Buying a Bull

“Charlie” – my new bull

It is indisputably important to acknowledge the arrival of a new team member on the Working for Grouse blog. Having hummed and hawed over the subject of breeding cattle for the past two years, I began this summer with the express aim of acquiring a bull. Feeling my way in the strange world of agriculture, I hoped that it might be possible to borrow a suitable animal, put my heifers in calf and then look forward to the results in May 2018.

These plans began to fall apart around three weeks ago. I came to the jarring realisation that in the light of biosecurity measures and complications around organic status, the option to “borrow” was effectively non-existent. I would either have to buy my own bull or consider throwing in the towel, and my tentative enquiries took on a shrill squeak of desperation. I hadn’t bargained on buying a bull, and I baulked at the financial outlay required.

My project with cattle has been utterly fascinating and I am devoted to my heifers, but this strand of my work often approaches financial suicide. Several thousand pounds has already gone in to “prime the pumps”, and it is unlikely that I will recover even the smallest percentage of that investment for another three years. I doubt I will ever break even, but the links to conservation, traditional farming and proper food more than repay the monetary outlay – the message is simply that demands for yet more money (in any context) are always enough to chill the spine.

Fortunately, I was soon presented with a solution. I contacted lists of people for advice and support, and I quickly settled on what I think is the best option available. Polbae Charlie used to be a “big name” in the belted galloway world, and he was spending his retirement years along the river Nith at Caerlaverock. Well into his eleventh year, he had all the gravitas and experience of a mighty old campaigner, but also the crucial weakness of antiquity. Fertility can decline with age, so he represented a balance between superb quality and risk.

Here was a cracking bull that I could afford, and impressed with a field of his calves from last year, I reasoned that his fertility did not seem to have failed him twelve months ago. The worst case scenario was that he might now (by some disaster) be totally infertile, and I countered this possibility with the sober idea that any outcome is a learning opportunity. The deal was made, and he came to meet his new ladies on Friday. I am happy to confess that he is an intimidating beast, and he dislikes being hurried. He speaks in a low, breathy moan and steps majestically through the rushes on feet which are as big as my head. Watching him hold court in the top field, I feel that I am already getting value for money.

I have four riggit galloway heifers and two belties, and I was originally hoping to find a riggit bull. I think riggits are beautiful and I love their historical significance, but riggit bulls are not easy to come by, and in their current form would not necessarily guarantee a riggit calf. The resurgence in riggit galloways over the last twenty years seems to have stemmed from a handful of strange genetic throwbacks which cropped up after more than a Century of absence. A few belted galloways suddenly gave birth to riggit calves, providing an extraordinary window into the past, and showing that all kinds of ancient DNA is lurking beneath the surface. Crossing my riggits with a beltie bull will probably produce “mismarked” calves which are beautiful but which do not conform to breed standards. But there is also a chance that they might have riggit calves, beltie calves or a colour form I hadn’t even imagined – it’s part of the excitement of the whole process!

There are moments in this blog’s story (as it enters its eighth year) that I have to wonder what I am doing and how I arrived at this point. What began as a simple obsession with black grouse has branched into an entire life dominated by farming, conservation and the countryside. Perhaps this latest twist seems like a deviation, but I am reassured that it is actually more like a broadening. I have more questions than I ever did about the countryside, and every answer sheds fractionally more light on the birds and the landscape which started it all off in the autumn of 2009.

 

Grit Expectations

Breakfast grit at 3:43am

Catching up with this blog after a few days away, I can’t resist a quick post about grouse grit on the hill. Regular readers will remember the considerable effort I put in to setting up grit boxes in November, and may also recall my slight frustration in February when it seemed like the birds were being slow to respond.

Setting up a trail camera on one of the most active grit piles over a fortnight ago, I returned last week to inspect the findings. Trail cameras are such useful gadgets that I’m astonished that we ever managed to live without them, and I was soon poring over pictures of roe deer, pipits and larks which had passed by the watchful lens during its stay on the hill. As far as the grouse were concerned, my eye was immediately drawn to two things:

1. Grouse are visiting the grit piles at first light. The best picture I have (night-vision is not very good on my camera) shows a hen bird visiting at 3:43AM, and while it looks like the grouse is moving about in pitch darkness, a recent stalking trip confirms that this is currently a time of deep blue dawn – a combination of stars and sunset. It’s never really dark at all at this time of year in Galloway, and this could be best described as “pre-dawn”.

