The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Take your pick from trees
Dogs, like humans, are sometimes so predictable. The Doyenne and I were visiting a house where Freya, a yellow Labrador, is the resident dog. Spotting that I was eating a chocolate biscuit, she sidled up to me and, with a gentle sigh, put her chin on my knee and gazed at me admiringly. The message was clear
– if I would just slip her a bit of my chocolate biscuit I would be her new best friend.
After a lifetime of dogs, I’ve seen too much of this canine cupboard love to fall for it. I munched the rest of my biscuit and tickled Freya’s ears to say we could still be friends.
With another sigh we parted company. In any event, chocolate is bad for dogs and can cause vomiting and diarrhoea and they should never be given it, even in small amounts.
Red berries
The rowan tree is one of our hardiest native trees, found growing higher than any other tree and flourishing in the harshest environments. The trees have a mystical place in our Scottish folklore and were planted beside houses as protection against ill luck and the malevolent attention of witches.
It’s not that I’m superstitious, but I would never cut a rowan branch for a stick, as that could unleash some very dark forces. I don’t know how many rowan species there are but their autumn berries, ranging from scarlet to dark orange, are starting to die back. I know of a white berry rowan in a local garden which was planted as an ornamental tree and I’m tempted some year to ask if we could take some berries to make white rowan jelly.
Another red berry-bearing native tree is the whitebeam, a tree of the woodland margins. Several grow beside the main road out of the village. Nowadays they are planted for their ornamental value but the wood was used for the working parts of early wooden machinery in the days of the old windmills and water mills.
The fruit is ripe for picking now and the berries were once made into jelly for eating with venison. However, I have a sneaking feeling that the Doyenne is quite happy with the rowan and apple jelly she made a fortnight ago.
Blaeberries are ready for picking, too, and you’ll find them in the woodland fringes. I’m a keen enough forager but I draw the line at these wee berries – you need to pick hunners just to get a pound and my patience doesn’t extend that far. Still, I enjoy their bittersweet taste when I pick a handful for myself.
Nutty foragers
Humans, however, aren’t the only foragers. Out walking with Inka, I spotted a jay foraging for acorns. They are notoriously wary birds and luckily its back was towards me otherwise it would have been away like a shot.
It was choosy which nuts it would keep – picking some up and discarding others. They store or cache the acorns all over their territory so that they have a ready supply of food in the lean times.
Inevitably they don’t recover all the nuts they’ve hidden and the spread of Scotland’s wild oak trees has been attributed to the jays’ forgotten snacks which have subsequently germinated.
Fragile future
I watched Sir David Attenborough’s Extinction: The Facts. What a shocker of a TV programme. I don’t mean it was
“Blaeberries are ready for picking, too. I’m a keen forager but I draw the line at these wee berries – you need to pick hunners just to get a pound
bad or awful or improper – it was none of these. But I can’t think I’ve watched a more uncompromising programme depicting the desperate state we have brought our world to.
His final comment was salutary – “What happens next,” said Sir David, “is up to every one of us.”
For this column I depend very much on a busy, vibrant and dynamic wildlife and countryside and, for a column that has always been a gentle conversation between me and readers, I have never lacked material.
But in my own lifetime, to take just a handful of examples, I have seen a decline in the numbers of our native wildcats, brown hares and grey partridge.
The numbers of garden songbirds has decreased too and allimportant pollinator insects such as honey bees, wasps and moths have suffered a similar fate.