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| Monawee Fire and Moon - pastel sketch on paper |
At first light, a Red Kite soared perfectly within a spherical column of frosted air, round and round over dead pastures sparkled with white crystals grown by a windless and starry minus eight. Plunging from air to water a Dipper mimics the porpoising of an Otter and for a moment, in my mind, the bird became mammal swimming deeply down through the icy river to rummage on the shingle bed for a larval morsel. It surfaces in rings of dappled water to breathe and shake drops from its plumage then immediately propels forward to dive down using stiff, short wings as flippers in a butterfly stroke motion. Further on, that same water is freezing on Loch Lee to thinly pave the surface with translucent glass. It forms to a symphony of sound, like thousands of needles dropping onto a tight drum and every tinkling note creates a tiny, bonding crystal that will eventually be solid ice.
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| Sketching today from Hunt Hill |
A drake duet of Goldeneye ducks swim warily towards the skin of ordered slush that bounds the cap of ice, then dive for long seconds near the loch shore. Plumage of black and white with an ocular iris of ember gold, like a jewelled amber set on black velvet, handsomely maketh the bird and both are winter visitors from the north. Nothing else moves on the loch bar the residual pools of water surrounded by ice, islands in reverse that glug and gutter as they are choked out of existence by the advancing ice. The ducks fly a circuit on whirring wings that bounce the rustle of feathers over the loch, then skid onto golden tinted ripples to bow break the surface with bills held low and then dive yet again into the dark, peat stained depths.
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| Inchgrundle Larches and Loch Lee - pastel sketch on paper |
Near the stripped Larches of Inchgrundle the shepherd throws hay to the paddocked ponies who slowly gum the dry, tangled strands of grass with chilled lips, in a grateful winter routine. The pensioned trees are sleeping in stillness, no enforced seasonal adornments here and no birds in garish make-up colour their cold greyness. Just over the hill cast shadow, that eternally curses the place, sunlight struggles to spread some goodness onto the uppermost branches. A quick sketch from a frosty boulder enforces a rushed exit upwards onto the sun kissed slopes where a snowy Cairngorms panorama, licked all over with azure blue, reveals itself and only then do I feel a warming rebirth. Climbing from the chill, shadow of the glen into whiteness sizzled by a tangible and dazzling light makes that other, man-made world fade away. Under a galactic avalanche, as Sun and Moon share that unfathomable space, I feel belittled by the unending horizon arc that reminds us of where we are.
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| Sketching today |
Higher up on the Shank, a mess of prints in the crusty snow is found belonging to Red Fox, Red Grouse and Blue Hare, but mainly fox where the track meets the hidey hole sanctuary of the crags of Maskeldie. Year in, year out there are always foxes here and it seems the efforts of the keepers are out-gunned by the sly fox who holes up on the steep crags where no man ventures. Climbing on these cliffs reveals a network of fox tracks during snowfall and I am amazed at how these beasts can climb up most gullies and terraces on the steepest rocks where climbers have to use crampons and ice axes.
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| Goldeneye drake |
A distant 'pruk-pruk' alerts me to the Raven pair that use this craggy territory and they fly past in self-contained blackness towards Cairn Lick. Ravens seem to be a good indicator of relationships on grouse moors and by that I mean levels of inherent illegal persecution carried out by management. One Raven circles a particular spot where its mate has alighted, then, as if losing patience, careers off towards Muckle Cairn on madly flapping wings tempting the other to follow, without success I must add. The action and inaction of other creatures inspires a sole travelling Snow Bunting to sweetly tweet its way over the mountain top, yet unsettled it bounds in flight against the north-west breeze to sink over the summit cairn, my resting place. All around is set in winter's aspic and gazing into the plunging depths from Craig Maskeldie's summit rocks reminds me of my route's destiny, Hunt Hill and the opposing cliffs of Earn Craig that form a rocky bastion where, as the name implies, eagles used to nest.
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| Dipper porpoising |
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| Dipper surfacing |
Muir burn is something that I associate with springtime in Angus but today there is a controlled heather fire raging on the sunny, south-west facing slope of the hill named Monawee. A fiery crescent of leaping flames ascends the slope to create a huge plume of smoke that drifts over the glen leaving a smouldering blackness behind, where in several years time young heather will hopefully sprout to feed grouse. Heather Beetle blight is to be seen on some banks of heather in this area, where the beetle larva has irretrievably stripped the leaves down to the dying stalk. Maybe it is a false impression but I am sure that more and more heather is disappearing to grass and bracken in the Angus glens.
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| Blue Hare |
Mountain or Blue Hares enjoy sunbathing and in every sunny, snow filled nook there might be a dozing hare medicating itself with deep heat, solar radiation. On Invermark there seem to be plenty of these hares and traditionally they have not followed the extreme example of other shooting estates by culling them in an attempt to banish the tick transmitted disease of Louping Ill. The observation on this estate can only be made that with a good population of hare there also exists a good population of grouse. Evidence is lacking that on estates where a culling policy is employed, they consequently have a higher population of grouse as an effect. Some claim that culling hares will deprive the Golden Eagle of a prey source, maybe to a degree but eagles are pretty darned good at taking grouse for their primary prey species.
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| Red Grouse on piste |
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| Red Grouse off piste |
I was surprised to photo capture a Red Grouse taking off from a snow bedecked boulder and inadvertently caught the shower of icy crystals erupting from the bird's feet as it launched into the air. The grouse had been loafing in the sun for a while, so I stealthily dodged from boulder to boulder along the crest of the mountain to get as close as possible. I have been trying to get a shot like this for a while, but with a hare as the subject..... next time.
Most animals of the high hills love to sunbathe and a large herd of Red Deer gather on the slope that is being burnt to catch the last warmth of the setting sun before enduring the long, cold night and maybe this is a more plausible example of deer 'warming up' rather than the one described previously in, Stories in the Snow. The herd is only a few hundred metres downwind from the burning heather and I am certain that they are gaining a double warming effect, one from the sun and one from the raging fire as a Yuletide bonus.
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Red Deer 'warming up' in the sunset
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| Raven |
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| Heather burning |
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| Glen Lee |
Notes;
My new book 'Wildsketch' is available from
Blurb bookshop
No wildlife was unduly or knowingly disturbed by my presence or for the purposes of this web page other than what would be expected on a normal hill walk. Canon bridge camera zoom lens 50x used.
Map of the area
