Bog Myrtle & Peat

Interesting to see the new “black grouse conservation in Southern Scotland” report published by SNH during the course of last week. This has been in the works for some time, and if nothing else the document serves as a useful position statement for an area of the country that seldom attracts much in the way… Continue reading

He didn’t even wait for us to go to bed. Slumped in an armchair, cracking the spine of a much anticipated new book (J. F. Burger on Buffalo), I was gazing at the fire and the shapes of the steam rising off my boots. Rain drummed on the skylight and almost covered the sound of… Continue reading

If I could choose a bird to represent the last three months, it would be the hen harrier – not because I delight in spraying the internet with rabid rhetoric, but because I have seen them every time I’ve been on the hill since the end of August. After a good summer’s breeding and consistently… Continue reading

Worth noting in passing that the past fortnight has seen an abrupt change amongst the local ravens. Even at the end of November, I was seeing groups of six and seven birds flying together when the wind dropped, but now they are far more often in pairs. Out in the snow on Sunday, two flew over… Continue reading

By midnight, the entire countryside was bathed in a silver wash of moonlight. Dark wracks of whin and blackthorn ghosted through the fields, and the light wallowed on the burn. Even the furthest snow-topped hills were glowing beneath the full moon, which hung from its cord in the silence. Faint stirrings of a Northerly wind… Continue reading

Despite setting off for a walk along the high hills this morning, a black pall of miserable cloud barred the route at Creetown and forced me back to the security of the bookshop in Gatehouse. While sleet battered the windows, I safely built a stack of natural history books beside the till and waltzed back outdoors… Continue reading

Difficult to resist noting the clamour that has appeared online regarding the GWCT’s proposal to explore the effect of pine marten predation on capercaillie numbers. This non-story was supposedly “leaked” to the press as if it had been wrested through a firewall by eco-hackers, and the sensational response managed to capture everything that is sad… Continue reading

We currently seem to have a foot in both camps; this is an odd middle-ground between autumn and outright winter. The leaves are off the trees but the grass is still growing. We’ve had two frosts, but both have been burnt off before seven o’clock in the morning. It was possible to head out to the… Continue reading

Also worth recording in brief some bizzare buzzard behaviour noted on the walk back off the hill last night. The sun was long below the horizon and the first woodcock were beginning to flight from the willows around the house as I watched a buzzard drop down out of a scots pine and sit on… Continue reading

As a post-script to a blog written in September about a mousing fox on the Chayne, it is worth recording that he was brought to book shortly before sunset last night after a stalk that took in three quarters of a mile of hillside so open that crawling was the only means of approach. By… Continue reading