On reflection, it makes sense that grouse should be using grit piles at this time of day, since this is probably when they are most secure from hunting raptors. Woodcock use much the same strategy in the winter, becoming most active in the last minutes of dusk and the first of dawn. Perhaps none of this is surprising, and this level of circumspection makes good sense when the nearby forests are full of hungry yellow eyes.

• 2) Metal grit boxes are not very useful on this hill. I put out a dozen metal-sectioned boxes in November, and the rest of my grit was placed on folded turfs of peat which I dug out with a spade. Only a handful of the metal boxes have been used, but every single one of the turfs is now being visited by grouse. The difference lies in the fact that the turfs allow grouse to dustbathe – a factor I had previously underestimated.

The grit is certainly being eaten, but the primary attraction of my folded turfs is that they provide a small area of bare, dry soil. As a result, they have all been dug up by long-clawed, fluffy feet, and the surrounding heather bears the signs of moulted feathers. The logic of supplying grit in piles across the moor is partly to provide grouse with everything they need and to reduce the amount that birds have to travel. Frequent movement across large areas of the moor will ultimately invite predation, so birds which can stay put are theoretically more secure.

What I hadn’t realized that grit is only part of the story, and grouse probably place a comparable value on access to dustbathing. Our hill is extremely thick and inaccessible, so there is almost nothing in the way of tracks, haggs or bare soil to allow for dusting. If they want to dust bathe, they would probably have to fly the best part of a mile to the nearest forest track or broken ground; a bad idea when goshawks and peregrines are on patrol.

Chewing all this over, it’s no wonder that the grouse have fallen on my grit piles with such enthusiasm. In fact, I’m surprised that I had overlooked such an important issue – after all, providing dust for bathing is part and parcel of grey partridge conservation. I quite understand why grit boxes are important for more serious grouse operations, but it’s also interesting to note that some big moors have invested in metal grit boxes and then finally given up with them after several seasons of being totally ignored. Different strokes suit different folks but in my situation, I think I’ll stick to traditional turfs…

The Independent Chick

Killing a caterpillar like a professional.

At the risk of labouring the subject of cuckoos, it’s hard to resist a further post to acknowledge the fact that they are slowly becoming independent of their foster parents. I noticed one youngster attempting to feed itself yesterday afternoon for the first time, dropping down off the telephone wire to bounce along the track in pursuit of a large black caterpillar. It’s always impressive to observe an instinct kicking in, and while this youngster will never have seen an grown-up cuckoo deal with a caterpillar, it consumed the poor critter with exactly the same “flick and wipe” of a foraging adult in May. A pipit returned with a beak full of grub a few moments later and the chick returned to the wire to beg noisily, but the subtle deviation from wholesale dependence had been noted.

These birds can be seen from my office window in almost every hour of daylight. I can hardly miss them, so perhaps it’s no wonder that I should be preoccupied with them. As they develop some independence, I’m also interested to see them gradually learning the value of caution. The sparrowhawks are now an almost daily visitor to the yard, where they hope to ambush young swallows and tear through the flocks of linnets and redpolls in the long grass. The cuckoo chicks would be easy pickings, but the imitative camouflage (mentioned in a previous post) seems to serve them well. They no longer allow me to approach within thirty yards, and that distance seems to extend by another few feet every day. When they fly away, they do so with a confusing flare of feathers and rush off in an erratic zig-zag, changing direction sporadically as if subject to some kind of mental tic. They make for an odd spectacle, so perhaps it’s no surprise that all three should have progressed as far as they have.

