October 2009

I am pleased to report that the black grouse at the Blackburn/Newcastleton end of the moor have produced young; several people, including me, have seen a brood. Sadly, in the same area, a grey hen was hit and killed by a car, her crop full of cranberries.

The amount of wildlife that is killed, on what is a relatively quiet hill road, is quite staggering: adders, slow worms, toads and frogs are common casualties.

Cranberries are much sought after by both red and black grouse; like strings of Coral necklaces, the deep red berries liven up the blanket bog. The heather flowers are now fading into seed and the entire moor is taking on its muted, autumnal shades. There is also a smell of change in the air.

What is striking is the vibrant green of the new heather that seems to have taken on a late summer spurt of growth, especially where the sheep have been taken off. In some areas, some of this year’s new plants have even flowered. We have had our first frost, which will soon nip any vulnerable flowers.

Mistle thrushes are flocking up and sampling the abundance of rowan berries across the moor. We are looking forward to resuming the heather-burning season on 1 October. I am keeping an eye on ‘Metcheck’, trying to plan the next window when we will be able to burn, contacting volunteers, making sure all our gear is in tip-top condition and getting in a good stock of the gas we use to power the wands that ignite the heather.

We have completed the spraying I wrote about last month. We managed 20 hectares with Glyphosphate and four hectares with Laser, a graminicide that only kills grass. It is already possible to see where we’ve sprayed, as the vegetation has died off. We will have to wait to see when we can burn, as it is now too late to do any more spraying and it is also quite an expensive process.

We are still catching and radio tagging grouse; we are now able to keep tabs on 30 birds on a greater area of the moor. We are also catching grouse so that we can take a look at caecal pats (the first dropping of the day). Captured with the aid of a spotlight and net, the grouse are kept in boxes overnight in the location in which they were caught and then released in the morning once Damian has collected the caecal pat. The fresh pat is then taken away and a sample is looked at under a microscope, which allows Damian to count the eggs of the strongyle worm that are present in the bird. Grouse are far easier to handle than grey partridge and seem to cope better when being handled.