Bog Myrtle & Peat

This blog has fallen silent over the last few days on account of a trip to Finland. Once I have caught up with work again I will certainly make time to write in more detail about the vast, bear-infested taiga forest of Arctic Lapland, but for now I can’t resist a quick note about a chance discovery on the roadside near the northern town of Rovaniemi.

Finland is essentially a vast forest, but a few fields have been carefully carved into the wood here and there. When we arrived, most of this open ground had been cut and baled for silage, but there were a few larger arable fields south of the Arctic circle. By sheer chance, we happened to pass one of these rare open spaces which showed the remains of barley stubble. Some unfamiliar grey shapes were gathered in the far corner of this field, and my wife and I slowed down for a closer look from the car window. To my overwhelming delight, the binoculars soon revealed that these were cranes – a family group including red-headed juveniles and stunning adults in gorgeous black and white plumage.

I was not prepared for these birds, despite the fact that their luxuriant breeding displays form some of the most distinctive spectacles in wild Lapland. I had assumed that they would have migrated south by the time we arrived, so I wasn’t prepared for this chance encounter. The birds rose up and flew away as soon as we stopped the car – three hundred yards of open country lay between us, but these cranes seemed nervy and anxious to keep their distance. Revelling in the discovery and marvelling at the shape of the long-necked birds passing away over the forest, my wife and I decided to take the opportunity to pause for a walk in order to stretch our legs. A railway line formed the backdrop to the field, and we set off on a slow amble towards this landmark beneath the grey, overcast skies which would come to dominate our entire trip.

As we finally reached the raised embankment and peered over the rails, an extraordinary spectacle was laid out before us. We had only been able to see a small portion of the stubble field, and the main bulk of the open ground had lain out of sight beyond the train line. A hundred cranes and almost as many whooper swans rose up in a clattering mass of wings, alarmed by our sudden appearance close at hand. We had accidentally kicked a hornet’s nest, but the hornets were monstrous, bugling creatures which combined to make the sky vibrate.

We stood for a moment and absorbed the spectacle while a seemingly endless file of bramblings rose up from the field margins and rushed past at close range, disturbed by the clamour of the larger birds. A merlin seared over from the forest edge looking for an opportunity, and we beat a hasty retreat to the car, dizzily wide-eyed at our chance encounter.

The cranes continued to circle overhead for five minutes, then finally dropped back to land again once we had moved away again – perhaps this was a stop-over for their southerly migration, which takes them diagonally across Europe to Spain and Portugal for the winter. Their purring calls rang in our ears for hours, and this fortuitous blunder turned out to be one of the most spectacular moments of the entire trip.

I’m drawn to the Nordic countries because they have so much cross-over with Scotland. It helps me to understand how strange, exotic birds fit into their niche when I can see them sharing it with species I already know and recognise. At a push, I could find a stubble field full of whooper swans in Galloway, and there is an outside chance that I could also find brambling on the same day. But the cranes lifted that spectacle out of the ordinary and turned a fine autumnal scene into a moment of staggering grandeur.

Of course there is much more Finland to come on this blog…