It’s been a busy few days with some fun over the goats of Inversnaid – the RSPB has put them on “the pill” – well, darted them with contraceptives to stop them eating the valuable woods in the charity’s Inversnaid reserve, but that doesn’t fit a headline … Radio Scotland, the Herald, the Daily Mail and The National all used my reports, getting a prime slot at 0820 on the radio,

and a very good spread in the Herald, here, although Colin McNeill’s byline went on it in the Herald in print, a by-product of the clunky Knowledge system.

Visiting the Inversnaid reserve was interesting: the RSPB has put a lot of time and effort into it, and their new buildings at the Garrison show they’re investing. As well as visiting the Pollochro Woods where the goats are doing the damage, Dave Beaumont and Fraser Lamont where kind enough to take me up to see the new growth trees on the moorland area of the reserve that has been fenced off from herbivores. There’ll be more to write or broadcast about in the future on this, I’m sure.

I also learned the limoitations of my camera skills: with a prime opportunity to snap a couple of the goats, I discovered that black goats, a dark cave, a gloomy day and aquarter-second exposure were never going to work. The goats came out fuzzy no matter how I processed them!