H&C

19
Apr
2010

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Daffodils, raptors and the Hydro electric scheme

Hydro electric scheme is not quite going according to plan

"The last ten days or so has seen some glorious weather in the glen. Having been fed up with all the snow and cold I have taken on a new lease of life with the warm sunny weather. At last we can get out and about on the hill, however there are still a few snowdrifts but they are now gradually melting. It’s amazing how much better one feels with some sun and warmth. The grass is growing and all the daffodils are now out.

We have been planting trees over the last couple of weeks. We try to plant about 2,000 each year in small patches all around the estate. At this altitude they take a long time to grow so I try and do a bit each year, and hopefully in 20 years or so they will look good! We are also cutting up all the fallen birch trees to fill the barn and make next years fire wood. We got through a lot this year! Spring is a time to get all these jobs done before things start to get busy in the summer.

The gamekeepers are busy after the foxes, who, tend to move in this time of year to have their young. It often involves staying out all night waiting for the foxes to return to their den (hole). If we can kill them now they will be no bother to game and livestock for the rest of the year. If they manage to breed the problem multiplies. The other real culprits are stoats and weasels that are devastating for ground nesting birds. The reason we have so many curlews, oyster catchers, lapwings, and red shanks is that we kill a lot of stoats. It really helps the ground nesting bird population.

Our local raptor group (bird of prey) representative turned up today to have a look around the hill. He’s a great guy called Mike and he tirelessly walks the hills observing all and any birds of prey we have on the estate. We are both very into merlins (a small and beautiful and very rare bird of prey) and we have at least 2 nesting pairs on the estate (in fact I think we have 3 pairs but he hasn’t verified that yet!). I saw him at about 8.00am this morning but missed him on his return so I haven’t caught up with how he got on yet. We also have nesting peregrines but not many, (which btw though I like them I don’t mind not having too many because they play hell with the grouse population!) Their favourite fare though is pigeon and I often find a puff of grey feathers on the hill, the remains of a poor unsuspecting pigeon who took a short cut over the hill unaware that a peregrine lived there!

The other thing I have personally been working on is the Hydro electric scheme. Despite a number of attempts to get it working correctly it is still not performing as it should. We have dug up about 500 yards of pipe in the section not working properly to find that some of the pipe has partially collapsed so we need to replace it. This project is really dragging on and becoming costly so I hope and pray they can finally fix it in the next few weeks. Life is never boring in the glens if sometimes frustrating!"