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| Dancing Pines - pastel sketch on paper |
Our highland landscape is alive with ever changing movement, exhibits drama through colour and light, presents sculptured forms that twist the imagination into tales of mythical proportions but it also creates an essential home for the beasts therein. Winter's magical snow transforms a bare, untraceable landscape into a chalky hieroglyph that reveals every interaction between all the animals and birds that live in the wilds. The tracks that they leave behind can tell many stories about a life 'below zero' on the mountains of Scotland.
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| Sketching today |
The nocturnal business of the Red Fox is laid bare in the snow and it looks like hard work taking in many miles of moorland. There are stretches of prints that tell us when the fox is going to a certain place, where maybe grouse favour roosting at night, and they are direct as if set with a compass bearing. The estate tracks are a highway for foxes allowing them to branch out away from the track on occasion and then return to continue the midnight patrol. I follow one individual past the Stables of Lee for a while and discover evidence of a successful hunt when a Red Grouse is nabbed from a tussock of heather. A series of wing scuff marks in the surface tells of the bird's fate after the fox prints veer off the track to investigate this heather island. I can just imagine the frantic flurry in the frosty darkness with stiff grouse wings flailing against the crisp snow as the fox carries the victim off into the deep, snow plopped heather. Sometimes grouse leave wing scuffs when they land or take off on snow but they tend to be in a graded straight line at regular wing beat intervals.
This one is obviously being held in the fox's muzzle as the mortal encounter progresses because the wing scuffs are in a confusion of directions centred on the fox's paw prints and I would almost be 'Sherlockian' enough to say that this grouse was caught in mid air just as it launched a starlit escape. Strangely enough, the cognitive powers of the fox are displayed here because this area hosts quite a few track-side grouse that have not joined the large winter coveys usually found on the moors at this time of year. One covey, two hundred and fifty metres higher up on a very exposed hill ridge, contained at least one hundred grouse today and that ridge had very few fox tracks crossing it.
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| The jump in mid air and landing to down the grouse |
This one is obviously being held in the fox's muzzle as the mortal encounter progresses because the wing scuffs are in a confusion of directions centred on the fox's paw prints and I would almost be 'Sherlockian' enough to say that this grouse was caught in mid air just as it launched a starlit escape. Strangely enough, the cognitive powers of the fox are displayed here because this area hosts quite a few track-side grouse that have not joined the large winter coveys usually found on the moors at this time of year. One covey, two hundred and fifty metres higher up on a very exposed hill ridge, contained at least one hundred grouse today and that ridge had very few fox tracks crossing it.
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| Fox catches grouse |
Today my eyes were set on a rocky ridge that led up to the high plateau and I reckoned this ridge would be free of the deep snow drifts that formed cornice snowfields on either side of it. Inevitably, my steps were in another's tracks, the wily fox had also used this ridge to gain the high ground but, ulteriorly, it knows that the rocks can shelter the odd Mountain Hare and its trail heads towards every boulder that would shelter a hare, checking for the chance. Today the wind was fierce in places and on this ridge many a step up was knocked back down, wind scoured eyeballs struggled to focus on footholds and balance was ripped apart making me feel more doddery than usual. Earlier, in the morning darkness, the car radio forecast eighty five mile an hour winds in this area but eventually my high point was reached, the rounded summit and snowman cairn of Drumhilt. The wind would be at my back for the remainder of the long ridge that descends to the Falls of Damff, how grand that would be.
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| Red Grouse |
Not being a photographer by choice, I set myself the far flung task of capturing the moment that a Mountain Hare gallops off in a sunlit spray of powder snow, but for the next two, high level miles these white creatures were way too fast for my tardy reactions. Annoyingly, I did see exactly what I wanted except these hares are red hot at the moment, fleeing at first sight and not stopping to look back until they are over the horizon, maybe they use this as an excuse to 'warm up' in this icy world. Like all creatures, the hare loves to sunbathe and on most snowdrifts that curl around the peat hags there are forms carved from the snow that shelter the hare from wind and concentrate the sun's rays in one cosy place. My technique to stalk them is to creep up on a south facing peat hag and more than likely a hare will dash off into the distance. The peat is frozen, the wet bog is frozen with glassy, treacherous ice and in between knee plunging snow drifts there are icy, wind scoured patches that push you along with the wind like a rudderless boat under sail.
