Bog Myrtle & Peat

The sedge warbler sings all night on the burnside, and by three o’clock when gleams of dawn begin to swell in the far northeast, he’s only just hitting his stride. It’s a rattling chaos of birdsong in the darkness, like a child on a drumkit oversupplied with cymbals and snares – and beneath his bending Continue reading

I heard about a dead horse from a friend. He’d been walking on the beach and followed his nose to the corpse where it lay at the foot of steep cliffs. At first he had wondered if it had been washed up there, but even when I found the wreckage strewn around the rocks, it Continue reading

We woke up early and walked to the far-retreating tide – out across the crab holes and the sad, abandoned lumps of stranded jellyfish to a point at which the currents gave way altogether. The slackness found us on a blank expanse of mud where the last of the seawater drained and gurgled around our Continue reading

They keep some fun wood carvings at the National Museum of Scotland. It would be easy to spend several days in the bright, well-appointed rooms on Chambers Street, and time seems to vanish in pursuit of Pictish stones or dinosaur bones. I take a sketchbook in during the morning, and when I look up, it’s Continue reading

An impressive amount of energy and work has been focussed on lapwing conservation in Southern Scotland over the last few years. In many ways, lapwings are easier to protect and conserve than curlews in this part of the world, not least because the little birds are surprisingly flexible and curious. If a curlew’s habitat is Continue reading

Hinds rose from their cover on the face of the blackened hill. An eagle had moved above them, and now for the sake of devilment it dropped around their shoulders and chivvied them up into the dawn. I had been watching three blackcock displaying together nearby in a stumpy wreck of myrtle and cindered grass, Continue reading

We’re all aware that curlews are declining across the UK – but that doesn’t mean that their absence can’t take us by surprise. Ever since my own curlews failed, I’ve taken a rough circuit of the hills around my home during the course of March and April each year, usually from the seat of a Continue reading

Spring lends itself to small traditions. Just as I note the arrival of sand martins, swallows and wheatears on the moor, I’ve fallen into the rhythm of taking the little dog onto the hill in the evening to watch the progress of a massive fire which burns relentlessly off to the west.   For four consecutive Continue reading

I found a dead curlew on the hill at Midsummer’s Eve. Something had grabbed it, puncturing the breast and arse-end with a puckle of wounds. The bird had flown on to wither and die soon afterwards, and I found the body lying meekly in a sheep track, dead for the day or perhaps a little Continue reading

Sea-pinks are returning to the coast, and the rocks are bristling with strands of crimson pigment. I used to come here with my parents and now I bring my son to squeal and shriek along the strandline. He runs beside his puppy on the sand, then they pause to prod at something dead in the Continue reading