… now that April’s there
The annual miracle of spring is thrilling everywhere. It is especially beautiful in the Chilterns, where the Prime Minister has a country house courtesy of you and me, the taxpayers. Our leader, however, scorns the beechwoods, the bluebells, the song of the blackbird and the call of the cuckoo. The Blairs preferred to spend Easter in Barbados. They must really hate England. They spend as little time as possible on this sceptr’d isle.
It is lucky that I live in Scotland, because I am tied to it hand and foot at this time of year. Lambing is in full swing on our Roxborough hill farm. Every day brings a mixture of routine and drama.
A fox has been getting into the lambing field. Five lambs were killed over as many nights. Then our stockman, whose day job is looking after cows but who loves keepering just as much, shot the culprit — a heavy vixen. Foxes are still classed as vermin, but many of our other foes are now protected. The raptors which circle overhead are looking for a weakly lamb whose eyes and tongue they can peck out. We are glad that the buzzards, sparrowhawks and peregrine falcons, which so nearly became extinct in the late 20th century, have come ‘back from the brink’. But we could do with fewer of them. They don’t just torture lambs and kill grouse. Other ground-nesting birds, like green and golden plovers, redshanks and pipits are what is known as ‘larder species’. They pay the price for that unenviable status. There are fewer and fewer waders and songbirds every year.
Robert Louis Stevenson, living in Samoa, wrote some of the most beautiful descriptions of our part of the world.
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