Sunday, February 06, 2022
The purple sandpiper was one of at least five on the river spit as the tide fell this windy morning.
It was recently reported that ptarmigan has joined the UK Red List. Ptarmigan are of course a game bird, but I wondered if people pay to shoot them and if estates offer them to shoot - and I started to google. I found one forum where someone was keen to come to Scotland and shoot ptarmigan (what an ambition!) and others were advising how to go about it. One had this to say: "When they burst from behind a rock in front of you, it is a very testing shot to take before they are up and away on the wind." (Does he mean they shoot them just as they take off - when they're almost still on the ground? I wonder if they deliberately flush them so the clients can shoot them. In my experience, ptarmigan rarely fly from you - they walk or, at the most, scuttle away.) He goes on "My pal and I both managed to down a couple of birds, and it was a great experience."
Ptarmigan are a great favourite of mine. It's difficult to put into words how thrilling it is to encounter one on a lonely summit - and however many I see, that thrill never wears off. That these men can talk so casually about what a "great experience" it is to "down" one of these tough, comical, trusting birds that inhabit the most inhospitable terrain in Great Britain, makes me see red. Redder than the Red List. The one positive thing about the forum was one shooter pointing out that many estates no longer "offer" ptarmigan.
There were also a couple of photos on the forum of some kind of ATV or Jeep bogged down hopelessly in mud on a hillside - from here guides and clients had to walk. But clearly, they'd already been conveyed some way up the hill at this point - and yet they call it "walked-up" shooting!
I've looked back through my records and find that over 27 years and some 152 hill-walks, I've recorded ptarmigan on just 44 of them. I was surprised that the number was so low - but it's because we've been so lucky with them during the eight years we've lived here. From 1993 to 2013, ptarmigan appeared on 19 walks. But from 2014 to 2021 the number of hill-walks where ptarmigan was recorded is 25. But my point really is, that every sighting of ptarmigan I've had in my life so far has been earned! I would have gone up the hills anyway as I love hillwalking; but there's always the hope of seeing ptarmies - and the fact is that all my precious encounters with them have come about after a great deal of effort.
And I reckon that if a woman in her seventies can walk up the mountain to see ptarmigan, those trigger-happy bastards should bloody-well have to walk up the mountain if they want to shoot them!
// posted by Christine @ 9:00 AM 
