It is one of those dark winter days where it the days never quite seems to arrive. The sky is lowering like a Egdon Heath at the start of the Return of the Native. There is a bitterly cold east wind and I can't decide whether it is snowing, raining, hailing or just dropping little round fluffy icy balls.I am out on the Moss to check over a scrub area that some contractors are going to cut. Much of the snow has gone revealing the muted winter pelt of the bog but there are still white patches like deer bums that catch my eye. The bog surface is still rock hard, there is no feeding for the woodcock, snipe and jack snipe that you might usually come across at this time of year. I note some rhododendron seedlings regrowing from a patch that we have cut in the past. Normally I would pull them out root and all and hang them in a try to die but with the ground frozen that is impossible. The first sign of life I see, if life it is, is a fresh gizzard lying on a hummock, the remains of a bird caught and eaten by a sparrowhawk or maybe even a hen harrier or red kite. And then some real deer bums, not white of roe but the beige ones of red deer as a large herd file out of the trees and head across the moss. But the treat of the day is a red kite, possibly the owner of the gizzard, that suddenly appears overhead. Maybe it came along to see what in the way of prey had been disturbed by the deer herd moving across the moss. Our own version of vultures, wildebeests and the Serengeti here in central Scotland !
