Bog Myrtle & Peat

Having written about the discovery of a hoodie crow last month, I can’t resist a quick note to record the fact that it has remained in situ. I see it every day, and it continues to hang around in a gang with a dozen other black corbies on the hill road. It’s becoming a permanent… Continue reading

It was loud and messy in the pub. Football streamed over the bar, but we needed a pint after the stickmaking class. I’ve always wanted to make a good shepherd’s crook, and the class is within walking distance of home. So I’d spent the evening shaping a tup’s horn and pressing it in a vice. By… Continue reading

Maybe I’ve written enough about hares in recent weeks, but I can hardly fail to record a discovery which may help to explain their surging numbers. Walking through the frosted turnip field this morning, I found the crop strewn with the wreckage of weeds. The lusty thickets of fat hen have been stripped away to… Continue reading

There were geese above the dripping haws, and all the low ground smool’d in mist and cobwebs. The river flooded yesterday and left pools in the reeds and the splashy ground; it was no surprise to find those old loops filled with snipe and teal at the first link of light. The dogs clattered belly-deep… Continue reading

People round here agree that hares have had a good summer. They’ve come out of the woodwork, and now I see them two or three times a day on the hill and the low ground by the river. I hope it’s more than a good summer; it’d be fine to think that they’re on the… Continue reading

Fog dogs the morning, and the rooks rise from their roost in the ghosting pines. It’s hard to tell where these birds are heading; perhaps to the yellow turf where the silage stood, or maybe the last of the barley stubble on good ground towards Castle Douglas. Memory guides them, because sight is useless. The… Continue reading

There was something crazy and wild in the mink trap. Not a mink sure enough, but a beast so furious that I sprang away from it in horror. I hardly know how to describe it, and even after a day to cud the evidence, I’m still unsure how to define the presence in that narrow… Continue reading

The last few days have brought geese in dribbling teams from the far north. I heard them first on Sunday evening, and I ran from the smouldering stove to watch them pass high and steady above the farm. I saw fifty birds in a chattery skein through the sunset. Then on Monday morning I looked… Continue reading

It takes a certain mindset to sustain enthusiasm for the subject of cattle genetics. I have a growing interest in the subject, so I write this almost in apology. But in visiting a friend’s herd of riggit galloways on Friday, I was delighted to find a calf with some lovely resemblances to my own favourite… Continue reading

Lapwings returned with a low moon rise and the prickle of stars. They fell to the marsh like shuttles and the yard was filled with their gurly moans as I worked at the peat stack and turned the wet faces to the wind. Fifty of these birds have been roosting below the turnip field all… Continue reading