Knoydart, Knapdale and the Northwest

Last week I indulged in an extremely risky activity - I allocated  a week's precious annual leave to holiday in Scotland in October. The gamble paid off; my week coincided with something of an Indian summer. The photos accompanying this post give a flavour of the highlights.................

The week kicked off with trip to Glen Pean for a bothy weekend. This leaves Kinbreak as my only outstanding Knoydart bothy. It was a fine weekend, echoing a similar trip last year, only this time round all of us had abandoned young families and the morning lie ins were that much sweeter as a result.

On leaving the bothy I made directly for Kintyre to meet up with my own family. We took a trip to Knapdale in an attempt to seek out another young family; I was aware from the excellent beaver blog that some of the recently re-introduced beavers have produced kits this season. We didn't spot any but were very impressed by the huge dam they have built (below). I'll definitely be back in the hope of clapping eyes on the beasts themselves.

This photo of pounding sea and perching shags was taken during a stroll round the Coves near Kilberry Head. I can't quite bring myself to take advantage of the opportunity for double entendres provided by this unlikely combination of beaver and shags, feel free however  to add your own as comments below.

The paps the paps are calling me.......... The paps of Jura from near Kilberry.

The Islay ferry from the same vantage point. I have started plotting an adventure that will take full advantage of the presence of willing babysitters a stone's throw from the ferry terminal at Kennacraig. Watch this space!

The icing on the holiday cake came on the last day. I returned home slightly ahead of family and livestock and on finding a fine forecast for the Sunday I headed for An Teallach. (the photo shows the view over Strath na Sealga to Beinn Dearg Mor with the Fisherfield and Torridon Munros beyond).

Despite living very close to this fine peak I'd never climbed it before. There is some fine airy scrambling to be had on the ridge which renders it a poor choice for dogs. Many's the time I have planned to bag it, but finding myself unable to leave my four-legged friend behind, I've changed plans and tackled more canine friendly hills instead.  My fisherfield trip earlier in the year was dog-free specifically because I intended to tackle An Teallach on the last day, but when it came to it I couldn't muster the energy to take on the pinnacles while carrying a heavy sack. It was, therefore, unfinished business. With a distinct chill in the air it felt like it may have provided a fitting end to the summer season.

Publish Post

An alternative to Alladale

Might independence be a necessary precursor to the reintroduction of wolves to the Scottish hills? This week's post discusses deer management, re-wilding, access and land reform.

Monday brought the dismaying news that the local licensing committee have renewed Paul Lister's license to keep 17 wild boar and 2 elk in a fenced enclosure on his Alladale Estate. It would be better if they had nipped this misguided enterprise in the bud, for if Lister gets his way far worse is to come. He is widely expected to submit an application for a zoo license in February. If this application is successful he would erect a fence around part of his estate, imprisoning an unspecified number of wolves and frustrating the access rights of a far larger number of hillgoers. Thankfully the Mountaineering Council of Scotland (MCofS) have announced their intention to protest this proposed infringement of our access rights.

An elk near Jasper, Canada. This isn't the type of elk that Lister keeps in his enclosure at Alladale - they are European Elk,  the same as Canadian Moose. Is that clear?

Like the MCofS, I object strongly to Lister's proposals. I am, however,  in favour of reintroductions and re-wilding  in general and would not be surprised if history records Lister as a visionary, albeit a misguided one. The recent reintroduction of beavers to Knapdale demonstrates that such exercises can be successful. Watching a documentary about wolf reintroductions in Yellowstone some years ago opened my eyes to the potential benefits that a similar exercise may confer to the Scottish hills. Within a few years of reintroduction there was a marked change in Yellowstone's vegetation. In the absence of predators, grazing animals eat everything in their path;  throw a few wolves into the mix and they have to stay on the move. The result is that trees start to grow beside rivers and other water sources, creating habitat for other wildlife as they do so. While I'm in favour of beavers and wolves, I would draw the line at bears. See this previous post for an account of an unsettling bear encounter!

There can be no doubt that significant environmental degradation is being caused at present through overstocking of red deer. In principle deer numbers are kept in check by deer management groups.  In practice the brutes are actually fed during the winter on some highland estates. On a winter walk in the upper reaches of Strathconon a couple of years ago I saw red deer filling their bellies with baled silage while surrounded by dying birch and alder, the bark of which had been stripped by the same hungry deer. An electrified wire lay impotent on the ground, a half-hearted attempt to prevent the deer from killing the few remaining trees,  

[I have noticed that silage and slurry are often confused in popular imagination so I will clarify. Silage is fermented grass which is used as winter feed - a nice silage is sweet and rather tasty, even to humans. Slurry is liquid dung, used as a fertiliser. I don't know what it tastes like but it smells awful.]

