Bog Myrtle & Peat

Steeped in lamlac and pecked apart by furious broody hens, I decided to finish a long day with a moment’s pleasure. Walking uphill beneath a veil of fresh larch needles, I knew precisely where to sit for the performance, which began at precisely 10pm on the verge of falling darkness. Within a moment or two of my arrival, something… Continue reading

Spring rushes past in a blur, but there has been the occasional moment to find my feet at the new house as tradesmen come and go and the smell of emulsion reeks out over the fields. I found the dismembered remains of a young bird in the long grass on Saturday, and puzzled over its identity for… Continue reading

There was plenty of food for thought at the “Working for Waders” workshop in Edinburgh on Thursday. This project is building on the idea established by previous projects to develop progress from a blend of science and social consensus, and it’s interesting to see this approach delivered at first hand. I’d like to write more about this in… Continue reading

  The hill has withered to a crisp. Spring usually unfolds in a systematic pattern, but those rhythms have been parched into jolting chaos. The wind has been stuck in the north for more than a month, and the drying breeze has reduced the moss into a desert. The desiccated grass crunches underfoot like an ocean of… Continue reading

I can hardly resist a brief and triumphant note about one of my little woods which I planted on the Chayne in 2010. The trees have struggled to get a foothold in this soggy little corner, but the undergrowth has risen up into a dense cage and the scrubby outline of the place has become much… Continue reading

Delighted to report that my much-talked-of owl box does actually seem to be occupied by a breeding pair of barn owls. I recently wrote about having captured a single photograph of an owl visiting the box, and wondered whether the lack of any other evidence could be down to a faulty camera sensor. To settle the… Continue reading

I recently spent a good deal of time writing about a curlew’s nest in a field of silage. I agonised over all the various angles of habitat management, and I ended up trying to imagine an agricultural landscape that is more varied and balanced to benefit all farmland wildlife. It ended up being a long article – longer than… Continue reading

Horrified to find that we’re now well into May and I’m still having to feed the cows. Grass growth has simply stalled since the wind got stuck in the northeast, and the landscape is horribly parched. I can hardly complain too much as the heifers now only require a single bale of hay each day, but… Continue reading

I made an extremely heartening discovery this afternoon while moving crow traps around on the in-bye fields. I noticed a pair of crows building a nest in an ash tree in the middle of April, and I marked them down for a trap when time allowed. These trees command a fine viewpoint over the hayfields where curlews often nest, and when… Continue reading

It was interesting to find a curlew’s nest in the rich green depths of a silage field last  weekend. I know this ground quite well, and it lies in the heart of some extremely productive dairy ground in the glen below the Chayne. This nest has been made in the heart of an intensive agricultural crop, and some crucial problems… Continue reading