Bog Myrtle & Peat

I’ve had twin heifer calves, and that sounds like an advantage. It’s two calves for the cost of one, and it’s fun that while the first came up black, the second’s a riggit. That’s a nice genetic curveball, but it’s not a wholly comfortable pairing. The black heifer is noticeably stronger than her sister, and… Continue reading

I was minding my own business at the time. I was out for a run on the back road to Caulkerbush with cuckoos regaling me, and I didn’t ask to be part of the story but the smell brought me to a standstill. I followed my nose and just a little way from the tarmac,… Continue reading

Following a recent post about curlews and forestry, I can’t resist the urge to carry those open-ended notes to their gloomy conclusion. A few people were in touch with me when that blog was published, and they added a useful degree of first-hand experience to many of the ideas I put forward. And I realise… Continue reading

Margaret Murray’s 1931 book The God of the Witches was panned by the critics. She wasn’t the first to walk on such shaky ground, but she took more than her fair share of the blame for it. I knew what to expect when I found myself a copy, and I can only agree that it… Continue reading

Calving started when the rain came, and now I’m underway for the year with three new births under my belt. The finest and most beautiful of these has been a ginger riggit heifer (above), who came without any announcement or fanfare. I walked through the field at midday and saw her mother’s teats looking large… Continue reading

I stayed with a friend in a cottage on Donside. He was doing survey work for wading birds, and he’d made the mistake of offering me somewhere to drop a sleeping bag for the night. I’d been nearby in 2010 for a number of days at work on the hill, but never this glen with… Continue reading

In a recent poll to identify the best place for a new National Park in Scotland, Galloway beat a number of other options by a country mile. That poll was more like a rhetorical device than any real attempt to measure public opinion, but it suddenly seems like we’re first in line with a real… Continue reading

The church of St Nonna stands on a slope of Bodmin Moor in the lee of trees where the rooks are nesting. It’s a place of delicate beauty and peace, and in the aftermath of rain on Sunday morning there was a smell of wet grass and wild garlic in the hammer of bells. There’s… Continue reading

Now the grass is up and most curlew pairs have failed, it’s hard to see what’s happening. At first I reckoned to keep this project up until May 15th, but the picture is now so confusing that it might make sense to stop.  I’ve only found twenty six pairs in all the great six hundred… Continue reading

I’m staggered by the absence of curlews on the hill this year. I knew they were struggling, but I did not expect them to fail so completely or so soon. I thought there was still time to sort things out, and while it’s not impossible that birds might return in the future, curlews are so… Continue reading