MEAT!!!

Marten handling lesson # 1:

Always ensure that your marten is fully sedated before attempting to pick it up.

Oh deer, oh deer, oh deer!

The boys were out today to meet the local forester and pick up some bait for our traps. As part of their duties, the foresters cull deer in the forests to keep their numbers down. In the absence of natural predators to control their numbers, a deer population left unchecked would destory any regenaration within the forest, making it a poor habitat for all other species.

Anyway, Raymond had lots of goodies for our martens, but also a particularly fine looking Sika roe deer. Now Sika are a non-native species (infact they are Japanese), but they are able to hybridise with our native Reds, causing a problem in itself. But apparently, of all the deer, they make the best eating.


Mmmmmm! Tasty!

On hearing that we can, through work privileges, get deer at £1 per kilo, the boys couldn't resist and bought the entire carcass there and then. The beast needs to be skinned and then hung a while, so we won't get her til next week. Then, as she won't have been butchered, we will have to do it ourselves. Just clear the kitchen table, get sharpening a good couple of knives, and learn on the spot how to cut up a carcass with the aid of Daniel's "Complete Book Of Self-Sufficiency". Its not something I've ever done before, but I have to say, I'm quite excited at the prospect. Is that wrong?

But with 17kg of venison to get rid of, I think we could be eating venison stew, venison curry, venison chops, venison steaks, venison kebabs, venison pie, venison suasages, venison burgers and etc etc for the next few weeks.

Any recipes gladly received on a postcard please!

A room with a view

This is the view from my office window. When I say "office" I have merely commandeered part of the lounge/conservatory for my own, and marked my territory by spreading hundreds of scientific papers, coffee cups, and bizarrely, cables ties, amongst other gubbins, on just about every surface. Including the floor.

The trouble is, the lighting and colours are so changeable outside that I seem to spend a lot of time staring (in deep contemplation of course). Its confounded by the fact we have a lively population of birds who come to the feeders we've been supplying. We get all the usual suspects: robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, chaffinchs, greenfinch, goldfinch, blue tit, great tit, wren, and song thrush. But due to our location, we often get quite a few species not common in most British gardens such as coal tit, crested tit, field fare, cross bills (well, passing through), goldcrests, buzzard, red kite, and, perhaps my favourite, the bullfinch.



(Picture courtesy of Sue Tranter)

Infact while writing this, I've been observing a snipe feeding greedily on a wet flush in the meadow outside.

All this makes getting on with my reading etc very difficult. Although you'll be glad to know it obviously doesn't seem to have affected my ability to waste time by blogging!

A beauty and a beast

(Click on pictures to see them in their full glory)

For the past few months, my poor, long suffering girlfriend has had to put up with me boring her incessently about the minutae of modern mountain bike technical specifications. Back in summer, I decided I needed a new bike. Not wanted. Needed. I'd been riding in Glentress and got hooked on the buzz from hurtling down a narrow single-track between trees and over rocks. In true geeky-PhD-student fashion, I started to do my background research. If I was going to spend money on something, I wanted to make sure I was getting the best of the best. Unfortunately, as I have a one-track mind, this became my obsession, and soon even Sherryll could tell you the merits of one brand of hydraulic disc brakes over another (sorry babe!!).

But finally, after a lot of umming and ahhing, I have my very own Gary Fisher Tassjara GS bike. I've upgraded the brakes (to Shimano Deore) and forks (to RockShox Recon 327), and it is without doubt a magnificent piece of engineering. And isn't it a pretty colour too!! *ahem*

The aim is to get fit again; bomb down hills at top speed going "woo hooo!"; see a bit more of the countryside; and most importantly, to tire out the dog.

I think first and foremost though, I need to invest in some mud guards!

Gone Fishing Boarding

Well when you can't beat them...

If I'd have wanted to go on a wild goose chase, I'd have studied wild geese wouldn't I?!?!?!

The unusually large amounts of snow are hindering my fieldwork. Because I was packed off by my supervisors with a Citroen Berlingo, rather than the sexy Ford Ranger 4x4 I requested, we are unable to negociate the forest roads, which have a thick covering of snow. This means its impractical to get on with a lot of the work we should be getting on with. So instead I've decided to make the most of a bad situation and crack on anyway. How hard can a little snow be to walk through right??