Mentioning 'warming up' recalls a spectacle captured on canvas by a former art lecturer of mine, Bill Cadenhead. During a snowy winter in Glen Clova he witnessed Red Deer galloping in a circle, creating a maelstrom of icy spindrift that was later explained by a local stalker as 'warming up' before the beasts climbed the steep slopes of the glen. Well, the event is more likely explained by the herd being cornered in a fenced field and panicking, but you never know. I come across a trail of single file hoofed prints showing that deer also use the estate tracks for nocturnal 'migration' from the upper reaches of the glen down to grazing areas free of snow. Deer don't like strong wind, so I am not surprised to find a small herd sheltering in the lee of a conifer plantation on a rocky slope.
The Mountain Hare must have a hands down advantage over the Red Fox during snowy conditions being lighter with ginormous feet that can propel it over drifting snow at a lick. The comparison of both animal's tracks reveals how adapted the hare is for swift travel over snow and, like me, how laboured the fox becomes when snow is encountered. On a bank of soft wind-slab snow the hare's hind foot print impression rarely sinks in further than a centimetre leaving a massive bounding distance between prints, whereas the fox leaves a ploughed trail several centimetres deep. When comparing how much weight each paw print takes, the hare exerts approximately forty grams per square centimetre whereas the fox exerts three hundred grams per square centimetre, so during winter months the prey choice is clear for the fox and that is roosting grouse, preferably territorial cocks, at a lower level down in the glens. From my observations today I am amazed at how many grouse and hare are staying up high on the hill tops in this very cold and windy weather instead of dropping down into the corrie basins and glens, maybe I have found the answer.
Mentioning 'warming up' recalls a spectacle captured on canvas by a former art lecturer of mine, Bill Cadenhead. During a snowy winter in Glen Clova he witnessed Red Deer galloping in a circle, creating a maelstrom of icy spindrift that was later explained by a local stalker as 'warming up' before the beasts climbed the steep slopes of the glen. Well, the event is more likely explained by the herd being cornered in a fenced field and panicking, but you never know. I come across a trail of single file hoofed prints showing that deer also use the estate tracks for nocturnal 'migration' from the upper reaches of the glen down to grazing areas free of snow. Deer don't like strong wind, so I am not surprised to find a small herd sheltering in the lee of a conifer plantation on a rocky slope.
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| A pair of fleeing hares |
The Mountain Hare must have a hands down advantage over the Red Fox during snowy conditions being lighter with ginormous feet that can propel it over drifting snow at a lick. The comparison of both animal's tracks reveals how adapted the hare is for swift travel over snow and, like me, how laboured the fox becomes when snow is encountered. On a bank of soft wind-slab snow the hare's hind foot print impression rarely sinks in further than a centimetre leaving a massive bounding distance between prints, whereas the fox leaves a ploughed trail several centimetres deep. When comparing how much weight each paw print takes, the hare exerts approximately forty grams per square centimetre whereas the fox exerts three hundred grams per square centimetre, so during winter months the prey choice is clear for the fox and that is roosting grouse, preferably territorial cocks, at a lower level down in the glens. From my observations today I am amazed at how many grouse and hare are staying up high on the hill tops in this very cold and windy weather instead of dropping down into the corrie basins and glens, maybe I have found the answer.
