July 2009

JUNE can be a real rollercoaster for a gamekeeper: on a high having seen a good-sized brood of grouse, and a low when a barren pair or a single cock gets up, leaving you wondering what their story has been.
It’s even worse when a young brood of crows, stoats or weasels appears on your patch; an oversight that needs to be dealt with straight away as they soon become like Willo the Wisp.

Foxes also have a habit of appearing from nowhere at this time of year. With so much cover – particularly bracken – about, foxes are sometimes hard to catch up with: by now, they are all capable of hunting, ranging far and wide, only returning when the vixen calls to signal that she has some food.

July is the best month to kill bracken with Asulox and we have been busy drawing up maps of bracken beds on the moor. We need to keep the bracken in check in order to protect other vegetation, particularly heather. Bracken is also poisonous to sheep and cattle and can harbour ticks. We hope to make a serious assault on it this year – by aerial spraying – so it is critical to get our plan of attack sorted in good time.

Walking over some burning sites recently, it is good to see bright green shoots of heather coming back; it’s even beginning to sprout from some of the less well burnt areas. It looks as though the heather growth has been good this year. Despite this, I have only seen one Emperor Moth caterpillar – these hairy monsters were all over the moor last year. I hope that the heather beetle does not attack us again this year; I have seen a few adult beetles about, but not many. It’s not the beetle that does the damage, though — it’s the grub. It’s too early to see whether or not they have inflicted any new damage to the heather yet. However, some of the areas that were badly beetled – and that we didn’t manage to burn last year – look very sad indeed. They are brown and lifeless.

Checking growth on some blanket bog is always fascinating. I never ceased to be amazed by the amount of plant-, and, in turn, insect-life, it supports. The tiny triffid-like sundew is particularly abundant this year. The bright yellow bog asphodel is stunning, but deadly to lambs as it makes them light sensitive, which causes their heads to swell like that of a mixy rabbit.

I have seen several broods of curlew of all different ages but, disappointingly, no Lapwings or Oyster Catchers yet.
The merlins’ eggs have hatched, producing two males and two females (raptor females are larger than the males); the adults chittered away when we ringed the youngsters recently.

The harriers have also hatched, producing five young. The adult birds are taking the diversionary food from the posts and the nest is being monitored from a hide. The hen has been quite jumpy and our harrier expert, Aly McCluskie, had to remove the hide the other week as it was unsettling her. It may be that the modern hide shows more movement and reflection from within and that she can pick this up. However, she has quickly settled down again, so hopefully she will soon accept the reintroduction of a replacement hide, as seeing what prey is delivered to the growing brood is critical to the Project.