheep get so accustomed to seeing those trotting red shapes that they scarcely even acknowledge them. However, things are changing. The sheep on the Chayne were scanned for pregnancies last week and they are becoming noticeably more confrontational as the lambing season approaches. Walking back Continue reading

The crows are pairing up on the Chayne. More and more of their distant black silhouettes seem to be coming out of the woodwork every time I visit, and it really is about time that I concentrated on doing something about them. The thought of tiny grouse chicks being gobbled up by hateful yammering corbie Continue reading

I have had to adjust myself to carrying a rifle everywhere I go. The days when I visit the Chayne “unarmed” are the days when I am sure to encounter vermin in crowing abundance, and nothing is more galling than being unable to offer a shot to a black devil who clearly longs for nothing Continue reading