You are welcome to join me on this fourteenth of a series of articles taking a look back over my shoulder at some sightings that have not only delighted us but startled and surprised us.
I will begin with a confession. The experiences I am about to share with you were viewed, not through a Zeiss, but my very first binoculars, a 1971 Swift Audubon 8.5x44 MkII. These Porro-prism binoculars did not stay with me for long, and neither did Troubadoris’s Swift Saratogas, as they were huge and took up too much storage space in the panniers that were the holiday luggage space on our Honda motorcycle.
Memorable experiences are memorable for many different reasons but it is arguable that one of the most powerful factors that burns an experience into your memory is when that experience is the first of its kind.
Looking back to our very first holiday together in 1971 we enjoyed the stunning scenery of the Lake District of England. We stayed in hotel called The Dower House (which is still doing business today) near Ambleside for a week and thoroughly enjoyed roaming around the Lake District which wasn’t quite so overrun with tourists as it is today.
We went for a walk along the nearby road each day after dinner and enjoyed the sounds of evening as the mists rose up from the valley. On one of these evenings the sun peeped through some thin cloud and a delicate shade of pink crept through the mist and over the sheep-meadows creating a fairy-tale landscape of peace and tranquillity. It was precisely at this point that a curlew flew up in a curve from the rough grazing behind us and began a gentle gliding descent towards the sheep below while its bubbling-burbling song poured out over the landscape like a hymn to the joys of nature. It was like a scene from a movie but even better because it was reality and we were standing, breathless, in the middle of it, simply hypnotised by the magic of hearing a curlew for the first time. We watched the curlew rising, singing and descending for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than 15 or 20 minutes and when it glided away and silence fell we began walking back to our hotel. But there was more to come.
On arriving there we felt that we couldn’t just go inside straightaway, we had to take one last look down the sheep-meadow, and it was then that we saw a ghostly shape flitting and gliding over the meadow. It was a Barn Owl, our very first sight of one, and we felt we could almost see how silent was its flight. It flew low over and even among the sheep and although one or two lifted their heads to look at it, they all continued calmly grazing. After a while the light had reduced so much that we could barely make out this ethereal visitor and eventually it disappeared into the woods and we reluctantly went indoors.
It is hard to put into words how magical these experiences were but I am certain that they sowed the seeds of our fascination with all aspects of nature and especially with the behaviour of creatures we see.
If the sightings of the Curlew and Barn Owl were suffused with a gentle tranquillity, our first sighting, or rather, first hearing, of a Snipe over its breeding ground was absolutely shocking. This was in 1973 on the island of Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland and it was our very first visit to the Western Isles. In those days before the internet most of our explorations were hopeful ventures guided by Ordnance Survey maps and on the day in question we had hiked over moorland for an hour to a group of lochans in the hope of seeing Red-throated Divers. On this occasion we were diverted by the boggy terrain and ended up near a much larger loch and were excited to see a Black-throated Diver there. We were so thrilled by this unexpected encounter that we were not paying attention to what was happening around us, so it was a shock when a dark shape seemed to pass over our heads like a missile making the most incredible droning noise. We ducked down in case the missile returned but stood up when we heard the noise start again, but this time it was quite high in the sky above us. We tracked down the source of the noise, and its shape, especially with its long bill, identified it as a Snipe, and the amazing sound it made was the famous ‘drumming’ noise made by the vibration of its outer tail feathers. Why it strafed us at close range and had us diving for cover, we will never know, but I suspect it was simply curious about us and so included us in its aerial display over its breeding ground. Even the birds in Scotland have a sense of humour, apparently.
Lee
I will begin with a confession. The experiences I am about to share with you were viewed, not through a Zeiss, but my very first binoculars, a 1971 Swift Audubon 8.5x44 MkII. These Porro-prism binoculars did not stay with me for long, and neither did Troubadoris’s Swift Saratogas, as they were huge and took up too much storage space in the panniers that were the holiday luggage space on our Honda motorcycle.
Memorable experiences are memorable for many different reasons but it is arguable that one of the most powerful factors that burns an experience into your memory is when that experience is the first of its kind.
Looking back to our very first holiday together in 1971 we enjoyed the stunning scenery of the Lake District of England. We stayed in hotel called The Dower House (which is still doing business today) near Ambleside for a week and thoroughly enjoyed roaming around the Lake District which wasn’t quite so overrun with tourists as it is today.
We went for a walk along the nearby road each day after dinner and enjoyed the sounds of evening as the mists rose up from the valley. On one of these evenings the sun peeped through some thin cloud and a delicate shade of pink crept through the mist and over the sheep-meadows creating a fairy-tale landscape of peace and tranquillity. It was precisely at this point that a curlew flew up in a curve from the rough grazing behind us and began a gentle gliding descent towards the sheep below while its bubbling-burbling song poured out over the landscape like a hymn to the joys of nature. It was like a scene from a movie but even better because it was reality and we were standing, breathless, in the middle of it, simply hypnotised by the magic of hearing a curlew for the first time. We watched the curlew rising, singing and descending for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than 15 or 20 minutes and when it glided away and silence fell we began walking back to our hotel. But there was more to come.
On arriving there we felt that we couldn’t just go inside straightaway, we had to take one last look down the sheep-meadow, and it was then that we saw a ghostly shape flitting and gliding over the meadow. It was a Barn Owl, our very first sight of one, and we felt we could almost see how silent was its flight. It flew low over and even among the sheep and although one or two lifted their heads to look at it, they all continued calmly grazing. After a while the light had reduced so much that we could barely make out this ethereal visitor and eventually it disappeared into the woods and we reluctantly went indoors.
It is hard to put into words how magical these experiences were but I am certain that they sowed the seeds of our fascination with all aspects of nature and especially with the behaviour of creatures we see.
If the sightings of the Curlew and Barn Owl were suffused with a gentle tranquillity, our first sighting, or rather, first hearing, of a Snipe over its breeding ground was absolutely shocking. This was in 1973 on the island of Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland and it was our very first visit to the Western Isles. In those days before the internet most of our explorations were hopeful ventures guided by Ordnance Survey maps and on the day in question we had hiked over moorland for an hour to a group of lochans in the hope of seeing Red-throated Divers. On this occasion we were diverted by the boggy terrain and ended up near a much larger loch and were excited to see a Black-throated Diver there. We were so thrilled by this unexpected encounter that we were not paying attention to what was happening around us, so it was a shock when a dark shape seemed to pass over our heads like a missile making the most incredible droning noise. We ducked down in case the missile returned but stood up when we heard the noise start again, but this time it was quite high in the sky above us. We tracked down the source of the noise, and its shape, especially with its long bill, identified it as a Snipe, and the amazing sound it made was the famous ‘drumming’ noise made by the vibration of its outer tail feathers. Why it strafed us at close range and had us diving for cover, we will never know, but I suspect it was simply curious about us and so included us in its aerial display over its breeding ground. Even the birds in Scotland have a sense of humour, apparently.
Lee
