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| Hiding - pastel on paper 2/6/24 |
Wander and Wonder;
Our days should be full of surprises, but seldom are. The humdrum of everday life yields little magic unless a person searches for it. I find magic in art or craft creation, but also by entering nature's kingdom. Take a wandering walk in our Scottish hills and glens with eyes and ears alert to wonder at what natural magic surrounds our life on Earth. The call of the Curlew echoing down the glen or the spiralling Golden Eagle reaching unthinkable heights, with both being free to those who dare turn the key to nature's gateway.
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| Sketching today 2/6/24 |
As I wander, a Red Deer hind in scrappy looking summer moult lunges from within a bed of Bracken on the high slopes of the glen to flee up the burn gully edge, and with one concerned retrospective stare that unwelcomed my freedom to wander I realised she was hiding something very special. Nervous peering through long, camouflaging stalks reveals her spotted calf lying stock-still. The only movement is the calf's following eye that screams fear as I gingerly tread through the dessicated foliage litter that crackles with every footstep; a guardian invasive presence throws guilt at my curiousity and I quickly leave this 'once in a lifetime' magic far behind.
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| Red Deer calf 2/6/24 |
Far above, a pair of Golden Eagles patrol their glen territory and both come to 'view' my sketch far below and, in that, I feel privileged but their intentions are more skilled than my ego. One perches on its favourite look-out post overlooking the entire glen and the other soars over the scattered herds of Red Deer that occasionally disturb cowering prey under-hoof. A 'covey' of hinds labouring in the heat climb upwards into the wind to escape the blood letting Cleg flies ... suddenly a raucous Red Grouse pair flush before them and the startled lead hinds turn tail to flee ... they are jumpy and flushed with a secretive need to birth. The perched eagle on seeing the curffufle launches massive wings towards them and spirals on thermal currents directly above watching for any feathery prey below ... nothing transpires this time.
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| Red Deer mother hind 2/6/24 |
My descriptive 'magic' in this case might sound like 'disney' fiction to some but to a few it is just another day on the hills of Angus ... what may be precious magic to some is humdrum to others and therein lies a problem. Valuation of nature and habitat is subjective in that it depends on a personal interpretation of what is important. The hind and calf, if governing bodies get their way, will be eradicated in a brutal local cull to enable Scotland's deer population target which in turn is meant to stimulate tree regeneration to appease the 'goddess' of net-zero carbon. Hinds with unborn calves will be culled with bodies left to rot on our hillsides and that is happening now; fact.
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| Red Deer calf 2/6/24 |
A watchful covey of seven Black Grouse are foraging on a Blaeberry covered hillside. These birds are extremely wild in the sense that it is nearly impossible to approach them unless they are busy leking. One flies and the rest follow with heavy bellies lofting into the air on powerful wings that scoop up buckets of air to zoom over my head and I can hear them throatily grumble at being disturbed ... sorry. They are game birds in theory but, in general, upland shooting estates leave them alone to breed because populations are declining in many areas; one individual Gordon Bowker has dedicated his time to successfully rearing and releasing Black Grouse to areas where they have become locally extinct (rearing any grouse species is problematic).
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| Black Grouse 2/6/24 |
On this sunlit morn I expected to find more Adders than I did, mind you it is still chilly up here in the highlands of Scotland at times, so many female snakes just stay put at their underground hibernaculum locations. Today I find four in a huddle at one location, two have sloughed skins and two are blackish and yet to slough skin. One wakens to my presence and raises a head as I video her, then super-quick launches into the undergrowth like an arrow leaving a bow. Seemingly snakes have five bodily methods of propulsion and I think this one was using them all at once! I presume that when ecological surveys are undertaken for forest or wind-farm developments any 'protected' hiding / underground or nocturnal species are not adequately counted, if at all.
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| Adders, both female 2/6/24 |
I think that I am justifiably worried about Golden Eagle breeding success in this area. Seemingly, if I recall correctly, only three pairs out of twelve in the Cairngorms National Park reared young last year and I do know of one active eyrie that was completely destroyed by Storm Babet in October last year, so maybe others have suffered too. The lack of prey Mountain Hares is certainly obvious to me and I am not finding the number of carcass remains that would indicate disease deaths or evidence of plucked fresh kills. In some areas the lack of grouse must be having an impact and I have the notion that some eagles are travelling a fair distance to find any prey and not enough to allow the females to come into condition for egg laying ... alternatively the fashion for cruel satellite tagging may be having an unknown cumulative effect on mating, and of course that opinion would be doggedly denied by experts who have not looked for evidence to the contrary, as per usual.
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| Gloden Eagle 2/6/24 |
At the moment the Angus glens have eight Golden Eagle breeding territories, but one glen that always had breeding eagles, and still could have them, mysteriously does not; I think it is time for Angus to have nine (if not ten) breeding locations and that would please me enormously. The traditional attitude of raptor study groups and bird protection organisations was to never let a game-keeper know where nesting raptors were ... silly is it not? On reflection of co-discovering the first White-tailed Eagle nest in Angus and divulging the location to a bird protection organisation my attitude now is never let them or the raptor study group or sat taggers know where a new raptor nest is ... that makes more sense to me nowadays!
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| Stonechat 2/6/24 |
I have had suspicions about Red Kites taking wader chicks for a year or two now after seeing lots of Lapwing chicks just disappear at one location and there always seemed to be a kite on patrol there ... a crude assumption maybe but probably correct. Recently an observer took photos of a kite fishing (yes fishing like an Osprey) and making good use of its 'useless' talons to plunge for coarse fish in a lake. Ah, the bird books usually state that buzzards and kites usually only eat worms and carrion but, as we are finding out, that is far from the truth. Therefore there must be a good reason why the glen Curlews and Lapwings were mobbing a foraging Red Kite today, apart from the well known ailment of wader neurosis, of course.
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| Lapwing mobbing Red Kite 2/6/24 |
The last anomaly on discussion is the amazing, irridescent violet Dor or Dung Beetle and over the years I have been finding fewer and fewer of these dung burying insects on my travels. Alas, the good old days of tippy-toeing through hordes of beetles trundling sheeps' purlies around with their back legs seem to have gone and, like the Mountain Hare, were icons of a day out on the hills. In my opinion, some things just don't seem right with our moorlands at the moment and no amount of rewilding nonsense or wand waving will fix that.
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| Dung Beetle 2/6/24 |
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| Curlew mobbing Red Kite 2/6/24 |
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| Bed of three Adder females 2/6/24 |
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| Yellow Pimpernel 2/6/24 |
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| Butterwort 2/6/24 |
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| Red Deer hinds fretting over a Red Grouse 2/6/24 |
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| Golden Eagle pair 2/6/24 |
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| Ring Ouzel 2/6/24 |
All text, photographs and sketch done on 02/06/24 (unless dated otherwise) and subject to copyright - no reproduction.
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 Lapwing, Curlew, Golden Plover, Dunlin, Dotterel, Snipe, Red and Black Grouse, Ptarmigan and many raptors nest on the ground, it is advisable to keep dogs on leads at all times especially 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 inquisitive disturbance to named species.
Canon camera 200D with optical zoom lens EFS 55-250mm used; please note that the zoom range ZR distance if given is calculated by OS map from subject location to camera.
