Bog Myrtle & Peat

Anyone who has stalked or shot with me over the past five years will know that I have been muddling along with a very cheap (and very blunt) Buffalo River knife, the handle of which has been largely eaten away by mice. It gets the job done (kind of), and I have always grudged the idea… Continue reading

There was a foul, caustic wind in the south west this morning on my final lap of the hill for 2016. The dogs raised a handful of snipe from the bloated moss, and a ring-tailed harrier scanned the land for some sheltering scrap of lark’s flesh. The blackie ewes are still being covered on the hill, and a… Continue reading

I had promised myself that I would find time to install my new owl box before New Year, and I just managed to meet that target this morning on a cold and blustery trip up the hill. I built the box in October from pieces of For Sale sign, and it will be interesting to… Continue reading

Having just returned from several days in Cornwall over Christmas, it’s a good moment to gather my thoughts about the southwest. I married a Cornish girl, so the furthest flung corner of England was always going to become part of my life to some extent, but despite having travelled to and fro to Cornwall for the best… Continue reading

Entertaining to find this picture of one of my riggit heifers in October before she was fluked and wormed, standing in front of a neighbour’s continental (simmental x) calf. The punchline is that while they are much the same size, the hairy black and white cow is almost precisely a year to the day older than… Continue reading

Returning Gilbert the borrowed hebridean tup to his home on the coast this morning after a month with my mother’s sheep, I had a chance to spy on a wonderful mix of waders and wildfowl. As Gilbert’s satanic shape emerged from the trailer, curlews rasped out a protest from behind the whins, and a tight pack… Continue reading

Uplifting to find a great quantity of snipe on the heather hill this evening as I walked the dogs in a low smirr. They rose up one by one from deep beds of crowberry and lichen which was duck-egg blue in the last glow of daylight. Amongst them were several jack snipe, which flittered weakly up… Continue reading

Just as a postscript to a previous blog about outdoor winter feeding, it’s worth recording that several more pheasants and a stoat are now also circulating around the feeders where the galloways gather every morning. Again, I don’t believe that any of these animals have had their conservation status improved by the simple provision of feed… Continue reading

Interesting to record some of many immediate impacts of feeding out-wintered cattle. I’m currently carting hay up to the galloways every morning, and in this period of wonderful high pressure and low temperatures, the experience is no chore. Having built a hay-heck from old timber off-cuts, the heifers now understand the arrangement and come trudging in when I… Continue reading

Having returned from Sweden less than 24 hours ago following an all-too-brief visit to shoot driven wild boar for the Shooting Gazette, I have plenty to think about. Fascinated by the links between Scandinavia and Scotland, I always nursed the idea that the Nordic countries had retained some wild spark which we have lost over the… Continue reading