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    Galloway and the Borders
    Galloway and the Borders
    Galloway and the Borders
    Ebook685 pages7 hours

    Galloway and the Borders

    By Derek Ratcliffe

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    About this ebook

    Another volume in the widely-read New Naturalist series, this book is an in-depth study of the natural developments and history of Galloway and surrounding areas.

    Often overlooked due to the reputation of natural habitat in other parts of the country, the author here conveys the diversity and magnificence of nature in the south of Scotland.

    Galloway and the borders is an extremely varied region, from saltmarshes and shingle beaches to rocky islands and seabird stations. The wide range of hills, displaying a wealth of rich colours, give the area its dominant character. The varied selection of flora and fauna only add to the diversity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateAug 19, 2010
    ISBN9780007405381
    Galloway and the Borders

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      Book preview

      Galloway and the Borders - Derek Ratcliffe

      The New Naturalist Library

      101

      Galloway and the Borders

      Derek Ratcliffe

      publisher logo

      Editors

      SARAH A. CORBET, SCD

      PROF. RICHARD WEST, SCD, FRS, FGS

      DAVID STREETER, FIBIOL

      JIM FLEGG, OBE, FIHORT

      The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native flora and fauna, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research.

      To Jeannette

      Table of Contents

      Cover Page

      Title Page

      Editors

      In Memory of Derek Ratcliffe 1929-2005

      Author’s Foreword and Acknowledgements

      Map

      INTRODUCTION The Southern Uplands: A Reminiscence

      CHAPTER 1 Environment

      CHAPTER 2 The Naturalists

      CHAPTER 3 The Coast

      CHAPTER 4 Ancient and Semi-Natural Woodlands

      CHAPTER 5 Lowland Farmland, Grassland and Heath

      CHAPTER 6 Wetlands: Rivers, Lakes, Fens and Bogs

      CHAPTER 7 The Southern Uplands: Vegetation and Flora

      CHAPTER 8 The Southern Uplands: Fauna

      CHAPTER 9 Afforestation

      CHAPTER 10 Conservation and the Future

      APPENDIX 1 Protected Areas

      APPENDIX 2 Conservation Organisations

      APPENDIX 3 Fungi

      References and Further Reading

      General Index

      Species Index

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      In Memory of Derek Ratcliffe 1929-2005

      Good prose is like a window pane

      George Orwell, Why I Write

      Derek Ratcliffe had a photographic memory of most of Britain, and certainly of the uplands. Name a location, and he could describe the habitats, the intricacies of their ecology, and especially the birdlife. He was an acute observer, with an enthusiasm for wild, open areas combined with a natural curiosity and an ability to think laterally. His industry and energy were remarkable, driven by a thirst for knowledge, an urge to understand what was happening around him, and the ability to reveal to others with straightforward clarity the hidden wonders of the natural world.

      Born in London on 9 July 1929, Derek grew up in Carlisle, where he developed a keen interest in nature. His first step on the literary ladder was a school essay on peregrines and ravens for which he won a prize at Carlisle Grammar. As he describes in the New Naturalist Lakeland: the wildlife of Cumbria (2002), his parents ‘made the wonderful decision to move from London to Carlisle when I was nine years old, and so paved the way for the eventual appearance of this book.’ Indeed, that move was a blessing, for it has now also given us Galloway and the Borders, which is both a lament for the wealth of nature lost in our lifetimes and a celebration of one of Britain’s neglected landscapes. In addition to writing these two volumes for the series, Derek was an enthusiastic supporter of the New Naturalist library, and a series editor for twelve years.

      During six decades, from his early encounters with wildlife through to difficult and strained relations with politicians and senior civil servants, Derek always wrote lucidly about nature. He was one of the most distinguished conservationists in Britain, featuring once in The Sunday Times as one of the hundred people who had most influenced the twentieth century. He retired in 1989 as Chief Scientist of the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC), but went on to write several more books and articles. His publications list is unique for the breadth of subjects in which he had expert knowledge. Derek devised the modern framework for nature conservation in A Nature Conservation Review (1977), which he edited and largely wrote. He made the key discovery about the link between pesticides and eggshell thinning in raptors, producing in 1967 a paper in the prestigious scientific journal Nature which became what is now known as a ‘citation classic’. Later, he published two classic bird monographs, The Peregrine Falcon (1980, 1993) and The Raven (1997), and a highly original book on Bird Life of Mountain and Upland (1990).

