Country diary: An adder, back from the ‘dead' in a burial cairn
Two days of sunshine at Fairy Hill croft and it has triggered some early spring action here. Young badgers are gradually emerging from the safety of their setts, while the volume has been turned up in the woods, with rooks, woodpeckers, red kites, buzzards, an early chiffchaff and 60 pink-footed geese cutting through the vapour trails above me.
A mile 'doun the brae', on a hillside of recently felled forest that looks like Desperate Dan's chin, I was stopped in my tracks by a sitting woodcock. I spotted a glint in his left eye, which was lucky because the birds' cryptic colouration in the undergrowth makes them virtually invisible. The eyes of a woodcock are set further back on the head, enabling 360-degree vision. I played 'What's the time, Mr Wolf?' and crept up within arm's reach before the bird took flight.
On my return to the croft, however, an even more thrilling sight awaited me. I passed the neolithic burial cairn that is over the wall from my vegetable plot, and while I was communing with the long-dead incumbents who lived here 6,000 years ago, I was delighted to see another resident of the stones – an adder, fresh from hibernation. It was easy to spot, away from any undergrowth, basking in the sun. It's not unusual to see adders in early to mid-March in southern Scotland, and this one was no doubt lured out by the brief sunny spell.
The silver-grey colour and the timing identified this one as a male (the females' colouration ranges between bright copper and dark brown, and they tend to emerge a few weeks later). I moved closer, hoping to get a closeup photograph of its beguiling red eyes, but decided against disturbing it and observed from a safe distance. He hardly moved, but his forked tongue flicked in every direction, collecting scent molecules from the air to detect both prey and potential mates.
I was reminded of the song Tam Lin by Robert Burns, my erstwhile neighbour at Ellisland Farm. He wrote of Tam's dalliance with the beautiful Janet, and his fears of his captors, the fairies, if he was not an honest man: 'They'll turn me in your arms, lady / Into an ask [newt] and adder.'
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
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