p. 37 “the story is told of a fox trotting down the hillside here and along the road past the house over by. The man of the house sees the fox, bold as brass, and fearing for the hens, runs into the housefor maybe a gun, but comes out only with a hearth brush, which he lobs anyway at the fox.The fox, nonchalant, turns, throws a look, grabs the brush in his smirking teeth and trots on his way. When the farm is having a new shed built, two-three years later,a fallen trunk needs to be moved,in a den underneath, dry and in good condition, is the red hearth brush. I think it is in use to this day.”
p. 52 “the naming of animals can have unsettling effects. A ewe by here …. with black and white markings has only an unofficial descriptive name. To burst into the bar to announce’the badger’s had a lamb’ can be the occasion for some perplexed looks among tourists. Likewise, to encounter a man as it’s getting dark, slamming the door behind him and setting off down the road yelling ‘Whisky’ is something summer visitors find only too believable of west-Highland men. They don’t stop long enough to learn it’s his dog’s name.”
p.66 “Frances Pitt, writing in 1946, had seen the last nesting place of the sea eagle in Britain, the west cliffs of North Roe in Shetland. A pair nested there every year until 1908, when a local farmer shot the male. The female, a partial albino,returned each spring until 1918, after which she was seen no more….on Rum, sea eagles were reintroduced in 1975, breeding from 1985. … there’s still only about 200 individuals across the Small Isles, Mull and thereabouts.”
p.73 “At Ardoe, what I took to be a fish hatchery (it’s that too) turns out to be breeding sea urchines… The plan, with the aid of the millions of eggs these urchins produce, is to stock the waters around farmed salmon cages, where they will eat particles of fish food which escaped the salmon in such large quantities, that together with their excreta, make the seas murky for divers. The urchins will also be fed seaweed … bred specifically for the purpose. … the urchins(and seaweed) … can be eaten by us (and in harder times were) where mightthat leave the salmon and the farmers if we all took to eating them. How would Tesco market small purple spiny creatures and sea vegetables that would be pungent in a very short time from harvest?”
p. 89 “Juniper … In the 19th century it was so common here that sacks of berries were sent to market in Inverness and Abedeen, where they were bought by merchants to send to Holland to make their gin, jenever….This plant, to thrive, needs a certain lack of competition from heathers and grasses when seeds set; a controlled grazing provides that; but latterly the glens and corries have suffered from the sheep and are very much overgrazed, meaning the sheep (and deer) will eat the seedlings as soon as they appear. The fact that this has happened for more than one generation means that all the juniper is old and making little, if any seed. The future may only hold extinction; juniper might only be found in captivity – churchyards, botanic gardens.”
p.112 Brecht also wrote: You can’t write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.
Fences are absentee policemen.
p. 142 oak trees seem now to need a great deal of light if they are to grow from acorns which fall from trees onto the woodland floor. Sometimes around 1900 there was an accidental introduction into Europe of American oak mildew, which spread to every deciduous oak in Europe. While not deadly in itself, its effect is to add to the burden of oak saplings attempting to grow under a heavy canopy; the combination of mildrew and absence of light does mean death to the saplings … Acorns carried by jays or squirrels outside the woodland, buried and forgotten, grow percectly well. Oaklings now grow happily anywhere except in oakwoods.”
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