In Glenfinnan one April I got close enough to a stag to throw a playful stone or two in its direction. The animal stood calmly as my first few shots landed in the mud at its feet. It scampered off only after I managed to land one squarely on its rump. It makes me to laugh to think of fat Germans and Americans paying a fortune to stalk and shoot these animals, many of which have been rendered practically tame by winter feeding. I imagine the deerstalker, eager for a tip, praising the hunters on their stealth as they crawl towards the beasts, whispering that they have never before managed to get so close to a stag.  When one considers the detrimental effect of overstocking and the fact that these buffoons have in many instances been Range Rovered to the hunt on tracks paid for by the public purse, crying might  be a more appropriate reaction.

I'm in favour of species reintroductions in general but I would draw the line at bears - too much nuisance value. I photographed this one in Yosemite.

The reason that Lister will need to lock his wolves away behind a fence is because one estate is not sufficiently large to provide adequate habitat for a pack of wolves. On a BBC documentary broadcast in 2008 Lister advanced the view that co-operation between the owners of neighbouring sporting estates would be necessary to create wolf habitats of sufficient size. 

I'd maintain that we'll never see wolves being introduced without land reform; action on an almost country wide level would be required to create the required habitat. Specifically, we would need to  nationalise the sporting estates and convert them into National Parks along the lines of the North American model. It fundamentally wrong that anyone with sufficient funds can buy up large tracts of what should by rights be protected land. It is easy to turn a blind eye to this injustice so long as we have free access, but Lister's current small enclosure, and his proposal to extend it, demonstrates how easily such access rights can be derailed.

The current arrangement, that of deer management funded by income provided by wealthy sportsmen, is one that primarily benefits the landowners. I contend that the contribution of sporting interests to the rural economy is consistently overstated and that the establishment of National Parks would bring far more economic benefit and local employment.  

Having given the matter some thought I have taken the position that Scottish independence is a necessary precursor to such land reform; I simply cannot believe that a Westminster government would ever endorse the wholesale nationalisation of the sporting estates. By inference, independence is then also a necessary precursor to the re-introduction of wolves to the Scottish hills with all the attendant benefits to the ecosystem as a whole. 

It is ironic that voting for the SNP may be the only currently available option that would allow us to move towards the necessary land ownership reforms. Given the current SNP government's shameful conduct over Donald Trump's golf / housing development on the Menie Estate, I fear they may be more likely to side with Lister and his absurd zoo proposal than with the MCofS and the interests of hillgoers.

I was guilty of repeating some dodgy figures in the original version of this post - this BBC link gives the areas as:

520 acres - size of existing enclosure 

23,000 acres - size of Alladale estate 

50,000 acres - proposed future wolf area comprised of Alladale estate and neighbouring land.

Some photos from around Inverness

I've got myself a better camera as part of an effort to improve my photography. Below are some photos taken around Inverness last weekend. 

Wind turbines above Farr, to the west of the A9 just south of Inverness. Having laid down my objections to the piecemeal development of wind farms in my last post I decided to confront the contraptions face to face. It's actually quite difficult to object strongly to this particular development. Having thought the whole windfarm issue over in more detail I came to realise that when David Mackay highlighted the impossibility of completely satisfying our energy demands through renewable sources he was thinking of Britain as a whole. When I find a spare half hour I will put my republican hat on and repeat his calculations for Scotland alone. Perhaps it is really England that  needs to build nuclear power stations.

These sandmartin nests in a sand bank near River Findhorn at Ruthven reminded me of cliff dwellings. The bank was slowly renewing itself, shedding its outer skin as the sun's rays melted its frosted surface.

Mallard drake at the mouth of the River Nairn.

The night sky before the peak of  the Geminid meteor shower. You can make out Pleiades, the small cluster of stars above the tree. I wasn't lucky enough to to catch any meteors in any of the 40 or so photos I took but we did see a few reasonably impressive ones.

Black Isle coastal walk: Kilmuir to Munlochy

On Saturday I began my quest to develop my understanding of the landscape by taking a stroll round the coast of the Black Isle from Kilmuir to Munlochy. This is a prime area for raised beaches, formed when the relative sea level was higher than it is at present. The walk also provided an opportunity to test out the GPS on my phone. The image below was created using a combination of the Instamapper phone app and Google Earth. I'm very impressed with the result. I appreciate that this is a touch on the geeky side but the geekiness probably pales into insignificance when compared with keeping a blog and spending Saturday afternoons examining raised beaches.

Saturday's walk round the Black Isle coast from Kilmuir (left) to Munlochy Bay (right)

View towards the Kessock Bridge from the shoreline east of Kilmuir.  Ord Hill is  in cloud towards the centre

I'm not going to go on about raised shorelines, you can read the link above if you're sufficiently interested. Suffice to say that when the relative sea level was higher, this eroded bank of silty soil was  a  tidal mud flat very much like the one in the photograph of Munlochy Bay below

Mud flats in Munlochy bay

As we returned to the car park at the end of our walk great skeins of geese filled the sky. Thousands of individual birds, fat after long days of grazing in the high Arctic summer; literally tonnes of   goose meat on the wing. The formation rippled as they changed course in response to my camera's flash, as if it had emanated from the muzzle of a gun.