      As a botanist, having taken his PhD on mountain vegetation at the University of Wales in Bangor, Derek went on to pioneer (with Donald McVean) the description and classification of upland vegetation in the Scottish Highlands, published in Plant Communities of the Scottish Highlands (1962). Later, he made pioneering studies of bryophytes, peatlands and mountain plants. He loved to write about his travels and experiences, and captured these first in Highland Flora (1977), later in his memoir of early years in the field, In Search of Nature (2000), and finally in the superbly illustrated book about his travels with his wife Jeannette in the far north of Europe, Lapland: a natural history (2005). Derek also wrote scientific papers, book chapters and articles which all had the hallmark of first-hand observation, clear analysis and fluent writing. Many of his photographs appear in his books, and even some of these have become conservation icons, such as the wave of conifers breaking over the uplands of Kirkcudbrightshire, Rannoch Moor with its pine stumps exposed, dotterel nesting on a Lakeland fell, and the great beeches of the New Forest.

      He did not dress, speak or behave as if he was important. He was quiet – sometimes virtually silent; he was shy and unassuming; thoughtful, intense, brave and constitutionally sceptical; and at times outraged, especially over forestry and farming impacts on nature and the land. Derek thought critically about the plight of nature, wrote about its place in society, and constantly urged people, especially his colleagues, to rise up in its defence. He never ceased to be upset by the destruction of wild places, and in his writing you can hear his voice.

      With his penetrating knowledge and understanding, and personal commitment, he effectively led the NCC in the 1970s and 1980s, laying the foundations for the wildlife legislation and protected areas we have today. It was an unorthodox style of leadership, founded on a first-hand understanding of the changing landscape, a capacity to analyse complex issues, an awareness of the political process, and the courage of his convictions.

      In the field he was special company, and at his happiest. He rarely worked outdoors alone, instead enjoying company. There was a rhythm to his presence in the wilds, with which he always seemed so perfectly in tune. Of the many tributes to Derek written after his sudden death on 23 May 2005, few mentioned one of his sterling qualities – his capacity for friendship. He was not gregarious, and his many friendships were sustained by an immense capacity for letter writing, which he kept up throughout his life, and above all by comradeship in the field. Derek trusted his colleagues and friends, and this was returned in huge measure; he did not have much faith in humanity, but he did in his friends.

      Derek inspired people; he breathed new life into them through his words, his photographs, his conduct, his humility – and his own idiosyncratic, understated greatness.

      Des Thompson

      Author’s Foreword and Acknowledgements

      THE SOUTH OF Scotland has always suffered by comparison with the grander Highlands, and in natural history has been something of a Cinderella, relatively unknown and written about by a very few students of plants and animals. Galloway, in particular, comprising the twin counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown – the Stewartry and the Shire – has neither a full-blown flora nor a fauna to its publications credit, and the counties of Selkirk, Roxburgh, Peebles, West Lothian and East Lothian have little of recent literature. Yet this is a region rich in diversity of wildlife, with a range of habitat that spans nearly all the main types to be found in Britain. Parts of it still have the allure of the unknown, and there is still much basic recording to be done on the less popular groups of plants and animals.

      I grew up only a short distance south of the Scottish border, and soon began to make forays in search of birds across it into neighbouring Dumfriesshire. Then I discovered the charms of Galloway, where from 1946 onwards I spent annual spring holidays exploring its hill country for peregrines and ravens, staying with shepherds and their families in out-of-the-way places. From 1956 to 1963, my first job with the Nature Conservancy was based in Edinburgh, and my work often took me south into the Borders and Galloway. Even though I have subsequently lived far away, there has not been a single year when I have failed to visit the region at least once.

      This book is based especially on my own field experience, but supplemented by the observations and information of many others, from both personal contact and perusal of the literature. I have to thank first Donald and Joan Watson, warm friends for over forty years, whom I visited often in their charming home in Dalry, for their kindness and hospitality. Donald and I had many good days together in the field, looking for birds, and I learned much from his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Galloway scene and his artist’s eye for it. His passion for the hen harrier was inspiring and his fieldcraft in finding their nests something to behold. Donald’s books, A Bird Artist in Scotland and One Pair of Eyes, illustrated by his own superb pictures, wonderfully convey the character of the country in which he chose to make his career as a painter more than half a century ago. When Joan turned her attention to butterflies and their photography, our outings gained further in enjoyment.

