He brought a fresh eye to a river he had not looked at with his angler's acumen for a few years, the Borora. For decades before, however, he had worked its banks and almost always brought home trout. It was sunny and the water was brilliantly clear. Within a couple of minutes he had news: there were two crayfish crawling over a rock just five yards from the riverside window of the house. But don't crayfish normally come out only a night? Yes, but whether or not they had been disturbed, there were two sizeable specimens crawling over and then around the rock. Further evidence that not all life had been wiped out in the disaster that followed the fire at Mullagh, a few miles upstream, some time ago, which poured chemicals into the water when the firemen went to the rescue with their hoses. Where the crayfish were seen was just at the head of a run which has given many over the years. So some good news after the gloom. They were big, too.
Then a couple of score yards upstream his keen sight brought more good news: "See that nice little trout," and there, sinuous in the current, was indeed a nice trout which he estimated at about half a pound. You would put him back, of course, if you hooked him. Then farther on, past shaded waters to a patch of shingle where, here and there, rings of water made by rising fish came several times. Nothing of any size, he thought, but there is life there. You hope some of them may be this year's young salmon parr.
So to a small grove of hazel bushes at what might be, but isn't, a cattle-dip: a nice sloping piece of ground down to the water. And right at the water's edge, a whole carpet of hazelnuts - all in bits and pieces, and (vandalism!) all utterly unripe. The shell and the flesh alike white, with the odd bit of green clinging on. Not human vandalism, but animals and birds being impatient. Why couldn't they wait until the nuts were ripe? People make studies of the oddest things and fortunately a book, Animal Tracks and Signs (Collins Guide series), tells us what creature is responsible for each and every mutilation.
Most of them seem to be the result of wood mouse or fieldmouse attacks. But do the mice climb the bush and cut down the nut? Or do they wait for the squirrel - several bear his trademark of topping the nut like a boiled egg? Forty coloured illustrations and a tray of mangled nuts. A study for half a day.
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