Bog Myrtle & Peat

This is a fine place for skylarks. We always have three or four little birds singing over the yard all summer, and we walk beneath a web of others as we move towards the river and the rougher ground. We’d be lost without them, and their songs fill this old place with a chatty racket… Continue reading

Spring is filled with tiny traditions. We mark the first snowdrop, then coo at the catkins which come suddenly bright in the woods. Now there are song thrushes and skylarks, and the cattle sway beneath them in that star-filled stillness of dawn. We walked last night along the old hill road as the sun slumped… Continue reading

You can’t believe everything you hear at this time of year. The starlings are back, and they’ve brought snatches of song from their winter on the coast. They copy lapwings and wild duck, and they blend those tunes into songs of their own. I look up from some chore and hear redshank passing over, then… Continue reading

The oats which filled my autumn have begun to pull their weight. This small crop of cereals was an experiment to find out how mixed farming could support wildlife, and I revelled in the phenomenal excess of birds during October and November. So far so good for wildlife, but I was always keen to make… Continue reading

His name was beetle seeker; spider’s bane – He bore the seed of a bear in his breast And brought scalding blood-rage to the brambles.   For at least one year he reigned As the kernel of fury; scourge of the wailing bug. Then he broke like thunder on a pane of glass And was gone.… Continue reading

Having danced around the subject for more than a year, I can quietly announce that I signed a book deal yesterday with Birlinn, Scottish publishers based in Edinburgh. It has been an extremely long road to this point, and I would not be in this position without the help of loyal friends, supportive family and an… Continue reading

There has been an unforgivable lull in the continuity of this blog. Perhaps it gave the impression that I have finally thrown in the towel with this project, although long term readers will know that I passed the point of no return a very long time ago. The reality is that two months of silence… Continue reading

The easterly wind is cold and it fills the yard with dry grass. Streamers fly like tickertape, and the fences are festooned with strandy bunting which trembles like a madman’s hair. Old folk call this grass flying bent because it flies away in the first good winds of autumn, but we are more pragmatic and… Continue reading

The pigs are digging in the old dump. They rip the turf and unearth objects of strange antiquity. The old boy who lived in this house before us had been tipping his junk over the dyke for years; out of sight and out of mind. I grumbled to gather up his plastic bottles and sardine… Continue reading

I used to kill sackfuls of woodpigeons. Shooting filled my world, and I longed for the dusting days of late summer when the stubbles were cleared and the doos would come sledging down to my hand-made paper decoys. I was fifteen years old, and I would lie in the whinns and watch the birds arrive… Continue reading