Bog Myrtle & Peat

The autumn flies past at a horrible rate, but it is worth recording a trip over Langholm moor this morning to review the heather beetle situation and catch up with the summer’s damage. A great grey shrike fluttered onto the top of a spruce tree nearby as we stood and chatted in the strange, low-hanging… Continue reading

A cracking morning to be down for a wander on the shore, where the barnacle geese are now happily set up and the hedges are alive with thrushes and blackbirds on the haws. A particularly fine roe buck watched me as I came through the gate onto the merse, his head slightly off-balanced by the single antler on his… Continue reading

This queer, scyzophrenic autumn continues to jolt and wheel itself between poles of ice and heat. In the yard yesterday, red admirals soared and glided over the hens to gorge themselves on the ragwort and the final trumpets of honeysuckle which still add a prosperous glow to the dying garden. This was in staggering contrast… Continue reading

Every time I think I have seen the last swallow of the summer, others appear. There were five youngsters still hunting over the loch below the house yesterday afternoon, and they seemed very out of place in a world of falling leaves and frosty mornings. I have fingers crossed for them, but they are at least… Continue reading

Can’t resist posting this picture of my family and I taking a break from cutting peat on the Chayne in 1988. I’m the one with the absurdly blond hair having a banana peeled for me. You can make out the peat haggs behind us, and these are the same haggs which yielded this year’s cut, part of… Continue reading

With a spare moment yesterday morning, I headed up to the Chayne with an old dog kennel to provide the owls with some additional breeding cover in one of their favourite strongholds at the back of the farm. There have been owls breeding in those sheds for as long as I can remember, but in the past few… Continue reading

Time again slipping away from this blog with trips to Wales and the continuation of my course with the SRUC, but worth recording a phenomenal encounter with the Northern Lights in Dumfries on Wednesday night. At first it simply seemed as if the Northern horizon was particularly bright with light pollution, but a closer look… Continue reading

Useful to mark the great passage of pipits across the Southern Uplands at the moment; a movement made more noticeably by the accompanying entourage of predators drawn together by this anonymous flux of protein. Staying in Portpatrick last night, I woke up this morning to see a hen harrier flying along the crisply shattered cliffs above swirling… Continue reading

These last few hot, dry days have brought summer’s collapse to a shuddering halt. As the sun rises, it lights up a world of almost frozen dew where the riotous activity of spiders shows up like a mess of strung pearls. Every sprig of whin and myrtle is festooned with ropes and cables, and the dinner-plate… Continue reading

After two weeks of an agriculture course with the SRUC, the flow of my blog output has dried up to a slow trickle as I try and get my head around a tremendous amount of new information. Over the past few days, I’ve been totally absorbed by lectures on pneumatic seed drills, liver fluke and beef conformation, not… Continue reading