For the most part, our Koniks are fairly low maintenance. They don't need too much food or shelter, just a check over every day to make sure they're all in one piece and all still have the requisite number of legs. They're also normally quite happy roaming around their fenced off areas and not go too far into the deeper parts of the marsh or over any of the boundary ditches.
Or so we thought until today.
Part way through the morning one of our regulars had been in the centre and seen two ponies right out on the very edge of the loch. This is a pretty long way from where any of our ponies should be, or frankly should be able to get to. Typically it was the two from the Starnafin pools- the ones with the driest ground and the best grazing- which had decided on a little expedition. Clearly being in a nice dry field with lots of grass isn't that exciting if you're a Konik, so they'd wandered towards the loch, forded a very deep ditch and followed the bank of the Savoch burn all the way down to the shoreline.
They weren't at all interested in being tempted back by a bit of hay, so there was no option but to head out and try and round them up. The marsh is a strange and soggy place full of floating mats of vegetation, head-high reeds, deep hidden ditches and some deep but quite obvious ditches that there's no way to avoid wading through. The ponies had sensibly followed the dry bank, but to get around behind them we had to venture right out onto some of the very worst of the ground. We then had to hide in the reeds while Richard shooed the ponies past us (some people had to duck down quite a bit, myself and Emma were already noticeably shorter than the reed tops so we just had to stand very still) and we formed a slightly damp cordon to encourage them back over the main ditch and onto the pools.
By that point it was raining quite heavily but to be honest we'd all gone up to our hips in marsh at least once (even the most waterproof wellies aren't much good once water starts coming over the top) so it's not like we could get a lot wetter.
Water in the wellies. Never a good sign.
Eventually the two escapees made it back to the pools where they wandered about looking as though they'd never been away. We made it directly to the kitchen for a hot cup of tea and to wring out a few pairs of socks before the wardens headed back out to make the apparently impassable ditch a bit more unpassable with some electric fencing.
Back where they belong, for now!
Hopefully they're now back on the pools for good, but if you see a small black or brown pony trotting through Crimond in the next few days, do let us know...
A quick bit of good regional bird news in the form of a Laughing Gull at Rosehearty just near Fraserbugh. This is the first record for North East Scotland so we're hoping that it might join the massive gull roost on the reserve at some point. Reports that the only reason it was laughing is that it saw one of us fall in the ditch while it was flying north are completely unfounded.