Winter Wonders - a rather special day
23rd February 2010. One Day Like This Each Year’d See Me Right.
One of the things I like about birding is the total unpredictability. You can never tell how a day will turn out, or what you will, or will not see. I wasn’t really looking forward to today. It was bitterly cold and snowy, but I still had to do my second winter visit to my three tetrads around Crathie and Braemar. Where of course it would be even colder and snowier. But they had to be done by the end of the month, and the forecast was for renewed snow to come. So I girded my loins with my thermal underwear and set off up the valley.
It was minus 11°C when I left the car, and the ground was covered in hard packed snow. The trees were sagging under the weight of the snow on their branches, and there was no movement to be seen anywhere. On the plus side, there was not a breath of wind, and the sun was shining out of a deep blue sky. I set off up the road for the ten minute walk to the start of my first tetrad, boots squeaking on the snow. The start of the route took me through a steep sided wooded ravine, deep in shadow. Nothing stirred. I stopped every so often to look and listen, but there was not a bird to be seen. It wasn’t until further on, where the track emerged into sunlight, that I saw my first sign of life. Something fluttered away among the rocks and heather that grew under the old pines by the side of the track. Looked like a Chaffinch. I checked with the bins, but no, it was a Bullfinch, a brilliant male, all rosy pink, grey, black and white. And then there were more of them. A little flock of six kept flying ahead of me, and landing in the heather, and flying on again. Soon I could hear the odd faint call high up in the pines. It sounded like Coal Tits. I watched for movement. Something caught my eye. Not a Coal Tit, much better than that – a Goldcrest. I have an abundance of Coal Tits in the garden, but here was my first Goldcrest of the year. I had been beginning to think they had been unable to survive the long and bitter winter. Soon I saw a second one, and then the Coal Tits too. I was standing in a little patch of sunlight, the warmth welcome on my face.
I pressed on through shadowy forest, ever uphill, finally emerging onto open moorland. The transformation was sudden. From the cold stale frosty air, I moved into a bright sparkling sun drenched winter wonderland. No cloud sullied the brilliant blue of the sky, not even the faintest breath of wind stirred, and all around the snow plastered hills gleamed and glistened. Somewhere to my right, a Buzzard mewed. Then a Crow caa-ed, soon to be joined in a duet by another. By now I was in my second, adjoining tetrad. When I reached a point roughly in the middle of it, I found a convenient boulder to sit on, and stopped there for about twenty minutes. I could hear and see anything that moved. The bulk of Lochnagar towered up in front of me, the coire walls sheathed in snow and ice. Through the binoculars I could see an occasional person moving slowly across the plateau. As I sat there, face burning and bum freezing, I heard the distant call of a Red Grouse. Some small herds of Red Deer were scattered about on the hillsides, their scribbled lines of footprints wandering at random. But that was all there was. The silence was intense, almost palpable. I remembered the last time I had heard silence like that, on top of Bidean nam Bian, in Glencoe. That was a long time ago. I began to drift off, lost in memories.
Finally, I reckoned there was no point in staying any longer, and I set off back down along the snowy track. Back into the dark pinewood, out into the sunny spot, bigger now as the sun had climbed above the southern rim of the valley, and suddenly the chip-chip of Crossbills filled the air. I counted nine in the flock as they yo-yoed across from side to side of the valley. Back down among the houses where I had left the car, there was lots of activity. Blackbirds, tits, Chaffinches, and Robins were all busily bustling about. The temperature was by now a balmy minus 4°C. Time to move on to the next tetrad, further up the valley.
In sharp contrast to my morning’s work, this was much easier. A road runs along both sides of the Clunie, allowing me to cover the whole tetrad without leaving the car. Apart from one small pine plantation, it is all a steep open hillside. I drove very slowly round, twice, stopping as often as I could, to listen and scan for any birds. I had some lunch at the edge of the little plantation, serenaded by several Woodpigeons, and Coal Tits. A pair of crows rowed through the airspace between the steep sides of the valley. Then, on my second time alongside the almost completely ice covered river, I saw the unbelievable. A Dipper was standing on top of a small snow thatched boulder in mid stream. It was probably the same one as I had noted on my first winter visit, back in November. As I watched, it took off and arrowed away downstream, to land on the edge of an ice sheet, where it stood staring down into a little patch of running water. What an astonishing, tough little bird!
Job done, I carried on down towards Braemar (where there was lots of birdy comings and goings) and amazingly, there was another Dipper in midstream. Perhaps they were a pair. And just to complete the day, I spotted a third Dipper on the Dee, near Braemar Castle. I don’t think I have ever seen three separate Dippers in one day before. As I said, birding days can be so unpredictable.
