It’s now been formally diagnosed. My game cover crop consists almost entirely of bolted radishes. The field has turned an attractive shade of pinkish white, and a sea of flowers stands at almost waist height. This is not what I had planned for, but it’s certainly better than just another field full of closely cropped Continue reading

I’ve been really keen to get a good picture of an adder for years. They never appear when I have my camera, and they never stay around long enough for me to go and get it. When I found a baby adder in some young heather yesterday afternoon, I decided that my moment had come. Continue reading

Driving off the Chayne yesterday, I put up a family group of four crows. They had been huddled next to the verge, and as they rose into the air, one of them dropped a little bundle onto the tarmac. Keen to see what it was, I slowed down and found the tattered remains of a Continue reading

Just returned from a fishing trip up into the Galloway hills, where wild brown trout were present in their dozens and the constant skreiking of a family of young peregrine falcons only just managed to cover the cackling of red grouse. There were black throated divers on the loch, and it was a thrill to Continue reading

Also worth noting that I saw the biggest adder I’ve ever seen on Friday afternoon. Scoop the labrador actually trod on it as she charged down an overgrown track, and it reared up behind her. Perhaps it’s easy to exaggerate the size of snakes because we’re so unused to seeing them and our natural reaction Continue reading

June is a great month for spotting young birds, and living where I do now, I’ve had some great chances to see chicks of all different species. The most conspicuous have been a pair of seapies (oystercatchers) who seem to have managed to bring off three chicks in the hayfield between the house and the Continue reading

It’s getting late in the season for larsen traps, but as long as mine keep working, I’ll happily keep on emptying them. I was coming off the hill this morning with a corbie in the bag just as the first magical drops of rain started to turn the beige soil of the cover crop into Continue reading

Just wanted to post this picture of a tawny owl chick in the fir trees behind my house. I would never have spotted the little brute if he hadn’t been silhouetted against the last glow of the sunset, and he sat squeaking cheerily away to himself while I crept up and took some photographs. An Continue reading

I had some time to spare on my return from Perthshire last week, and I spent them driving slowly up the side of Loch Rannoch with my binoculars and camera lens sticking out of the car window. There were all sorts of things to look at, and by the time that I finally turned to Continue reading

I posted in some detail last year on the subject of buzzards killing adders, and as the seasons revolve, it seems like the time has come again for adders to be picked out of the young bracken. Most people don’t like adders, and it won’t be heartbreaking for the majority of readers to see these Continue reading