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Shake a tail feather
This post is chronologically weird, since it concerns a feather I found more than six weeks ago. I have had it sticking up behind my kitchen clock ever since, and it was only when I put the kettle on this morning with my eyes still foggy that it occurred to me that it was quite… Continue reading
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If I were a rich man…
Dumfries and Galloway has never really been known for its grouse moors. In the golden days of upland sport at the turn of the last century, our hills produced thousands of blackcock, and visitors came up from England to cast a fly on our remote lochs, but we have simply never produced red grouse on… Continue reading
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New kit
Now that the ferrets are up and about, I got a little carried away with spending money on them. The first, and in my opinion, most important acquisition was a ferret detector. Deben seem to have cornered the market for manufacturing ferret locators, but since I bought a gunlight from then ten years ago and… Continue reading
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The Ballerina
As I learned a fortnight ago, toadstools have excellent names. Discovering a colony of the awesome “sickener” in the woodcock strip had me examining the ground very closely before stepping anywhere else, and the more I have got into the habit of looking for fungi, the more I have found. It makes me look dull… Continue reading
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Thunder-bolt
A week after the muted success of killing a mixy rabbit, the ferrets have struck again. Having bought a ferret locator, I finally felt confident enough to give the boys another tour of duty on my parents’ farm down on the Solway coast. It was a grim afternoon, with heavy showers blowing out of the… Continue reading
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“Behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth”
It didn’t seem to have rained all that hard overnight. I heard water splashing on the windows at around four o’clock as I busily rearranged my pillow, but there was only a miserable shower when I got up a few hours later and went out to feed the ferrets. I should have known that up… Continue reading
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The last of the swallows
Now all the swallows have vanished. The great bulk of them moved south around a fortnight ago, but I have been holding off mentioning it until the last few stragglers headed off as well. The first birds arrived at the Chayne on April 10th, the day of the Grand National, a fortnight before I had… Continue reading
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A berry experiment
The berries are here. Ever since the first week in August, the rowans have been blazing away with bouquets of red berries, followed shortly after by fuzzy red strings of hawthorn on every hedge. I have been gathering berries here and there for the past few weeks, and although most of the rowans have now… Continue reading
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Caterpillars again…
With the moor dying away, it’s easy to get gloomy about the long months ahead, but the last few weeks have seen a great rise in the numbers of caterpillars across the lower ground on the farm. Two of the most recent finds have been ruby tiger (on bog cotton) and light knotgrass (on soft… 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 