A good day yesterday. Nick, Stephen and myself spent the day repairing gates and stiles. I did the basic labour of digging deep holes in the sticky clay while Nick and Stephen did the skilled work of tensioning up the wires and fitting struts and rehanging gates. The gates we had bought are meant to be self-closing but on the clay soils the hanging and shutting posts move around so much when the clay dries out and wets up again that the gates had become self-opening. For the technical fencers Stephen and Nick fitted box strainers in the hope that this will stop the posts moving. It may have less effect when the West Moss-side Shetland cattle rub up against them or lean on the fence but we will just have to wait and see. The stiles were a health and safety issue, the old stiles were in such a state that if one broke when in use the resulting injury could have been very nasty.
A cool breeze kept us cool when digging, the rain showers held off and the birds kept us entertained. Up to 3 grasshopper warblers reeled away, the summer's first whinchat scratchily put himself on the map and reed buntings zip, zip zupped from thick patches of rushes. A couple of wheatears mooched around the arable fields, the anxious males have mostly passed through, rushing to grab a space, these laid back females passing through now are calmly confident of claiming a male on territory. All the while I dug away a skylark towered over me singing the whole while. I hope I didn't disturb him too much. Across the Moss the big caterpillars were on the march, I didn't know the species so just admired the hairy defence and singleminded migration.
And to finish off close to the last stile we found a small pile of otter spraint, a sign that they continue to use Flanders as a link between the Goodie Water and the Forth .
