Pages

Monday, 24 June 2019

The Eagle and the Gull

Marks on the Land - pastel sketch on paper

The hill land of Angus lay before me with all its life marks embedded through a history of change. Those marks on the land can be fashioned by nature and the weather, by animal passage, or by the hand of man. I love the old path that vaguely zig-zags up a grassy hill shank to vanish into a maze of peat mounds and hags on the plateau. I imagine that the path was the product of a century of footfall by man and pony to approach the deer stalking areas on the tops, but now contrasts drastically with the newly excavated track that joins it from below to only serve the grouse butts on the slope.

Sketching today

The land here is made up from a patchwork of rough heather and velvet grass to create a tapestry chibbed* by paths, both animal and man made, or by drainage ditches and vehicle tracks. Somehow the land looks like a rag doll that was once loved but is now torn and patched and stitched. The scars are slow to heal on these delicate lands of peat and once the underbelly of rock is exposed the vegetation becomes depauperate, or non existent, and can take years to recover. Today I walk for over a mile along the bed of an old drainage ditch that transversely bisects a large, naturally well drained hillside and the historical reasoning behind it are a mystery to me; at one time, grant schemes offered to drain agricultural land went berserk, in my opinion.

Bell Heather with Northern white-tailed Bumblebee

Nature, of course, also carves away at the land in an extended and perpetual motion, consequently the influence of man's hand in all this pales into insignificance when compared to the powers of weather and nature. The glen that I over look for my sketch has been subject to glaciation and the ravages of water eroding down through the mountainous substrata over the millennia. The grassy hill shank in my sketch is tattooed by eroding peat slips and flood ravines and frost shatter on the rocks, so the whole zone is under a natural metamorphosis wholly dependent on the fickle Scottish weather.
Immature Golden Eagle

This morning's work wafted between sightings of Red Kites jostling and duelling in the early morning air, Common Buzzards mi-owing over the still moor, Kestrels hovering and chattering displeasure, Golden Eagles hunting a should be, could be territory, a Short-tailed Vole scampering into a burrow, a Common Lizard scuttling into the heather kows, a Peregrine in laboured flight as it carried prey, a Raven pair blackening the righteous light, a mad hatter's party of Mountain Hare coursing then watching, and a few Red Grouse families winged it before my boots crunched their heath.

The Golden Eagle mobbed by a Common Gull

The highlight of the day was watching an immature, male Golden Eagle for half an hour, or so, as it hunted over the peat hags and heather divots at the top of the mist enshrouded hill in my sketch. Earlier, I had heard the cries from a scolding Common Gull and what I thought was the ill natured, yapping retort from a harassed eagle but then in the hazy glare of light could not focus. Eventually a white blob and the dark shape of an eagle below it showed up against the washed out scars on the hillside and only then was the source of my audio input realised. The gull succeeded in pushing the eagle up the glen away from its nesting place and only silenced its raucous calls when the eagle gave up and went to ground on a big divot of peat ..... gull power for you!

Peregrine Falcon carrying prey

Some way along the drainage ditch I come across a well plucked Mountain Hare carcass and, having seen that these beasties love to speed along the ditch as an escape route, I can only reckon that an eagle despatched this hare as it coursed along the open ditch in a bid for freedom. Also, hare use vehicle hill tracks to speed away from danger and, again, I have found a few carcasses near tracks when in eagle country, and by the way, the carcasses include grouse because they love to socialise and consume natural grit for their crop functions on the exposed sand and chip tracks. 

Red Kite early morning antics

Bell Heather, Cross-leaved Heath and Ling are flowering early this year so purple is on the pastel palette when sketching now. Heath Spotted-orchids are showing to provide a splash of glamour to the boggy moors and, where water stills at its burn margins, pink Cuckoo Flower grows alongside white Starry Saxifrage, and the brilliant blue flowers of Water Forget-me-not star the wetted greenery with a perfect sky blue. A Northern white-tailed Bumblebee busies a buzz over the heather flowers, and a Green-veined White dances a flutter over the soft marsh, while a Small Heath flits between Blaeberry tufts up on the solar baked slopes.

Common Buzzard mobbed by a Kestrel

This particular glen is bucking the trend for Kestrel scarcity for at least four pairs were seen today exhibiting territorial behaviour and going by the number of Short-tailed Vole tracks and burrows there is a good supply of food for the hovering Kestrel, and for the frequently seen Common Buzzards that also hover; unusually I managed to see a scampering vole disappear into a grassy burrow. Straggly moor grass is the perfect nesting habitat for the Meadow Pipit and literally hundreds are occupying these moors at the moment and ironically they will provide the majority of prey items for the Merlin nesting in the depths of rank heather.

Meadow Pipit

This glen has a deep and mysterious history that describes one of the last Wolves in Scotland that survived for a while on the wild hillsides after taking a liking to killing the local sheep. The final straw for the Wolf was when a young lass who had fallen asleep on a bank of heather awoke to find the befriending, shaggy haired Wolf lying beside her. A hunt was organised and the beast was shot by the local laird on a high hill in the glen making the Wolf extinct in Angus at least! Truly, there is no accurate record of when the last Wolf was killed in Scotland; a date of 1743 in Morayshire has been mentioned.

Curlew

Local extinctions are a consequence of a slowly declining population, habitat loss, human persecution or predator overload. At one time this glen had Capercaillie in the conifer woods and, funnily enough, the local postie from Brechin was frequently held up by the sole surviving cock bird attacking his shiny, red van. Nowadays, at the same place, the traveller may be held up by Red Squirrels dancing around on the road; let's hope they survive the spreading pox and because they are relatively isolated from lowland Grey Squirrels and their disease transmission potential, that might just be possible.

Lapwing

Golden Eagle x 2

Heath Spotted-orchid

Skylark

Small Heath butterfly

Green-veined White butterfly
Stonechat

Wheatear juveniles

Mountain Hare


Cuckoo Flower and Starry Saxifrage

Water Forget-me-not

Golden Eagle x 2

Drainage ditch and hare fur plucks

Predated Mountain Hare

Golden Eagle immature, white tail band and wing spots

Thyme-leaved Speedwell

New Zealand Willowherb


Notes;........article in progress............

All text, sketches and photos are done on the 23 June 2019 and subject to copyright - no reproduction.

My new book 'Wildsketch' is available from Blurb bookshop

Income from book sales will form a donation to CABS (Committee Against Bird Slaughter)

chibbed - Scottish derivation meaning marked incisions cut with a sharp blade or cut-throat razor usually on the face as a result of an assault or fight especially in the east-end of Glasgow many years ago.

If you are inspired to go out into the hills and glens of Scotland please leave it as you find it, respect the environment, do not litter or discard so called 'biodegradable' fruit and especially if you are a dog walker keep your beast on a lead and do not bag up its waste then chuck it by the wayside. I recently came across one black poo bag neatly hung on a tree branch for someone else to take home and also a bright blue one thrown in the moorland verge....why?

Moorland birds like Golden Plover, Dunlin, Dotterel, Ptarmigan and many raptors nest on the ground, it is advisable to keep dogs at heel or preferably on leads when walking on the high plateaux of the Cairngorms during summer months.

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. Observe protected species at a respectful distance usually from about 1000 metres and for short periods of time only.

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. Many geographic names and location recognizable photos have been omitted to prevent persecution or ringing-monitoring disturbance to named species.

Canon camera 200D with optical zoom lens EFS 55-250mm used; please note that the zoom range distance if given is calculated by OS map from subject location to camera