Aha!

If you're a regular visitor you may have noticed that, of late, I..er..haven't been.

My excuse is that my laptop caught a particularly nasty bug and had to go to the docs. I hope the people who write these viruses end up in the docks too.

So what have I been up to while all this has been going on? Well My colleagues and I have walked more ground for foxes, we've also been out in the early mornings spying for them. But we haven't fallen in with any. In fact, we haven't seen any. Actually, we've hardly seen any recent sign of a fox at all.

So without the distraction of foxes, we've concentrated our efforts more on stoat and crow traps. The 'problem' is there seem to be very few of them as well.

We're delighted of course, albeit in a slightly mistrusting, perplexed sort of way. (Can there really be so few? Or are they just giving us the slip?)

Our delight is slightly dulled with the fact that this allows us to catch up with all sorts of sorting. We've been freed up enough to catch up with cleaning and oiling every bit of tack in the tackroom. We've swept out the hayloft and stable block. We cleared out an old shed of a formidable pile of ancient crap. We sorted up the lochside road. We've cut some of the firewood needed for the bothies in the shooting season.

If you live in Britain you maybe heard about the storms that hit yesterday. Winds of 100mph were recorded less than 10 miles from this spot. One of the families in the glen had their estate car transformed into a right state courtesy of an extremely large beech tree. There was driving rain too.

And us? Well we thought we'd do a bit of fencing. I was chapping the new posts in with a mell. It wasn't easy being accurate with the thing when I was being buffeted all over the place. The man on the post-holder- Gus- has been mentioned in despatches.

I include a pic taken of the loch that day. We were fencing just out of frame on the right.

As I've mentioned before, I get a real kick from seeing everything thrive at this time of year. I could bang on endlessly about nests I've found or chicks I've come across.

I went as far as asking our regular bird researcher about ringing the birds I happen upon. I was incenced to hear you need to be licenced. And to get your licence you need to pass through 2 stages of 'apprenticeship'. *Deep sigh*

On a non-worky note, I got together with some of my oldest friends to spend a day flighting pigeon on a low-ground estate a few miles away. As one would expect for this time of year, the sport was hardly fast and furious. And a strong wind made these very underestimated birds even more taxing. But we had a blast (or two).

If you're reading this guys, lets do it again soon.

Out of the Picture

It was inevitable, I suppose. That's why the camera I used was an ebay special. God knows where it is now. It might be somewhere oot the hill right now, in this deluge. Perhaps it's down the back of a piece of furniture somewhere in the house. Perhaps my young son has purloined it. Whatever.....

I'm almost more annoyed at losing the handful of photos that I hadn't yet downloaded. I reckon there were some cracking shots of a crack of dawn. And I would have loved to have had it to show a classic fox kill I came across- an oystercatcher near the lochside with its head pulled off. And the wild mallard with her 10 newly-hatched chicks would have been a good 'un. And the goosanders nest I found in a hole in an old ash tree.

But I did say almost.

As it is, I hope not to deprive you of piccies for too long. I've just heard that my last bid was successful so a replacement should be with me shortly.

I hope it proves to be as robust as the last. I always expected water or an impact to be its demise. Maybe it will be yet, after all it's sure to appear now I've bought another.

It's been another busy week. Walking ground, doing early mornings, checking traps. A rough calculation tells me it's been a 60++ hour week. And there is loads still to do. Hey ho.

Maisie Misses Out

As stated in my last blog, I had to leave Maisie in the kennel the next day. The poor dear could hardly move when I looked in on her in the morning.

And wouldn't you know it, she missed the action.

The truth of the matter is I nearly did as well. As I negotiated a particularly steep and heathery slope a fox got up. In 3 bounds it had reached the top of the bump it had been lying on. If it had managed a 4th bound it would have been out of my sight.

As you can see from the pic, it didn't make it but I'd be the first to admit it was an unlucky fox.

On a completely different tack, I thought I'd treat you to some pics from the other side of this beautiful country. I was fortunate to be invited to a weekend of sailing over on the West coast.

The weather was fantastic and the scenery was outstanding (har). But a word of warning to my overseas readers- don't think it's like this all the time. Of course, the scenery is always there, it's just you don't always get to see it for the mist, rain or clouds of midges.

Colin, if you read this, thanks for a great weekend.

Done In

As promised, we walked the biggest corrie on the place today. In it there are dozens of cairns and holes where a fox might have a den. And hundreds of places a fox might lie up for the day. It's just not possible to find and check all the places, but we give it our best shot.