A sky full of geese and a few raindrops on the lens.  

Geese aren't the only ones migrating - I'm toying with the idea of migrating this blog over to Wordpress but it's all a bit daunting and I'm not sure I've got the mental strength needed to see the job through at present! If you've done similar yourself and have any tips to share (or want to talk me out of it) please get in touch.

6JE67BPEWW6S

Alone in the Wild

Take one man, issue him with a camera, drop him in the midst of grizzly country and leave him there, fretting about the risk of bear attack, for three months. This is the wonderfully simple formula for the Channel 4 series 'Alone in the Wild', the first episode of which was broadcast on Thursday night.

California's High Sierra just after dawn

I found it compelling viewing, having experienced this primal bear fear at first hand while backpacking in California's Yosemite National Park. We had taken dehydrated food in order to minimise the weight of our packs, but my friend Mark was so horrified by the unmistakably vomit-like appearance of our Mexican chicken meal that he refused point-blank to eat it. As darkness descended I harangued him to consume his share, painfully aware that the scent of his uneaten food was wafting through the surrounding forest, acting as a beacon for any bears in the vicinity.

North American National Parks are as full of rules and regulations as they are of bears, and we had been well informed about bear danger. One must not keep any food or other odiferous items in the tent. There was no suggestion that a bear would be interested in food that had already been eaten, so they must be wary of the smell of people. There must, then, be a tipping point at which a bear's fear of humans is overwhelmed by its desire for food. I expect that a couple of pounds of pork links would do the trick, but what of more minor smells, such as that produced by the Mexican chicken that I had spilled down my front? Would that embolden a bear sufficiently to slash our tent canvas with his sharp claws and make off with my soiled shirt?

Half Dome from the approach

It was imperative to fill the bear cannister - a black plastic cylinder which the bears, lacking thumbs, are unable to open - and get it away from the camp. Our stuff wouldn't all fit in the box, so we put our non-food items - bug spray, soap, toothpaste, tobacco - in a stuff sack, which we hung half-heartedly from a puny tree. The unfinished food felt dangerous, like a cartoon bomb with a hissing fuse. We placed it on a boulder in front of the tent, then retired for an uneasy and broken sleep, unexpectedly tormented by bear-related thoughts. During the night I was woken by a loud bang vibrating through the ground. In my dozy stupor I attributed it to falling rocks.

In the morning bear tracks were evident all around. The audacious beast had even deposited a stool 20 feet from our tent. I realised with a start that the bump in the night had been caused by a bear resuming its four-legged stance after plucking our stuff sack from the tree. Gingerly, we followed a trail of chewed possessions until we found the shredded remnants of the bag. Perhaps the brute had been upset by a mouthful of mosquito repellent or tobacco, perhaps he had picked up the scent of our leftover food, every scrap of which had been carefully licked from the bag.

Bear attack aftermath

The chap on the programme, Ed Wardle,  recounted a story that a bear expert had told him just before he set out on his Yukon adventure. Two men were camping when a grizzly pulled one of them away, presumably with the intention of eating him. Cocooned in his sleeping bag, he was powerless to resist. Fortunately all ended well, his quick-thinking friend shot the bear dead. Even though my own encounters were with less ferocious black bears I am glad I didn't know that story at the time. I'm planning another trip to bear country next summer – hopefully by then I will have erased it from my memory!

Half Dome from Clouds Rest Summit

Half Dome. The cable route is visible to the left of the photo. Hikers are (just) visible near the top.

Pioneering Puffins on Handa Island

Back in June we took a trip to the Handa Island nature reserve. It is located off the northwest coast, near to the village of Scourie. Access is granted by a small motorboat capable of carrying ten or so passengers. It was the prospect of viewing puffins that drew us there. I am very glad that puffins exist. Viewing them cheers me. I view with suspicion anyone not uplifted by their presence.


There puffins do not nest on the island itself, but on top of the Great Stack of Handa (above). The stack is very close to the island so the birds are still easy to observe. The main island is was previously infested with rats who would eat the eggs and young, so the puffins wisely retreated to the sanctuary of the stack. The pamphlet provided by the warden reported that although the rats were exterminated in 1997, the puffins have yet to recolonise the main island .

We did see one pair of pioneering puffins on the main island, nesting in a burrow among the thrift flowers (above). The twelve year gap shows that being born after the extermination of the rats was not in itself sufficient to encourage the puffins to recolonise the main island. Perhaps the puffins stayed put until the last of their number who could remember the rats had passed away, and the association between nesting on the main island and the threat of predation by rats began to fade from the folk memory of the puffins.