Bog Myrtle & Peat

Norman leaned back on his bike with time to spare and told me of a bull he’d lost in the river. Not “lost” as a euphemism for death or geographic puzzlement, but lost as the final sigh of resignation, the way you lose patience or hope. Norman had been angry. Now he was just tired.… Continue reading

In curlew terms, we’ve come to the end of the breeding season. Many birds have already faded away to the shore, and it’s surprisingly hard to see how they did. I know that all of my curlews failed this year, but only because I spent hours watching them. Even then, it was difficult to interpret… Continue reading

Friday 18th June 16:30 There’s crying from the ditches below the house, and a wet style of bickering which provokes me to say first: “that’s a curlew”, and then “but what’s wrong?” Nothing is said without meaning; in this mad and wrecking yap there’s a message which drives me to stand from my desk and… Continue reading

Having monitored a pair of nesting golden plover for just over three weeks, it’s well worth reporting that their chicks hatched on Thursday. For the next seventy two hours, the young birds staggered and strutted around the nest like tiny tyrants, and they finally moved offscreen to embrace the future just as the camera filled… Continue reading

The oystercatcher nest was raided with less than a week to run before the eggs hatched. The camera failed to capture the culprit, but I’m pretty sure that a fox is to blame. Of course I’m disappointed that this nest should have failed, not least because I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty… Continue reading

Under normal circumstances, I would never dream of sharing political comment on this blog. However, the enormity of this problem makes it hard to remain silent. It’s become clear over many years that our old systems are failing to keep up with change. Traditional ways of thinking about people and places have become irrelevant, and… Continue reading

The Working for Waders nest camera project continues across Scotland, and it’s worth a brief update on the nests I’m monitoring here in Galloway. The golden plover are doing fine on the high tops, and I receive regular updates on their progress. It seems to be a general habit that the two birds share incubation… Continue reading

Lockdown lifts, and the returning world feels subtly new. Galloway has always been a calm and forgotten corner of the country, but now we’re on the move. Quiet places have become extraordinarily busy; I pass convoys of campervans and cyclists as I move back and forth to my cattle. A new density of people has… Continue reading

It’s hard to imagine a worse spring for breeding birds. The enduring cold has doomed many early nests to failure, and the dry weather has forced the vast majority of waders to abandon their breeding grounds. Up on the hill, our curlews were late to arrive but numbers were good until mid-April. Then cold weather… Continue reading

Having saved the lapwing eggs from an ignominious end beneath slurry tankers, Nitrogen spreaders and field rollers, I began to embrace a foolish flicker of hope. The nest camera worked perfectly, and I recorded many hours of intimate and pristine footage which revealed the little bird attentive at her eggs and defying the odds for… Continue reading