We work along the slope in a line. On a big slope we can be over a hundred metres apart. Whenever we spot a likely place the nearest person clambers up or down to it, checks it out with his terriers and returns to his place in the line. Big cairns will have two or three of us converge on it.

It's really demanding work. Not only do you have to negotiate steep rough ground, you also have to clamber through cairns and creep your way along narrow ledges. All the while you're moving as quietly as possible, constantly watching for a fox getting up from anywhere round about you.

You also have to watch your terriers to make sure they dont go straight off a precipice as they push through the rank heather which invariably grows in these steep sheltered places. You also need to monitor the progress of your colleagues to keep the line good.

While all this is going on you keep an eye out for any signs of foxy- kills, pad marks, scats. And you you watch the trees and cliff faces for crows or their nests.

It was another tough day. So much so that I'm going to have to leave Maisie (my 3 year old Border Terrier)at home tomorrow. She's all done in.

And I'm not far behind her.

Some Enchanted Evening

Since my last blog we have walked and walked and walked.

The fact of the matter is that we're just not finding anything to divert us from our walking. For whatever reason, foxes seem to be really thin on the ground this year.

And as I stated in my last blog, it has been the steepest, rockiest places that have getting our attentions up until now. When we were comparing notes at the end of todays slog, it was interesting to hear that we're all suffering from 'hot' right feet. That's been our downhill foot over the last couple of days. And, strangely, that seems to slip around inside your boot slightly more.

The weather over the last fortnight has been stunning. And stunned is pretty much how we've been feeling after sprachling about these slopes for a day. Word on the street (?) is that we're doing the biggest steepest corrie on the place tomorrow. I'd better put my insoles in the fridge.

On a different note, I was up on a promontory overlooking the loch at sundown last week. It was a warm, still evening and any sound was travelling a long way.

As I sat there it occurred to me that you only ever hear people banging on about the dawn chorus. The dusk chorus I heard that evening was magical.

There were ring ouzels pipng among the rocks, grouse cackling from near and far, down on the loch Wigeon were doing their most unduck-like whistling (like the second half of a wolf-whistle), a pair of Greylag geese were honking away.

As the light faded, snipe started their 'drumming' display flights, woodcock began their croaking and whistling, cock pheasants declared their territories and a dozen other species competed to have the last word.

The icing on the cake was a loud splash alerting me to the whereabouts of an otter. I watched him for 15 minutes as he worked his way up the loch.

I ended up staying longer than I should. Then came the last bit of magic- I groped my way back down onto level ground without breaking my bleedin' leg.

Bonus!

Haggis Country

Phew. It's been a tough week- and it's only Wednesday!

We've been walking ground, looking for fox dens. As I've said before, the foxes often favour the steep, rocky faces. So that's where we've been walking. I feel like I'm needing to grow one leg longer than the other. (And hope we then don't start walking the hillsides in the other direction.)

And what have we gained from all this invested shoe-leather? Not a lot.

We've found sandholes that have been scraped out. We've found a cairn that's had a recent visit. (See pic of one of my colleagues inspecting poo!) But really we're no further on.

Having said that, all is not lost. I located a 'hoodies' nest on Monday. It's going to be a major excursion to get out to it with a Larsen cage but that's what I'll be doing the first spare moment I get. Do you suppose the chicks will have flown by Christmas?

Needing a Fire Break

It turns out that yesterday was the last day of heather burning for us. I was planning a blog to commererate the fact but I didn't have the strength left to lift the lid on the laptop.

Twice before I had travelled out to a certain row of grouse butts. I was determined to give them a 'clean out' before the burning season ended. (Rank heather around the butts makes picking the shot grouse a nightmare.) Anyway, twice before the fire just wouldn't take.

I knew I was running out of time. Officially, we can burn until the 15th- or until the end of the month if it's over 2000ft.

As it turns out, I WAS out of time; I put up a hen grouse off 3 eggs before I got to the butts. I'd come all this way, so I decided to keep going but resolved that this would be my last burning for the season.

I got the butts cleaned out without incident then, for my piece de resistance, went down to a nearby bed of ancient heather that I'd been eyeing up for ages.

Well the fire made short work of the long heather- but then continued to smoulder it's way through the green strip where it was meant to stop. It ended up burning right up to the top of the hill. And we (our trainee was with me) had to rub and scrub every inch of the way to get the sides out. Probably about 1km.

I was out digging more grit piles (by hand again!) today and was in a position to get a picture of the fire. It looks pretty tame from a mile away.