At the same time, their comfort zone is gradually growing. When I first discovered them, each bird was confined to three or four trees in perhaps a two acre patch. Now when they leave their perches and move around, they travel five or six hundred yards at a time. I wonder when they will feel the pull of migration and leave the farm altogether. In the meantime, the heights of summer rage on to the sound of grasshoppers and young sand martins, and a blaze of trefoils, vetch and meadowsweet.

Putting him in context – a begging cuckoo against a galloway backdrop

Life in the High Hills

Beautiful but doomed in Galloway

It’s worth recording that I found a good number of golden plover on the summit plateau of the Merrick when I climbed that mighty hill last week. The little black-bellied birds rose up and rushed away to the West, leaving nothing more than a mournful “peep” in their wake.

This ground is very similar to many of the best sites I know for breeding golden plover in Pertshire and Aberdeenshire, and I was disappointed to see that none of these birds had any nests, chicks or youngsters in tow. To be honest, I didn’t expect them to – despite its high altitude, this is sheep farming country par-excellence, and the hill bears some obvious scars of over-grazing. Despite the grazing pressure, I was still impressed with the diversity of plant species I came across (including dwarf willow and mountain thyme), but there is no question that the hill is a little threadbare and tatty around the edges. A shortage of secure nesting sites may tip the balance when it comes to breeding golden plover, but the sheep bring an additional challenge for ground-nesting birds.

I saw some large gatherings of ravens on the high ground – some numbering into their twenties and thirties. These birds are clearly buoyed by the quantity of carrion available to them, and from one vantage point above the Fang of the Merrick, I could the remains of five dead sheep, three of which were being actively stripped by the great black birds. Plover eggs and chicks are extremely vulnerable to ravens, so it is no surprise that they should no longer breed in this high and lonely place. On one Perthshire estate I visited, the mass arrival of ravens had totally cleaned out first the ptarmigan and then the golden plover. Ravens themselves were not specifically to blame, but they were the mechanism by which over-grazed and degraded habitat manifested itself.

This walk begged several questions and ideas, and despite turning them over in my head for hours and days afterwards, I still don’t know where I stand. Most land management decisions require a trade-off or a balance, and I wondered if we are getting the best value for our money by grazing sensitive alpine habitats with sheep. It’s hard to say what impact the livestock are having without in-depth surveys, but the amount of dead sheep (and sick sheep I’ve seen before, suffering from yellowses) prove that this is not natural farming country and doesn’t make for an easy ride for the shepherd.

As you approach the summit of Benyellary on the approach to the Merrick, a large fenced-off enclosure is home to an interesting native woodland project by the Cree Valley Community Woodlands Trust. Rare and locally endangered alpine plants have been restored to the hill, and this provides a wonderful antidote to all the wrong-headed, ignorant planting schemes I’ve seen in Galloway over the past ten years. I was fascinated to see sprigs of downy willow showing through the resurgent undergrowth, and the progress since my last visit in the autumn was obvious.

High altitude places require a delicate touch and a unique approach. It’s hard to justify paying farmers to keep sheep in places where they struggle to survive – it may have been a viable model a Century ago when the man-power was available to provide pro-active care, but it simply feels wasteful and stubborn now. It would be fascinating to see the hill-tops restored to their ancient glory, complete with a natural tree line and a full spread of alpine species.

Downy willow on Benyellary

Rabbit Disease

Myxy returns

It has been disappointing to find the annual crop of rabbits is suddenly in a tailspin. Rabbits move in mysterious ways on the hill, and their population swings between periods of extraordinary boom and sudden, crushing bust. I’ve written on this blog before about liver fluke as a driving cause of population collapse, and I’ve also wondered about coccidiosis and Rabbit Viral Haemorragic disease.

Unfortunately, this year’s nemesis has been old-fashioned myxomatosis. The dogs now catch multiple swollen-headed bunnies on every trip, and it is disheartening to see entire litters of baby rabbits all hunched up and puffy eyed in the rushes. I don’t think I’ve ever known a population of rabbits that was meaningfully controlled or suppressed by predators, and the real limiting factors when it comes to rabbit numbers must be parasites and disease.

Myxy may have been a crucial tool for reducing rabbit populations after the War, but the disease has remained horribly persistent ever since. I can’t help thinking what a waste it is to see rabbits just shrivel up and die in their hundreds when they could easily produce a sustainable crop of food, skin and sport.

