I pulled the proverbial trigger. Jones time.

[Jock Scot]

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news...rnethy.html#cr

Jock, considering as there are now something like 2,000 or less Capercaillie in all of Scotland, for you to have four breeding pairs on your land is a real treasure.

We don't see them very often, certainly not just outside our window, but they pop up from time to time.

Yes I have heard the squirrel and the tree story too and I have no reason to doubt it. The death knell off the last of the remainder of our "Old" woodland were the two world wars where timber was cut down out of simple necessity for the war effort. Most of the dense green forestry blocks seen today were planted by the returning servicemen and remaining German and Italian prisoners.Until about the 1990's there were serious tax advantages to encourage forestry.The trees(soft woods) planted in the late 1940's are now being harvested.

The deer fence is a ten foot wire mesh fence that surrounds nearly every thing! If I wanted to grow a cabbage I would have to fence it to keep the deer out! There must be tens of thousands of miles of the stuff surrounding our "new" plantations, it is the only way.