Bog Myrtle & Peat

A hot day in the clipping sheds, with swallows crackling in the sun. We turned the sheep inside the shade and grabbed them one by one. These boys are fast, and that serves to highlight my clumsiness. I can do one in the time it takes them to do three, and my spectacles slip in… Continue reading

Curlews have become a symbol of biodiversity crisis in the UK. People are working to protect the birds in every corner of the country, and they’ve become a powerful rallying point for a wide variety of different interests, from upland gamekeepers to regenerative farmers in the lowlands. In this context, each part of the UK… Continue reading

The hay I made was a mile away, so I travelled back and forth from my farm to the fields over several days in a range of tractors and trucks. Amidst this constant shuffling of machinery, there were often times when all the kit was either here or there. That left me high and dry,… Continue reading

By a strange and roundabout route, I’ve found myself managing most of the communications outputs for the Working for Waders project. I’ve written about this role before on Bog Myrtle and Peat, not least because it puts me in the firing line for people who don’t like the project. Like any collaborative attempt to find… Continue reading

Back in May when the rain fell in sheets for three consecutive days, I watched the silage mowers working into the darkness. The grass was rich and sodden then; a fine and glassy blue to the far horizon. When the crop was mown, forage harvesters growled in the headlights after dark and tall-sided wagons carted… Continue reading

Not angels but bats in the rafters at Llananno, and the altar topped with a plastic sheet to keep the shit off. Even as I sat for an hour in the old church, the purlins scratched and rattled with movement. Once there was a small dispute, and a moment’s angry wailing which brought a streamer… Continue reading

I went to see M Wynn Thomas at the Montgomery Literary festival in Powys. I was there to speak for myself on the following day, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear and meet a long-time idol of mine. My first glimpse of the man himself was surprisingly opaque. He slipped onto the stage in… Continue reading

I’ve been working on a national project to set cameras at the nests of wading birds. I did the same last year, but 2022 has seen a significant uptick in participation and scale across Scotland. There have been times during the last few weeks when almost ninety cameras have been running from Galloway to Aberdeenshire,… Continue reading

You might remember that I found a pair of golden plover last year. I wrote about them at length because these birds are so absurdly scarce in Galloway nowadays that the chance of finding their nest was ten thousand to one. So I made hay while the sun shone and tried to gather all the… Continue reading

The last few weeks have been fraught with activity. Working with a number of enthusiastic observers and volunteers, I’ve forcibly extracted information on curlew breeding attempts from an ambitiously vast piece of rough and varied countryside. It’s been far harder than I thought it would be, and more time consuming than I ever could have… Continue reading