      Roderick and Jean Corner have hospitably welcomed me to their home in Penrith on numerous occasions, and Rod has given me the benefit of his profound knowledge of the flora of the Borders. His long-term fieldwork in Selkirk and Roxburgh has left few places unexplored botanically, and his discovery of the important fens in these hitherto little-known counties was a major find. I have greatly valued his information and advice on the botanical treatment, his comments on the text, and his companionship in the field. He kindly gave me copies of his historical review of botany in his two vice-counties, and of the bibliography for the Flora that he is compiling. Grant Roger was a colleague in the Nature Conservancy’s Scottish headquarters in Edinburgh, and after his retirement to Melrose in the 1970s I visited him and his wife Jean regularly. The three of us had many days together in the field, botanising and taking pictures of plants, for Grant was a great photographer. Both he and Jean were the best of companions, with whom I shared happy times roaming the wilds.

      I am extremely grateful to John Mitchell for his keen interest in the work, which, with his knowledge of the local literature and library researches on my behalf, has provided me with numerous references that I should otherwise never have known about. He has helpfully read and commented upon parts of the text. Humphrey Milne-Redhead, busy country GP, was always glad to talk botany and head for some unexplored corner of his territory. I thank him for company and hospitality.

      My mentor Ernest Blezard first aroused my interest in the south of Scotland, by telling me of his experiences there, and this was the stimulus behind my early explorations of the Langholm, Galloway and Moffat hills. We had many memorable days together on the moorlands north of the border, and his description of changes seen within his lifetime gave an historical insight not otherwise available. Other Cumbrian friends, Ray Laidler and Peter Day, recounted their early times among the peregrines and ravens in Galloway, while Geoff Horne and Ralph Stokoe gave me detailed records of their golden eagle days in those rugged hills. I give special thanks to two bird of prey enthusiasts extraordinary, Dick Roxburgh and George Carse, who for over thirty years supplied me with precise data on the annual rounds of peregrine eyries which they made, with their helpers. Their lengthy epistles are minor masterpieces of literature, to be treasured for their vividness and passion, apart from the vital information. Chris Rollie has also kept me informed about golden eagles, peregrines, red kites, ravens and other birds in Dumfries & Galloway. In the Borders, George Smith, Malcolm Henderson and Chris Cameron have provided data on falcons and ravens. My thanks to them, too.

      Not the least of the pleasures of my early days in the Southern Uplands were the good times I spent staying with shepherds and their families in lonely places among the Galloway and Moffat hills. They were some of the happiest days of my life, wandering over lonely uplands where the only souls I ever saw were other shepherds, and returning at night to wonderful suppers and good talk. I thank Will and Mary Murdoch of Dregmorn, Louisa McGarva of Craigenbay, and John and Elizabeth Borthwick of Polmoodie for their kindness to the young man with the bicycle and pack they welcomed to their homes year after year. All but Mary have passed away but my memories of them are evergreen.

      I am grateful to my erstwhile colleagues on the South of Scotland regional staff of the Nature Conservancy, for help in various ways: Thomas Huxley, Langley Roberts (and Madeleine), Nancy Gordon, Joanna Robertson, Jim Lockie, Nigel Charles, Chris Badenoch, Vincent Fleming, John Young, Robin Payne. In the successor Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), Chris Miles, Dianne Holman and Sarah Eno have been most helpful in giving me information about Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIS) and reserves, and I am grateful to Heather Shirra for a copy of the SNH inventory of ancient and semi-natural woodlands. The list of SSSIS in Appendix 1 was taken from the SNH website (www.snh.org.uk). Des Thompson, Principal Uplands Adviser in SNH, has discussed the problems of upland and bird conservation over many years, and given me much valuable information and help, while days in the field with him have been a great pleasure. I have relied on Des to keep me informed about the Scottish conservation scene, which he observes with a perceptive and critical eye. Ian Newton has commented helpfully on the piece on sparrowhawks. Roy Watling very kindly wrote, at short notice, an account of fungi in the region, which is reproduced as Appendix 3.

