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Deep & Crisp & Even
In some little dips and gullies, the snow drifted to a depth of eighteen inches during the night. I headed out onto the hill in the hope of finding some new tracks, but found that it was actually too deep for the dog. If I were a fox, I would have been spending the day… Continue reading
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“Real” Snow At Last
After griping about a shortage of snow, it finally came to Galloway today with quite a bump. We haven’t had anything like the devastating snow-pocalypse as seen in the south of England, but a good four inches fell this afternoon and drifted into some fairly respectable heaps wherever the steady south easterly wind allowed it… Continue reading
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Housing Solutions
Every day seems to make my partridges more aggressive. I have five hens and four cocks, and after dividing up three pairs, I left the two remaining hens in with the last cock overnight on Saturday while I set up some alternative accomodation for the last pair. They were all in the same pen which… Continue reading
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Grey partridge wattles?
Everything is happening so quickly with the partridges, and I can hardly keep up. They are now paired off quite happily (more or less), and the past twelve hours have been spent building them some decent accomodation as recommended by the ever present GWCT manual. One thing that has really taken me by surprise is… Continue reading
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Where is the snow?
After a frankly shameful amount of media hype about the weather during the last few days, it looks like Britain has miraculously survived a devastating onslaught of lightly frosted water. When weather centres start to issue “mega-warnings” about snow, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and imagine that something really unusual is… Continue reading
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a new silkie cockerel
After agonising back and forth about whether or not to make a change, I picked up a new cockerel yesterday evening. He is a pure partridge silkie and is the son of my old cockerel who now has a new home outside Dumfries. Slightly smaller than the old cockerel, the new cock (named “vulcan”) will… Continue reading
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Pairing off the partridges
Having noticed the cock partridges starting to get a little frisky a few days ago, it was quite alarming to find that the hens have also been feeling the first stirrings of spring. One or two of my small stock of hens has suddenly started to show missing feathers around the rump and lower back,… Continue reading
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The loneliness of the maladjusted blackcock
I was just going through some photographs on my computer and found this one; for some reason the only surviving photograph of a series I took of my favourite blackcock doing what he did best – kicking hell out of a pheasant. He liked nothing more than a good scrap, and given that he spent… Continue reading
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The partridges are restless
Just worth noting that the cold weather has brought on some new behaviour from the grey partridges. The cock birds are suddenly being very vocal and restless with each other, and I saw one of them keenly rogering another this morning. Perhaps this is in anticipation for spring, and I daresay this recent cold is… Continue reading
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Flighting woodcock in the snow
After a day spent working at the computer, a fine evening with the chance of a woodcock seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Although it’s still a new moon, I wanted to see what effect (if any) the snow and subsequent freezing temperatures has had on the woodcock, so I drove the car out… 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 