Bog Myrtle & Peat

For all my frequent excuses about the lack of blog output over the past few months, I hope that readers will understand the current silence when I explain that we have just ended up with a new puppy. Our nights are spent in a deafening din of howling hell, and our days are now freely garnished with piddle.… Continue reading

Having just returned from a fishing trip to the high hills of Galloway and Carrick, the headlines about re-establishing golden eagles in the Southern Uplands have a fresh resonance. I’ve written (and ranted) before about eagles in Galloway, although usually in relation to the hackneyed spectre of “persecution” as an idle, often pig-headed means of explaining their… Continue reading

Interesting to see the start of a war of words being launched against wild boar in Scotland over the past few weeks. Dumfries and Galloway is home to a growing population of boar, and other colonies appear to have sprung up further North in Lochaber over the past few years. Rumblings and rumours overheard at… Continue reading

This is a timely moment to touch on my developing addiction to antlers. More specifically, I am becoming fixated on roe antlers. Not in the swaggering, pseudo-scientific allocation of “scores” to specific heads, but more in the marvellous, almost spell-binding variety of shapes, patterns and oddities which help to elevate the humble roe into the realm of the demi-god. Readers may… Continue reading

The summer flies past as I work and paint, and it takes a concerted effort to get out and make time in the cool evenings after the rain. Down the lane below the house, the grass verges are foaming over with brambles in flower, and the bracken is hardening into breadknife blades. Beneath the scaffolding… Continue reading

It was interesting to attend the launch of the plan to conserve black grouse in Southern Scotland at the Scottish Game Fair on Friday. All the big-wigs were there, and the moment provided everyone with some really good photo opportunities and a chance to slap backs. Perhaps I’m getting cynical in my old age, but… Continue reading

Interesting to provide a quick update on the progress of the single curlew chick which has come on in leaps and bounds since it was last photographed properly 12 days ago. In the intervening period, the two adult birds have taken their charge a long way from the road and in so doing have kept… Continue reading

Interesting to spend an evening helping with an RSPB and Forestry Commission nightjar survey in the woods below the house. Nightjars were a common sight down there for many years but have recently tailed off to such an extent that surveys have been abandoned. After discovering two calling males on the hill behind my house, the… Continue reading

The past few weeks have been spent in close pursuit of a brood of curlew chicks. These tiny birds appeared as if from nowhere in a thoroughly unexpected spot below my house where intensive silage fields meet a ramshackle sliver of moss and boggy ground. The farmer has been forced to downsize his operations this… Continue reading

This blog has been surprisingly quiet over the last few weeks. You could interpret this silence as a lack of inspiration, but in fact the opposite is true – so much has happened that I simply don’t have time to sit down and write about it all. Curlew chicks, nesting nightjars and the first young grouse… Continue reading