      Chris Rollie, the RSPB officer for southwest Scotland, has also been a mine of information and a stimulating field companion, with whom it is always a tonic to exchange the talk and put the conservation world to rights. He has very kindly read parts of the text and given me many valuable comments on it. Rob Soutar, District Forest Manager for Forest Enterprise (i.e. the Forestry Commission) has brought me up to date on the changed policy of his organisation towards wildlife conservation. I thank the Forestry Commission for access to their vast estate in the south of Scotland, including some of the roads normally closed to the public, and acknowledge the help and interest of their field staff, even though we part company over the Commission’s afforestation policy. Richard and Barbara Mearns have kindly given me notes on butterflies, moths and dragonflies, while David Clarke has also advised me on dragonflies and Graham Rotheray on Diptera. Other friends and contacts whose help and kindness I acknowledge are John and Hilary Birks, Elsie Gordon, Margaret Russell, Dorothy Blezard, Heather McHaffie, Stuart Illis, Tom Irving and George Trafford.

      I am much indebted to Bobby Smith for letting me choose a selection from his fine collection of colour photographs of birds and habitats in southern Scotland. Norman Tait achieved a spectacular enhancement of some old and overexposed photographs that show pre-afforestation scenes, and I thank him also for the brown argus picture. Other photographs have been kindly supplied by David Clarke, Geoff Horne, John Mitchell and Philip Newman/Nature Photographers. Unattributed photographs were taken by me. Pradeep Sihota at the British Geological Survey kindly arranged permission for reproduction of the geological map.

      As regards literature sources, I have drawn heavily from many of the works mentioned in the historical review in Chapter 2. Of the recent publications, I acknowledge particularly the annual bird reports for the Borders and Dumfries & Galloway, the various county botanical checklists, and the atlases of plants (Hill et al., 1991-4; Preston et al., 2002) and birds (Gibbons et al., 1993; Murray et al., 1998; Wernham et al., 2002). The Solway Firth Review, compiled by the Solway Firth Partnership (1996), is also an important work of reference. I hope I may be excused for not giving the detailed references for these publications on every occasion when their information is used, but the value of the material is much appreciated. Ian Dawson and Lynn Giddings in the RSPB Library at Sandy have given valuable help over references, and I thank also Carol Showell in the BTO Library at Thetford.

      British Plant Communities contains a classification of British vegetation types compiled by John Rodwell of Lancaster University under contract to the Nature Conservancy Council, and published in five volumes between 1991 and 2000. Where possible I have tried to relate southern Scottish plant communities to his types, by giving the reference code letter and number, but – to save space – without repeated acknowledgement of the source.

      PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      To the great sadness of all who knew him, Derek Ratcliffe died just days after finishing the manuscript of this book. The publishers would like to extend their grateful thanks to all those who have helped make this publication possible. In particular, Des Thompson and Chris Rollie for checking facts, tracking down obscure references, and bringing rare-bird data up to date; Hugh Brazier for his superb editorial expertise; Jean Torrance of the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club; Richard Mearns and Roy Watling; and all the photographers who have contributed their work.

      Map

      image 1

      INTRODUCTION

      The Southern Uplands: A Reminiscence

      IT SEEMS WORTH attempting to convey what it was that first attracted me to this region. The hill country was the magnet – a wide panorama of lonely uplands forming the skyline to the north on clear days from near my home town of Carlisle. Not dramatic enough to have excited mountaineers, and hence to have become famous, it appeared little known outside its own residents, and neglected also by natural historians. As something of a terra incognita, it held prospects for exploration in search of wildlife, with possibilities for modest discovery in the wilds.