Well after 6 hours of trudging through knee deep, and in places thigh deep, snow - I can tell you that is bloody hard! We were trying to find Face's (that's him below) den site today by homeing in on his radiocollar signal. We must have tramped about 9km through thick forest, debris strewn clear fell, marsh bog and heather moor, in a vain attempt to pick up a signal. But could we find one??? No.




So with great annoyance we stomped back to the van, which was parked at the very edge of the forest, feeling throroughly defeated. It was getting late and we were cold, tired and very hungry. Just as we were about to jump in, Richard decided to check one last time with the tracking gear to see if we could find a signal. And what do you know: the silly marten's only in completely the opposite direction to where we had been walking, in an entirely separate area of woodland a good couple of miles away across roads, habitations and farmland.

Grrrr. Bloody animals, they never read the script.

She lives in a house, a very big house in the country…

Some of the more observant among you may have noticed a distinct lack of bloggings in recent weeks (or should that be months?). “But what has become of our intrepid Fi Pants?” I hear you cry. Well, since we last spoke, I have upped sticks and relocated to The Middle Of Nowhere, or more precisely, here:




This is *********dale Lodge in the far flung reaches of northern Scotland. And when I say northern, I’m talking just about the same lattitude as Stockholm, St. Petersberg and Oslo. I think. Its not far off the Arctic anyway. And its bloomin cold.

So here I am, its finally happened, I have relocated in order to conduct my fieldwork that's been so long in planning. This basically involves lots of forests, pine martens, poo, mud, dirty fingernails, and for this week only: snow. We’re pretty much snowed in at the moment. We may have to eat the dog if food runs too low. But then again, she’s providing far too much entertainment as a moving target for snowball throwing, so maybe we shouldn't be too hasty.

So who is this “we” of which I speak? Well, I now have two field assistants, or rather, minions, to do my bidding. More than anything, they are two great guys who keep me entertained and in fits of giggles. But most importantly they're here to fetch spiders out of my bedroom. This is them, Daniel (left), and Richard (right):




The character in the middle is Nigella. We made her during a particularly hard day out working in the woods, snowtracking martens. As we couldn’t actually find any pine martens to snow track *ahem*, we turned our attention first to snowball fights, and then to who-can-build-the-biggest-snowball-contest, which naturally progressed to creating her. In the name of equality we thought it only right to build a snowlady (you'd never have guessed we've each got a girlfriend over 200 miles away now would you??).

So pine martens are the main reason we’re here. That’s what its all about. And aren’t they worth it? This is Drew, or rather Female #3 (the other two being Lucy and Cameron). We’ve caught three males so far too (BA, Murdoch, and Face. We’ve yet to find one smoking cigars. Its quite civilised with equal numbers so far, and will do wonders for my stats - don't you just love it when a plan comes together?).




The only down side is that unfortuanately, being “here” means a noticeable absence of television, mobile phone reception, broadband internet connection, and most importantly: pubs (the nearest pub being a whole 8 miles away). Did I mention that I'm also missing my dearest Shezzypants? The reason I haven’t blogged for so long is because BT are useless and even my dial-up almost never happened.

So since living with such technologically primitive isolation we have learned a great many things, the most important being: 1.) that early man spent most of his time inventing narcotics such as alcohol for good reason. 2.) that poached eggs really are the food of Gods, and poaching them to perfection is an artform that too few take time to master. 3.) that peanut butter is the universal bait with which one can trap just about any animal immagineable. 4.) that having a shower only once every 4 days makes having a shower all the more pleasurable. 5.) that Encona hot pepper sauce goes perfectly with every food group known to man. I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten all the more interesting tales to tell of our time here, and it seems we’ve developed a slight preoccupation with food. All we seem to do is talk about, prepare, or eat, food. But as food is one of my favourite preoccupations anyway I can’t complain really.

So that’s that. A short yet dull explanation of my absence to date. I will try to do better at keeping up to date in future, but sometimes, when the highlight of your week is finding a really fresh pine marten scat, these things are probably better left unsaid.