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| Fox meets hare |
You know, as I walk the long ridge where eagles sometimes soar, I sadly think about the White-tailed Eagles that attempted to nest last year, not far from here. Consequently their nesting Scots Pine tree was cut down maliciously and today I can see the other nest, a collection of sticks in a neighbouring tree that was abandoned maybe in the previous year. The cut down tree trunk lies in sawed up sections that are covered in snow and, incidentally, does that imply a 'cover up' or maybe just an attempt to make bad things go away. The truth will never be known like many persecution incidents. Nevertheless, I recall that this year Mike and I found the new nest site for these eagles, but again that failed by the thickness of an eggshell after an overdue incubation and hopefully this coming year will see a successful breeding attempt. I think about the dichotomy inherent in such a bird, meaning we have one of the largest, fiercest looking birds in Scotland, with an invented, evil reputation created by sheep farmers yet, in reality, these birds are nervously shy and are very easily disturbed. On the other hand these eagles are persevering and I recall being 'on duty' watching this new nest while an organised fox hunt with hounds went on nearby. The keepers flushed two foxes and let leash with a barrage of twelve bores that shook my nerves to the core but even although the sitting male eagle, only four hundred metres away from the hunt, did get up off the eggs in a shocked state he settled again quickly and never abandoned his duty, very brave indeed.
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| Drift |
A pair of jousting Ravens sparkle in the sulphurous sun as it slowly sinks towards tomorrow's coming winter solstice and then, almost instantly, things change for the better as the light returns. Nature begins a rehearsal for spring breeding, our eagle pair choose an eyrie site and then tidy up the nest with fresh heather kows or branches, the grouse get verbal on their home patches and our hares settle a little to concentrate on reproductive madness. The tiniest tracks that I found today belonged to a timorous Wood Mouse, I think, that shadowed the fox prints for a while before vanishing into the heather bank where a Wren busied itself by churring and bombing around frantically when I passed by. Once upon a time, I recall finding two Wood Mice on the summit of a wintry Mount Keen and they would come out from under the frozen granite boulders to steal the odd sandwich crumb left by visiting 'munro bagging' hill-walkers at the weekends. No doubt, owing to their very visible and fast nibbling performance, they had commandeered a large larder of walker's excess jeely pieces to last between weekends.
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| Cairn snowman, as found! |
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| The damaged White Lady foot-bridge |
The Ranting Soap-box;
The wooden footbridge leading to the Falls of Unich that crosses the Water of Lee has been mysteriously damaged. This bridge replaced the previous one that was washed away in a spate a few years ago now. I could hopefully presume that some debris or water impact in a recent spate has collided with the cross guard rails and broken them, but those are facing downstream and not the ones facing upstream that would tend to break first in a heavy spate. Also the Invermark estate information signs about the bridge have been twisted by someone with vandalistic tendencies, how meaningless and obviously reactionary against anything related to their biased perception of a 'bourgeoisie' shooting estate. So, I can only conclude that the rails have also been vandalised by the same reactionary 'types' that should never be allowed to roam the countryside without handcuffs and leg shackles in the first place. I, for the life of me, cannot understand this sort of needless aggression against any inanimate object that actually enables the aggressor, and appreciative others like me, to cross a dangerous river without drowning or falling headlong onto the rocks below. It is the same 'types' that proceed across the bridge to view the beautiful Falls of Unich and then light a tin foil barbecue, drink copious tins of beer, then attempt to hide all the leavings under a small stone saying, "Its a nice place really, ken, so let's tidy up a wee bit, eh". Why do people like that come to the wilds of Glen Esk? I know why, I have met some of them and have had confrontation with them, so to all those concerned who think that a trip up the glen is their soul searching right and will solve all their drug problems, alcohol problems and social inadequacy problems, it won't - go back to your spawning housing estate in Peh-dee and, indeed, dee. Next time, take your foul mouthed holidays at the local rubbish tip instead.
I offer no apologies for my frankness.
My new book 'Wildsketch' is available from Blurb bookshop
All sketches and photos are done on the day and are subject to artist copyright.
Please be aware that it is illegal to disturb nesting eagles or other raptors and you may do so inadvertently in your journeys into the highlands. I do not recommend searching for any of the species mentioned in this blog because this may cause undue disturbance to them. With my knowledge of the areas described I can locate and observe protected species at a respectful distance usually from about 1000 metres for short periods of time only.
Deer stalking is ongoing at the moment so please check local information and follow requests to alter your plans. My hill wandering in some areas is confined to Sunday when no stalking occurs.
Average Mountain Hare weight 2.5 kg, average Red Fox weight 10 kg used to calculate surface pressures.
Map of the area