      GALLOWAY

      After an introduction to the Lakeland fells, the northern Pennines and the Border moorlands of north Cumberland in 1944-5, my thoughts turned to the more distant ranges of the Southern Uplands. Ernest Blezard told me about Galloway, a wild and little-known district of rocky hills, where three young friends of his had explored during short Easter holidays before the war and found several eyries of peregrine and raven in quite easy crags. I bought the maps and weighed the possibilities. A good many crags were shown, some in remote places devoid of tracks, and some of the hills had strange, romantic names – Cairnsmore of Fleet, Corserine, Millfire, The Dungeon, Mullwharchar and Curleywee. I read the Reverend C. H. Dick’s book on Galloway and Carrick in the Highways and Byways series (1916), and was fired with enthusiasm by his vivid descriptions of the lonely hill country. Still more to the point, he mentioned the nesting of a pair of golden eagles in 1906. The Birds of Ayrshire (Paton & Pike, 1929) added the information that the species nested in the Loch Doon hills in 1921, and I picked up rumours of more recent breeding.

      This was good enough. I found that the Caldons farm in Glen Trool would put me up and this seemed a good central location within walking distance of much of the most interesting hill country. On 13 April 1946, I took an early train for Newton Stewart, intent on ten days’ solitary exploration of the Galloway hills. My introduction to these wilds came as the train left New Galloway station. The journey had been through pleasant though tame country of green cattle pastures, with whitewashed farms and scattered woods, and some low hills behind. Across the River Ken, the scene changed suddenly and dramatically, as a great empty sweep of moorland marched into view. At the back of a large undulating plain along the course of the River Dee there rose strange rocky hills, with much higher tops more distantly behind them. The treelessness of the scene was striking (Figs 1 & 2). Distant patches of oakwood showed beyond the Dee, but otherwise the only trees were on a couple or so of birch-grown islands in Loch Skerrow. Two distant shepherds’ cottages were the only sign of human presence. The imposing mass of Cairnsmore of Fleet presently loomed up to dominate the panorama, with a great slabby cliff in its eastern corries, and the craggy shoulder of Craigronald. This was truly a country fit for golden eagles. Then, swinging under a spur of the hill, the line ran beneath the finely sculpted

      image 2

      FIG 1. The Awful Hand range from Craignaw. Merrick, Kirriereoch Hill and Shalloch on Minnoch, with Loch Enoch. Kirkcudbrightshire – Ayrshire.

      image 3

      FIG 2. Muirburn on Cairnsmore of Fleet: before the trees came. April 1968, Kirkcudbrightshire.

      escarpment at the Clints of Dromore, where grey granite buttresses rose with startling abruptness from the moor. Cairnsmore began to recede behind a further stretch of moorland before the track dropped to the Cree estuary with its woods, green fields and salt marshes.

      That journey remains vividly imprinted upon my memory. These granite hills were different from those I knew in northern England. Their colours were drab at this time of year – grey or even white of exposed rock, pale bleached straw of flying bent grass, dark red-brown of heather and tawny bracken. The perfect day, with drifting masses of cumulus casting shadows widely, added to the rich tapestry of tone across the uplands. Later I realised that it is the flying bent (Molinia) that, as much as anything, gives the dominant visual character of these Galloway hills, through the huge areas occupied by this tough grass of wet ground, either in pure growths or variably mixed with heather and bog myrtle (Fig. 3). But this is the winter or early spring impression. In a few weeks time the scene is transformed as the new growth of Molinia appears and the hills flush with green. It is sometimes known also as purple moor-grass, and this colour refers to the inflorescences that come later still. The Galloway shepherds’ name of ‘white blaw grass’ seems the best, for its long and pale dead leaves blow around and accumulate as a deep litter under the shelter of walls and rocks.

      image 4

      FIG 3. Galloway sheepwalks: flying bent on wet ground, fescue/bent on dry moraine knolls. Kells Range behind. Mackilston, north of Lochinvar, Kirkcudbrightshire.

      From my base at the Caldons I trekked far and wide into the surrounding hills. One day I reached the pass known as the Nick of the Dungeon between the two hills, Craignaw and the Dungeon, in the central granite range, and gazed down on a scene of desolation surpassing even that of the Cairnsmore wilds. Within a kilometre radius or so much of the ground seemed to be bare rock: crags, slabs, pavements, boulder fields and block screes of grey granite, with a patchwork of heather and flying bent where peaty soil had managed to form (Fig. 4). The long slopes below the Nick dropped to the floor of a broad valley, the Cauldron of the Dungeon, with two bleak tarns, the Round and Long Lochs, in view and a third, the Dry Loch, hidden round the Dungeon shoulder. Confluent streams from the higher ground joined to form the Cooran Lane, which ran a sinuous course southwards to join the River Dee near Loch Dee. On broad flats, mostly on the nearer side of the Cooran Lane, was a chain of bogs, where the reflected light glinted from myriad pools and explained its name, the Silver Flowe, of sinister reputation in the writings of S. R. Crockett. Beyond the river, the ground rose, gently at first, then more steeply, into long, smooth grassy slopes to the broad, lofty ridge of the Kells Range, with the high summits of Corserine (813m), Carlin’s Cairn, Meikle Millyea and other tops (Fig. 5).

