Genuine and Wild

It should be emphasised again and again that the experience of seeing animals in the wild on Blacka and elsewhere is completely different to seeing them in the park of a stately home. The deer on Blacka are truly wild and easily frightened off. They keep largely hidden by day and you can search for weeks without seeing one. Usually they are off into the woods as soon as they spot you. This brings with it a treasurable sense of being in a genuinely wild place. There is a world here that is beyond the control and concerns of man and you tread more carefully, knowing as you do that you are in the realm where wild animals have set up their home. I do not sense this on a grouse moor, nor on a place where heather is managed by wildlife trusts for ground nesting birds nor where scrapes are specially dug for waders. That is bird-gardening and the occupation of our wildlife bureaucracies. The vegetation where this hind was seen is a glorious birch and scrub area transformed by the early morning autumn sun. Let us hope it is not destroyed by the birch bashers of SWT in a week's time. If the SSSI designations of Natural England had existed in the 1930s when this land was given to the public by J G Graves there would be none of this natural beauty here. It would be all boring heather with never a tree to be seen.