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February Rut?
By sheer chance, I happened to stumble across an extraordinary drama while heading up the hill on Friday. Movement caught my eye through the trees as I drove up the road, and I pulled over onto the verge to watch a group of roe deer running wildly across an open field. Wondering what had disturbed them,… Continue reading
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Indestructible
I spotted this bird in the fields below the house this evening – curlews are usually so shy and impossible to approach that my eye was particularly drawn to this rather confiding individual. After a few seconds, I noticed the horrible deformity to his right leg which has left it looking as twisted and bendable as… Continue reading
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In Velvet (part 2)
Just worth a short update on the roe buck which I have been watching for the past few weeks in a turnip field at the bottom of the road to the Chayne. I posted about him on the 21st January, noting his rapid antler growth, but much has changed in his world since then. He was always in… Continue reading
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Greyhen Stirrings
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
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Stalking Challenges
With the first skylarks of 2015 singing on the Chayne yesterday, it suddenly feels like spring is coming. All of a sudden the pigeons have started to boo and groan in the woods above the house, and it won’t be long until the snipe begin to chack again. In less than a month, the curlews will be… Continue reading
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Reunited
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
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More Merlins
Worth mentioning in (very) brief that during a forty five minute vigil down by the Solway this evening at sunset, I saw four merlins, two sparrowhawks and a peregrine over the same field, all within half a mile of where I saw the merlins and the harrier earlier in the week. The concentration of little… Continue reading
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Marsh Harriers
Having developed an interest in hen harriers during the course of the last winter, it was fascinating to compare them with the marsh harriers which haunt the North Norfolk coast. These larger, rather more cumbersome birds were notably abundant on the freshwater marsh where we were shooting at the end of January, and I had several close… Continue reading
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Mass Migration
By a chance encounter this afternoon, I lifted the curtain on a fantastic process currently taking place right under my nose. Heading down to the coast to walk the dog, I pulled the car over to watch a couple of roe deer browsing through some old stubble. My eye was drawn from the deer to a… Continue reading
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Hare-Jugging
As I get more into cookery, I can’t resist a brief note regarding my latest culinary achievement. Of all dishes known to country folk, jugged hare has to be the most vaunted and notorious. Everybody has a take on the old-fashioned recipe, and if you know nothing else about the process involved in “jugging”, you probably know… Continue reading
About
“Shout on, Morgan. You’ll be nothing tomorrow”
Swn y galon fach yn torri, 1952
Also at: https://andtheyellowale.substack.com
Bog Myrtle & Peat 