      Away in the middle of this broad strath was the wee shepherd’s cottage at Backhill of the Bush, deserted for the past three years, when its occupants finally

      image 5

      FIG 4. The rugged summit of Craignaw, showing jointing of the granite. Kirkcudbrightshire.

      image 6

      FIG 5. The Loch Dungeon corrie and Corserine: a sheep-free summit with extensive woolly fringe-moss heath. Kells Range, Kirkcudbrightshire.

      gave up this lonely existence, five long miles from the nearest road end (see Fig. 207). Apart from this, and the cairn beside me, there was no trace of human presence. There was no vestige of a track to the cottage, nor anywhere else. The smoke from a distant moor fire far down the valley told of shepherd activity, but I did not see another fellow human all day, and even sheep seemed to be thin on the ground. A few wild goats and red deer were more fitting occupants of the place, along with the ravens and peregrines that I had come to seek. It was the wilderness, quite treeless again, apart from two rowans by the empty cottage. In those days this condition had no message of past human impact for me and it appeared to be natural, unspoiled country.

      This first visit to Galloway was not blessed with the best of luck as regards the birds. I walked hard and averaged 25 kilometres a day over seven days, mostly over trackless hill, but located only two nesting pairs of peregrines and seven of ravens. My best but frustrating find was an undoubted eyrie of golden eagles from which young had obviously been reared, evidently the year before. It seemed highly probable that there was an occupied nest not far away, but lack of time and mobility prevented an adequate search of possible alternative sites. Many years later I learned that there was indeed a nest in 1946, but it failed, and there was uncertainty about its exact location. Perhaps it had already come to nothing while I was there. By the following year the return of golden eagles to the Galloway Hills became well known, and two fine young in the nest were pictured by a local photographer.

      With my appetite whetted by this challenging country, I was back the next year, this time with a bicycle and, working from both Glen Trool and Clattering-shaws, covered a wider area and had more success with my favourite birds. I continued to return every spring and before long had worked out the distribution of all the peregrines and most of the ravens in the higher Galloway Hills. I greatly enjoyed going the rounds of them each year, climbing to the nests that were accessible, recording the contents and making notes on their food and breeding habits. Their numbers seemed remarkably constant year by year. The golden eagles yielded some of their secrets and I watched their numbers slowly build up, from one pair during 1945-51 to four pairs by 1964. There were other birds of the moorlands, above all the curlews, and one of the abiding memories of those days on the wide open moors is of the haunting liquid bubbling calls of the display flight, as the ‘whaups’ rose on rapidly beating wings and then sank gracefully downwards. On still, sunny days, the smoke from the shepherds’ moor fires rose high into the air from all quarters, and the freshly burned ground had a marvellously aromatic smell. Not the least of the pleasure was in staying with hill shepherds and their families in their sequestered dwellings deep among the hills, where I was welcomed back each year and partook of their simple and lonely life (Fig. 6).

      In those early years I knew little about plants, but was aware that the granite Galloway Hills had little floral variety. The northern cliffs of the Merrick had a modest assortment of alpine plants, but the prevailing vegetation seemed to consist of about a dozen common plants of hill grassland, moorland and bog. A summer visit in 1949 brought the discovery of the azure hawker dragonfly, a boreal-arctic species previously unknown south of the Highlands. By fortunate chance I became a botanist at university, and learned about the nature of peat bogs. The Silver Flowe seemed to be an important and possibly unique system of bogs and, after a reconnaissance visit with my student colleague Donald Walker, the newly formed Nature Conservancy gave us funds to make a proper survey. This we did in the late summer of 1951, when we were joined by Richard West, and camped for two weeks, after carrying in a store of provisions, in the remote and empty cottage at Backhill of the Bush, which was conveniently close to the bogs. Our report formed the basis for the establishment in 1956 of a National Nature Reserve over the Silver Flowe, which became a major United Kingdom site for the study of peatland ecology (Fig. 7).

