Book reviews: The Black Grousie | Scotland’s Wild Harvests
The Black Grouse
by Patrick Laurie
Merlin Unwin, £20
Star rating: * * * * *
This beautiful book is a labour of love, with its lively text and striking illustrations by the author. Patrick Laurie has devoted much of his adult life to the conservation of the black grouse, creating a sanctuary on his family’s farm outside Dumfries. Years of first-hand observation, backed up with wide-ranging research, have given him an unmatched understanding of a fascinating, engaging species, its complex social structures and its courting rituals. The more deeply he’s explored his subject, the more he’s come to appreciate the black grouse’s predicament – its status as a Scottish icon is itself, ironically, a measure of decline for a gamebird once as comfortable in Dorset as in Deeside. Old hunters’ memoirs and field guides from as far afield as Surrey and Hampshire report shockingly extravagant bags – though Laurie makes a convincing case that the bird’s decline has owed much more to the modernisation of land-management than to large-scale shooting – and, indeed, that game-shooting represents the last best hope for its survival.
Scotland’s Wild Harvests
edited by Fi Martynoga
Saraband, £12.99
Star rating: * * * *
Caledonia? Cornucopia, more like … This handsome handbook opens up the possibilities of a Scottish natural scene which is not only beautiful to look at, but good to eat. Some of these free-range foods and drinks are the ones you’d expect (elderflower wine, blaeberry muffins, wild mushroom risotto), but there are much more recherché tastes too: dock pudding and dog rose petal jam; nettle-stuffed ravioli and silverweed salsa; salads with hawthorn and chickweed leaves, gorse flowers and hogweed stalks and seaweed recipes aplenty. The emphasis is on eating quality: taste and texture trump eco-worthiness in a guide that’s as indispensable for the foodie as the forager. Medicinal plants are not neglected: there are free-range herbal treatments here for everything from colds and constipation to sprains and stains, from varicose veins and headaches to palpitations and PMT. And brief sections too on non-food uses: natural dyes and fragrant fuels; which woods are good for carpentry, which twigs for basket-weaving …