Singing away the snow
Ptarmigan on Carn Ban Mor, by Espen Helland
I wake up at ten to fucking five, again.
I’m sleepy but I’m ready for the day – this is our first van adventure of the year. The whistle of the kettle jolts me into life. Old memories flood back and a sense of adventure courses through me.
Before I know it, the comfy camper bed is packed away and the coffee is brewing, filling the van with the heady scent of excitement, adventures, and possibility.
The steam rises from my cup and the strong, nutty smell of coffee fills my nostrils, hitting me like medicine. I breathe it all in.
Yesterday was Good Friday. We didn’t know where we were heading when we left the house late in the afternoon. By default, we aimed north. As usual, I wanted to go far, far north. But half an hour into the drive, I checked the weather. Durness looked wet. Aviemore’s forecast said sun. Cairngorms it would be, again. Why break with tradition? I have a tendency to think these familiar spots are boring – my soul yearns for new excitement, and too easily I can forget what it is I love about these places.
In the early days of being together, we spent all our spare time outdoors. Both keen birders — well, Espen, a professional ecologist, and me, following him, falling in love with the experience as I was falling in love with him. We would take every opportunity to escape to the hills, go in search of wildlife and seek solace in the mountains. It was a tonic to our normal day to day lives. When we became self-employed, those trips became fewer and farther between. Other things competed for our time and attention.
Instead of sun, we encountered dark clouds and drizzle when we arrived at Carn Ban Mor last night. But this morning, it’s dry, almost warm. It’s early, we are up before the sun, and it’s quiet. Though we can see mist cloaking the hilltops where we are headed.
The van door creaks irritably as we slide it closed. The central locking clicks reassuringly, and with one last look back, we start walking, our boots crunching the gravel car park as we head towards the hills.
Halfway up the hill we pause to take a breath and scan the habitat. I can hear my heart beating in my chest, pounding from the ascent, and I let it calm while we survey the scree below us. Moments earlier we’d caught a flash of white — not enough to convince us, but enough to make us stop. Could we hear the song? Was that a Ring ouzel?
Wheatears dart back and forth, teasing us. Flirting and courting and fending off rivals.
We carry on. Then we see it again. This time a better, clearer view. Definitely Ring ouzel. That’s a nice start to the day. We reminisce over past visits to this very same hill over the years, when we would spend agonising amounts of time trying to spot ring ouzel here. In our inexperience, we just weren’t sure this was the right habitat. We waited for what felt like hours to catch a glimpse. Today we are vindicated.
We walk onwards, upwards, following the path as it snakes up the side of the hill. We pass by a patch of snow and we check the altitude. 650m. Soon after we enter the mist.
This hike feels deliciously like old times. The old spark is back, my senses are alert. I want to see birds but our visibility is almost zero. The mist curls around us, swirling and cloaking us in silence. Shapes appeared and disappeared quickly – not enough time to discern if they were bird or boggy mound of heather.
But then we hear it.
A piercing, plaintive cry. Long and low. Melancholic. Evocative. Unmistakable.
Espen and I stop and crouch. We can’t see it, but we can hear it. A golden plover is calling somewhere nearby. We lie low in silence, waiting for it to call again so that we might be able to locate it and catch a glimpse.
There, again. Pee-uuuuuwwwwww.
Pleading, sorrowful. An apology?
It’s us who should apologise. Invading the upland moor, sneaking out of the mist and encroaching on to its habitat.
Carn Ban Mor in the mist, by Espen Helland
The mist swirls some more, momentarily revealing a lone bird, perched elegantly on a tussock. It calls again. We can just about make out its plumage – regal gold and black, summer breeding colours.
Golden plover. Pluvialis apricaria. A small bird with a lot of character. This bird is significant to us – I’d forgotten until a bit later that day, but years ago Espen named his ecology consultancy Heilo, the Norwegian name for the species. Whenever we see a golden plover now, I think we both whisper knowingly to ourselves, heilo. A reminder of the good old times.
The mist doesn’t lift until much later in the morning. Visibility was so poor on the exposed hilltop that we didn’t end up with any golden plover photographs – not even a record shot. We saw a few other birds during our walk, including a glorious white tailed sea eagle, and a ptarmigan finding shelter from the wind, nestled under a stone step. Later a dog walker must have flushed the ptarmigan, and I collect a single white feather as a memento.
Yet it’s the haunting call of the heilo that stays with me all day. And days later, even months later writing this, I still think of it.
Back in the day, the thrill of seeing a bird was everything. I was quite into ‘lists’ - keeping lists of birds I’d seen that year, in that location, or on that trip. Seeing them was the ultimate prize – but I would settle for hearing them – it just wasn’t as good. But the Easter walk, hearing the heilo through the mist, was a glorious reminder of what a full body experience bird watching can be. It’s so much more than just watching birds.
In Iceland, the return of the golden plover signals the beginning of the summer. Locals have a fond saying encapsulating what the golden plover means to them: ‘the sweet spring herald to sing away the snow.’ Watching out for the return to their summer breeding grounds is an annual tradition that even the children get involved in. The first golden plover song at the beginning of spring is a celebration that the whole nation looks forward to each year – the end of winter, and the start of a new season.
Photo by Ulrich Knoll on Unsplash
The day we saw them, they didn’t sing away the snow, nor the mist.
But hearing the golden plover that day, Easter Friday, marked a lesson for me in the power of a song, the audio experience. The golden plover song is unmistakable and unforgettable. To this day I can still hear it and when I hear it or even think of it, I’m transported back to that moment on the hill where we heard it through the mist – the first golden plover of the year.