      With my interest in peat bogs aroused, I realised the potential of the lower moorlands for other important sites. In Wigtownshire, especially, there were

      image 7

      FIG 6. The end of the road. Dregmorn cottage, where I stayed with Will and Mary Murdoch. 1955, Kirkcudbrightshire.

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      FIG 7. Northern end of the Silver Flowe, showing watershed bogs in 1956, before afforestation of the slopes behind. Round and Long Lochs of the Dungeon.

      great areas of low-level peat moss, which seemed to be intermediate in character between the true raised bogs of the coastal plains and the typical blanket bogs of the uplands. I looked at some of these peatlands, fascinating of name: Tannylaggie Flow, Kilquhockadale Flow, Anabaglish Moss, Ink Moss, Gall Moss of Dineark and Dirskelpin. They had greater variety and number of birds than the typical higher hills of the district. I had always been struck by the numbers of curlews on some of the lower Galloway moorlands and, much later, turned my attention to those on the gentle Molinia sheepwalks northeast of Dalry. By this time, they had decreased greatly across the region, and the Galloway Hills had come to bear a very different appearance from that of my youth, as I shall relate.

      MOFFATDALE

      It was not until 1949 that I reached the hills of Moffat Water in the far northeastern corner of Dumfriesshire. These, too, I first heard about from Ernest Blezard, but then read a fascinating account of them in a little book entitled Birkhill: a Reminiscence. Its author, C. R. B. McGilchrist, was a Liverpool merchant who spent holidays fishing for trout in the hill streams and lochs of the area. He stayed with the shepherd and his family in the little cottage at Birkhill, at the very top of Moffatdale, where the pass goes through the hills to St Mary’s Loch and Yarrow Water. His writing so beautifully captures the essence of the free and simple life among the hills, in company with the hardy folk who spend the whole year there. I read it again now and then, and recapture some of my own good times among these hills.

      I was lucky to find accommodation at the sheep farm of Polmoodie, far up the valley, and arrived there early in April to prospect for ravens and peregrines. These sedimentary hills are very different from the granite uplands of Galloway. On both sides of Moffatdale, great smooth slopes soared high above, as steep as it is possible for hillsides to be, without breaking out into actual crag (Fig. 8). But in the heavily glaciated side glens of Black’s Hope, Carrifran and the Tail there were extensive ranges of cliff, and in the last of these was the great waterfall gorge of the Grey Mare’s Tail, with its stream issuing from the elevated Loch Skene under still higher scarps. Moffatdale was mainly green and grassy and, although there was patchy heather in places, it was clearly in retreat. On the northern side of the range, the similarly high hills of the Megget Water in Selkirkshire had more heather ground, but much less crag and, indeed, outside Moffat Water, rock outcrops of any size are few and far between in the central and eastern hills of the Southern Uplands. The smooth, rounded tops of Broad Law and Cramalt Craig above Tweedsmuir are, with Hart Fell and White Coomb on Moffat Water, of

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      FIG 8. A hill sheep farm. Polmoodie in Moffatdale, Dumfriesshire.

      much the same height as the highest Galloway hills, and had sheltered hollows which sometimes held snow until late in the spring.

      When I became a botanist and did postgraduate research on mountain vegetation in Snowdonia, my interest developed in the plants of other upland districts. The Flora of Dumfriesshire (Scott-Elliot, 1896) revealed that the base-rich rocks of the Moffat Hills were by far the richest area of the Southern Uplands for ‘alpines’, and in the early 1950s I systematically set to work searching the craggy glens to find them, again from Polmoodie as a base. I eventually found most of the recorded species, some of them hanging on in minute quantity in single localities, and even managed to discover a couple of new ones. Records of some other alpines have been judged erroneous, or the plants are long-lost and possibly extinct, but the possibilities of the area are perhaps not yet exhausted; and I still bear in mind things to look out for when I visit the Moffat Hills.

      These Moffat and Tweedsmuir hills did not have quite the desolate character of the Galloway uplands, but they had their own distinctive charm, and became another favourite stamping ground, to which I paid at least one annual visit for many years.