Cuckoo Chicks

A close encounter

The new house continues to reveal pleasant surprises as the seasons revolve. Having enjoyed a deafening din of cuckoos throughout May, I had the distinct feeling that eggs and chicks must be somewhere in the vicinity. Swamped with work and tied down with the mechanics of moving house, I failed to spend much time in reconnaissance with the cuckoos, but heard the start of an obvious wailing in the undergrowth about two weeks ago. This noise grew ever louder until I looked up on Saturday afternoon and found a plump cuckoo chick perched on the dyke a few yards away.

Obligingly, the fat little bird sat and waited for me to run to the house and find my camera (which had been dismantled and was lying in several pieces across three rooms), then allowed me to approach quite closely to permit several photographs. I am no great photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but even I could hardly fail with this subject matter – I was shooting fish in a barrel. It was only after an hour of watching and photographing that I realised how noisy the little bird had become. I turned around and saw a second youngster perched fifty yards away on a thorn tree. Two youngsters in a three acre field!

Despite my best efforts, I struggled to take a photograph of them together, which I imagined would be quite a coup. As it was, they were not drawn to one another in any sense, and when they did move a little closer together, the effect seemed to confuse both sets of parents. The cuckoos stood to gain nothing from joining forces, so I had to settle for a distant shot of them both in a blackthorn bush which has nothing to commend it aesthetically and serves simply to show that there were indeed two individuals.

All the while, both sets of meadow pipit parents laboured to feed the youngsters. They relayed in a constant procession of grasshoppers and caterpillars, placing each one directly into the cuckoos’ undeserving throats. I don’t think I’ve ever seen cuckoos parasitise any except meadow pipits, and I’m always slightly disappointed to read books and research based entirely on reed warblers – the dynamic between cuckoo and pipit is under-researched and hugely under-represented in the media. The national picture of cuckoo decline is generally quite hazy and headlines tend towards the glum. We have lots of data relating to how birds have declined near centres of human population but I think that there are far more of these birds in the hills than many people believe. Perhaps the gloomy slant is more a product of incomplete surveys. In the same way, skylarks are sometimes said to be on the verge of national extinction when I would rate them some of the most common hill and moorland birds at this time of year in Galloway.

Having so often found the remains of cuckoo chicks killed by foxes, it has been revealing to see just how vulnerable these little birds are. Trusting, idle and consumed with greed, they allow me to approach to within ten or fifteen feet without bothering to move away. Their constant screaming calls must be a magnet for a whole suite of ground predators, and they would be easily caught by anything with a mind to do so. Fortunately, most of their silliness takes place ten feet up in a canopy of thorn scrub – dotted around individually and able to find some security in the trees, young cuckoos must be far more resilient to foxes or badgers than black grouse or curlews.

It has also been interesting to see that while adult cuckoos are famously similar in appearance to sparrowhawks, youngsters have refined this imitation to a point of near perfection. The close-up photograph below is easy to identify, but at twenty or thirty yards, their dark heads and white breasts are extremely similar to a small hawk. One of the two youngsters even has flecks of white feather at the nape of its neck – a perfect facsimile of many sparrowhawks. This is sensible camouflage, as they would make an obvious meal for a quick ambush predator along the edge of the wood. The swallows were similarly fooled by the disguise, and they periodically came screaming out of the yard to bombard one of the cuckoos. It responded in kind, gaping open a blazing orange mouth in protest.

Even as I type this, I can hear them both droning away in the field. Judging by previous years, I feel that these two youngsters are better developed than other cuckoos I have found at this time of year. My notes tell me of chicks still lingering in the nest in the first week in July, and I spotted a comparable cuckoo chick on the 17th July last year, (although this one had the added glow of being a “rufous” cuckoo – a chestnut brown bird, very like a kestrel).

It will be interesting to see how these birds fare over the next week or two, and as always, the stacks of notes continue to mount up…

As I crept up to take this picture, he was happily playing with a piece of rabbit shit