I usually keep Facebook for observations on family life, anecdotes of personal disasters and tales of losing my wallet/keys/phone. It isn’t somewhere I usually post political comment, keeping that for Twitter. Last week, however, the publication of the report on 131 satellite tracked golden eagles showing that a third of them had gone missing in suspicious circumstances drove me to Facebook. It wasn’t long before the extended family had picked up on it. “Something to discuss at the family gathering on Saturday?” posted a cantankerous relative, highlighting it to a cousin who works in the driven grouse business.  

He was probably hoping for a repeat of a discussion at a similar event, five years previously, when, sat at a trestle table in a large marquee, he had watched while the cousin and I had an animated argument pitting conservation against driven grouse moors.

We nearly missed the opportunity to revisit that discussion, when, just before setting out, I realised the family railcard had expired and renewing it seemed to be beyond the capacity of the ticket office. After a lot of faff and an aborted attempt, it became clear that wouldn’t happen. Following a moment of horror when we found they couldn’t sell us tickets to England either, and some very quick thinking we managed to buy tickets to Carlisle and scurried to the train like shrews on amphetamine.  

The journey to Derbyshire seemed even longer than usual given that I had spent much of the week up in Speyside for work. Grouse were on the menu there too in the form of discussions about Capercaillie conservation. There was anxiety that the heavy rain that welcomed our visit would affect the young chicks, which are prone to waterlogging for a couple of weeks after hatching.

At our destination, with children swarming all over a small playpark, I fell into conversation with my cousin, not over our differences, but over our mutual concerns for baby grouse. He was concerned that the wet weather would be doing the red grouse chicks no good either. We shared tales of early mornings watching black grouse leks and it turned out that he could do a very plausible impression of the bubbling sound of a lekking black grouse and that both our hearts are lifted by the sounds of displaying waders. 

We talked about my experiences earlier that week in Speyside where I had been fortunate enough to visit Glen Feshie estate, where deer numbers had been reduced to a level that was allowing the natural regeneration of the pine forests, and trees were advancing in all directions, and wildlife with them. How could grouse estates create a more realistic experience of nature on their moorlands, I asked. Perhaps there would be fewer grouse but there could be more of other wildlife for people to enjoy. But before we could explore this further, as it is so often in circumstances where children outnumber adults, something vitally important interrupted the conversation. 

 
There really was so much more to talk about. Perhaps we will just need to pick it up again on Facebook.

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