Rabbits

The track that runs up through the forestry from Drummuie to Loch Lunndaidh leads out through a gate onto open moorland. When we first came to Golspie this was probably our favourite walk as it was one of the few places around here where we could see red deer but, a year or so ago, the estate fenced it to plant conifers.

We walked it this morning because it's still worth the effort for the view - which, once the conifers grow, will be hidden - our across Loch Fleet to the Dornoch Firth and Ross-shire, but on our way back we looked for another of the features of this walk - rabbits.

This field used to swarm with them - we'd count a dozen in just one corner of it - but today, in its whole length, we saw five.

Talking to a local resident we found the reason for their decline: myxomatosis is back, and the rabbits have been dying again.

I say 'again' because I recall its arrival in Britain in the 1950s and witnessed then what a terrible way it is for a rabbit to die. Since then, even though it's been endemic in British rabbits, I've hardly thought of it, so that it's back here, and cutting swathes through the local population, is deeply distressing.