Bog Myrtle & Peat

I’ve tried several times to write about heather cutting on this blog. In my opinion, I usually fail because it’s such a massive topic and I inevitably try to pack too much in to a short article of 1000 words or less. Having spent the last four years working on a review of heather cutting… Continue reading

Over two days of extraordinary high pressure and a steady east wind, what better time to get some more grit out for the grouse? I knew I was on a winner as I drove the quad bike up through the open sheep fields onto the hill and saw a shoal of golden plover rise up to twinkle… Continue reading

Well worth posting this picture of a sparrowhawk which thumped its head on the kitchen window this afternoon in close pursuit of a great tit. For the first few moments after the resounding collision, it lay on its back in what seemed to be a state of deep and irretrievable decline. It twitched horribly and seemed… Continue reading

Striking to note the huge abundance of snipe on the hill over the past few days. Hauling home a load of split ash last night after dark, we flushed fourteen snipe from the muddy puddles in less than a mile. Snipe and woodcock always congregate on the farm tracks immediately after sunset, and they tend to disperse into… Continue reading

Over the past few weeks we’ve been working in an old, unmanaged wood on my parents’ farm. The trees are an odd mix of sycamore, hazel and a bizarrely enormous leyland hedge which serves as a safehouse for every roosting woodpigeon in the parish. From my perspective, the whole mixture could do with some hands-on management, not only… Continue reading

While on the subject of cattle, it’s worth including these comparison shots of “Maggie” the wild heifer. The top picture was taken in September 2015 when she was five months old, and the second was this afternoon at eighteen months. Seeing them every day, it’s easy to think that they never grow at all. It… Continue reading

Crucial to record the arrival of two more cows to the “Working for Grouse” fold on Friday. Management of native cattle for conservation purposes has been a sub-plot to this blog for the past year, and the addition of two more galloways will hardly be much of a surprise to any loyal readers, but these… Continue reading

Worth recording in brief my first mink, caught in a shed by the river Urr. I’ve shot a mink and helped several others to meet their makers, but this was the first I have ever accounted for in a trap, and her existence might have gone totally unnoticed if it hadn’t been for her predilection… Continue reading

The cattle are lowing. They don’t want to be gathered for fluking, so we have fallen to a protracted conflict of baiting them in to the pens. Over the course of the last few days, I’ve been gradually feeding them closer and closer into the race, and they will soon be confident enough to have… Continue reading

  Tied up with work and replying to emails at first light, it was getting on for nine o’clock by the time I dropped the car and began the long zig-zag climb up the steep face and into the heather. Hoping for a final buck from the season, I carried the .308 on my shoulder and stopped… Continue reading