H&C

4
May
2010

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Lambing on the glen

Lambing happens later on Dee's estate

“Lambing has started in earnest now up here. We lamb later than most of the rest of the country as our grass starts growing that much later and we don’t want to have lambs before their mothers have plenty of grass to eat or else they don’t produce enough milk to bring up healthy lambs.

The weather for lambing has been reasonably good and the warmth has allowed the grass to green up. The last few days have been colder but it’s dry and sunny and that is much better than rain. Once lambs get wet, they get cold and one tends to lose many more in their first few days. Even if it’s cold but dry they seem to do fine. We tend to have the traditional early April weather in late April and early May with the odd snow flurry and hail storm, but the days are now are very long with it’s light about 4.30am and not dark till 10pm. It makes me wake up earlier and have a lot more energy.

I went up on the hill last week and saw a merlin flying about, calling to its mate, (which I didn’t see) and on the way back down I saw a group of about 12 Black Grouse. These are the much rarer relative of the Red Grouse. They seem to disappear over the winter but they have now reappeared on the lower slopes of the hill. You tend to only see the males who are jet black with white on their tails. You only see the white when they are displaying or “lekking” to attract females. When they do this they fan their tail feathers showing the white feathers on their behind, making a noise not unlike a coffee percolator. It’s a wonderful site (and sound). The females are called Grey Hens and they are much less distinctive with a browny grey plumage. The males tend to hang out together at the “leks” which are specific sites they have for lekking. We have four or five of these sites, and from now on until the winter you can normally see Black Grouse at all of these sites especially early in the morning or in the evening. The grey hens turn up too, to look for a mate, but are much more secretive. The males are not very family orientated and once they have attracted a partner, and mated they leave the poor grey hen to hatch out and look after the young on their own. Red grouse males on the other hand are great “hands on” parents and they pair up each season with a female and stick together all season through thick and thin, even taking there turn sitting on the eggs.

We have also started fishing. Though the fishing season starts in February this part of the river is not worth fishing till May, so we have now started salmon fishing though we haven’t yet caught anything. Some fish have been caught lower down the river so we hope to have our first fish any time now as they move upstream. We operate a catch and release policy this time of year and even later on we encourage people to only keep the second fish they catch in a day, thereby helping to preserve stocks. Our record catch for a season is 17 salmon but I hope to beat that this year. Of those we would only keep one or two to eat ourselves, the rest get returned to the river. I’ll keep you posted how we get on.”