Bog Myrtle & Peat

Purely on a whim, I decided to head up for a walk around the Chayne this evening after a bracken cutting demonstration in Annandale. It could have gone either way – I was toying with the idea of coming home to chop some logs and do some painting, but I took a notion and soon… Continue reading

I was thrilled to find a brood of wild pheasants on the Chayne on Saturday morning – in fact, the discovery almost made my week. Four strong poults wandered cautiously away through the rushes as I came through the farm gate, and I had a chance to watch them browsing in the grass with a wise… Continue reading

With the first few weeks of the season now behind us, bleak expectations of grouse numbers seem to have held true. Many days have been cancelled in Scotland, and while Northern England often seems bomb-proof, bags have been little more than steady at best with a few exceptions. Here in Galloway, we had an excellent… Continue reading

  Interesting to note a fox “caching” surplus food on the back hill. Unable to eat an entire dead sheep in a single sitting, the wily beast had been stashing bits and pieces all across the surrounding countryside. The old sheep’s skeleton had been tidied up and cleared away by the shepherd, but a mattress… Continue reading

Very satisfying to spend the afternoon visiting one of my little half-acre plantations which I scattered around some of the lower ground in 2010 and 2011. I’ve been trickling trees into these patches for the last five years and some of the first are now really getting away, with several aspens and birches well over fifteen… Continue reading

Interesting to have a snipe chick brought to me last night by the dog. We flushed an adult snipe as we walked through the long grass, and it raised suspicions by fluttering only forty yards before dropping back in again. My first reaction was that it was a jack snipe, as this reluctance to fly… Continue reading

One of my first experiments on beginning Working for Grouse was to fence off a small area of heavily overgrazed heather on the hill. I called this my “heather laboratory” – it was less than half an acre and initially taught me more about fencing than it did about botany, but with benefit of six… Continue reading

I always wonder whether or not it’s worth writing about the politics of grouse shooting. It’s usually not. Over the past few years, the birds have become a rallying point for all kinds of opposition to shooting, and it feels like my contribution (although based on practical experience) would be meaningless in a world of… Continue reading

Walking the new pup this morning, it suddenly felt like Autumn. Just as you sometimes get a wink of spring in February, the hills had a still, dusty tiredness which felt like change. A brood of young buzzards were stretching their wings and mewling to one another above the bog myrtle and the ripening bramble… Continue reading

Nice to check in last night on the progress of one of my small hedges which was planted in December 2012. These hedges were strategically positioned to improve connectivity between areas of good wildlife ground and also to provide cover for my grey partridge project. The benefits of a good, well-mixed hedge are hard to… Continue reading