      THE LANGHOLM AND MOORFOOT HILLS

      The nearest of the Southern Uplands to Carlisle were the unspectacular hills around Langholm, only 35km away, where the Malcolm Monument on Whita Hill was visible to the unaided eye as a distinctive feature in a massif of rounded tops reaching only 600m at their highest (Fig. 9). I first went there in 1945 in search of a pair of ravens nesting in one or other of two strange ravines, which had been occupied by the bird ‘from time immemorial’; and subsequently followed them and their successors for many years, by annual visits. These were partly sheep hills but also grouse moors, dark and heathery in contrast to the green and grassy appearance of the former. They included moors famous for their record ‘bags’ of red grouse, especially on Tarras Water, but in the early years after World War II management had not returned to the intensity of the interwar period, and numbers of the bird seemed depressed. It was also an area that did not quite live up to expectations. Scarcity of decent rocks partly explained the lack of crag-nesting birds other than kestrels, but it did not account for the total absence of peregrines, which had been known to nest on minor outcrops in the past. And the single pair of ravens was puzzling, for the bird is quite common as a tree-nester in similar hill country in parts of Wales. Buzzards were hardly ever seen, yet many pairs bred on small rocks and in trees in Lakeland, not far to the south.

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      FIG 9. Heather in flower on the Langholm Moors, Dumfriesshire.

      There were reports that golden eagles and hen harriers appeared in the area but soon vanished – victims of gun, trap or poison with which the grouse custodians soon put them down.

      Later, when working in Edinburgh, I made the acquaintance of another grouse moor area on the Moorfoot Hills, not far to the south of that city. Here, too, was a scarcity of predators, except perhaps merlins, a single pair of ravens which presently dropped out, occasional nesting attempts by peregrines, and no sign of buzzards that I ever saw. Tidy lines of butts, heaps of white gravel and a neat patchwork of burned heather said it all. Yet this was great country for other moorland birds – even better than Langholm for golden plover, which I observed on the Moorfoots for some years, and with dunlin, curlew, snipe and lapwing. The broad watersheds, with their expanses of blanket bog, were fascinating as the British equivalent of tundra, and remarkable in their quantities of cloudberry, though dreary and featureless to many hill-walkers, so that they were usually lonely places where the day was passed in solitude.

      THE REST

      There are few more varied stretches of coastline in Britain than that of Dumfries & Galloway. Its chief glory is its long and diverse series of sea cliffs, which compare favourably with those of the better-known West Country and Pembrokeshire, ranging from broken scarps with wind-pruned oakwood to abrupt, bare bird-cliffs. The Mull of Galloway is a fine example of the last, a narrow and precipitous headland, forming the southernmost point of the region, on the latitude of Skiddaw in Cumbria. Off its point, the meeting of conflicting currents from Solway and Clyde creates an impressive tide-rip. It is now an RSPB reserve, where a good variety of seabirds can be viewed from the cliff tops. And if the seabird colonies of this coast are modest in size, those of the Berwickshire seaboard around St Abbs make up for any deficiency, with their teeming throngs of auks and kittiwakes. In the southwest, there are, besides, rocky shores, shingle beaches, sand dunes, estuarine flats and salt marshes to provide a wealth of maritime wildlife.

      The woodlands of native broadleaved trees are the least well represented of the major habitats. There are plenty of them, but they are mostly small and scattered, and many of the best line the sides of steep glens and rocky ravines, so that their total area appears rather small. Many in Dumfries & Galloway have not been explored or documented as wildlife habitat. Plantation forest has, by contrast, become somewhat overwhelming in its scale and uniformity, as I shall discuss.

      Lowland raised bog was, in my time, extensive, and the lower moorlands, especially in Wigtownshire, were one of the largest expanses of blanket and intermediate bog in Britain, outside the Flow Country of Sutherland and Caithness. Fens are numerous and interesting, though mostly rather small, while the lakes and rivers are delightful in their variety. The last include the great River Tweed, which gave its name to a whole industry based on the sheep rearing that became the principal use of the uplands over many centuries. This is not, otherwise, a region much disturbed by human activity such as the heavy industry of the Midland Valley. It is one of pleasant market towns,

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