There is no path, so we follow the faint line of a ditch into the trees. Jackdaws scatter away through the twisting tree trunks, and my 18-month-old daughter, perched in her rucksack, points after them and imitates their clack clack clack calls.
This soggy fragment of alder and ash woodland in the southern Borders is a site of special scientific interest, a rare scrap of mature native trees in a land of sitka spruce and sheep-grazed upland. For me it’s always been an edge, the point where my parents’ garden ends and the open hill begins. Each spring I came in search of jackdaw nests here, clambering up the side branches and peering into the darkness at the leathery nestlings, wincing from the acrid stench that emerged.
