When Mother Nature Does Her Own Thing

A new monthly column about the vicissitudes of life on a mixed farm in Scotland

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Whatever the weather, Mother Nature simply gets on with the job. Heart-breaking sight of the year was a hen pheasant crossing the road on September 7 with seven-day-old chicks. She must have been sitting all through the wet weather to bring them into the world at a time when their chances of survival would be as statistically close to zero as possible. I like to think that she’d already reared one or even two broods successfully, but she had very likely experienced the heartbreak of losing them to the crows.

A happier sight that week was a nest of swallows on the point of fledging. There’s a chance they might make it to the eastern Transvaal for Christmas, given a fair wind, and they’re definitely a third brood.

It seems to have been a bumper year for frogs, toads and wasps. The latter have presented a particular challenge with a marked tendency to take up residence in our holiday-cottage roofs. There’s something consoling about the Old Testament plagues, which show that these freak natural population booms are nothing new.