With lambing rapidly approaching here at The Oa, it's time to bring all our sheep in for scanning to see who is to be blessed with a visit from the stork this year. The reserve is grazed (mainly for chough) with cattle and 800 odd sheep spread over the hills, cliffs and glens of this rugged 2,000+ hectare site. Most are the hardy Scottish Blackface variety and are about as interested in coming in to the farm to get poked and prodded as I am with going to the dentist, though they make considerably less fuss about it. So a great battle of wits commenced today between the ewes of Upper Killeyan and the staff of RSPB The Oa. Team RSPB had superior numbers of quad bikes, sheepdogs and walkie-talkies. Team Sheep had the edge intellectually and were clearly the fitter of the two teams. Despite being heavily in lamb.With Upper Killeyan looking beautiful in the early spring sun, battle commenced.
The cliffs and bays of this part of the reserve are stunning. Unless you are scrambling up them on your hands and knees chasing a sheep.
Several tense stand offs develop, with the ewes knowing full well we cannot get to them in some places
Until finally we get things moving again.
One of the local peregrine falcons comes to see what all the fuss is about...
And eventually we start to get the upper hand, pushing the sheep further inland where we can get the dogs behind them...
And after what felt like many, many hours (because it was) of chasing, cajoling and, let's be honest, swearing, victory was ours. 100 plus sheep safely gathered from the cliffs into the in-bye fields. We'll repeat it all again tomorrow, and for the rest of the week.