Ah, it is so good to be home!

After our four month field trip in Turkey, Sweden and the UK, Sarah and I arrived back to our bush home last Wednesday evening. We were tired, but happy to be back in familiar surroundings.

We left one of the hottest summers on record in the UK, and arrived home to freezing cold nights. Our first morning dawned crisp and misty, with dew on every leaf, and the sun not coming through until mid morning.

Even at this very early point in the season, the birdsong is ebullient. This recording is of a mixed-species feeding flock moving through the forest on our first frosty morning home.

As we stood outside in the bush, breathing in the heady scent of eucalyptus, a small flock of Swift Parrots torpedoed out of the scrub past us. A lovely welcome home from these rare winter visitors!

No one could say that tens of thousands of seabirds breeding together on a small, rocky island would be anything but noisy. Raucous in fact.

Following on from Sarah’s recent posting of Puffins,

here is an audio recording from our visit to the Farne Islands.

Social living and limited space lead to some very vocal interactions between individuals, as birds return from feeding at sea to feed their young, and jostle among themselves throughout the day.

Nevertheless, their plaintive cries have an endearing quality and create a soundscape which is active and characterful.

On this recording you will hear Kittywakes (named after their “ke-ke-waeeek” calls, such as at 2.37), Guillemots (gruff, growling calls throughout), Sandwich Terns (“kerr-ink!” heard occasionally in flyby, such as 2.46), Arctic Terns (in the distance mainly) and Shags (occasional barking calls).

We set out from Seahouses, a small town on the east Northumberland coast. It was a sunny day with barely a puff of wind, which boded well for Andrew who was hoping to get some recordings.

Our small tug boat departed at 10am, and en route we observed Grey Seals lolling on the rocky outcrops amongst the kelp as the sea crashed and sprayed around them.

Grey seals in the surf

The smell from the islands hit us before we arrived, very strong and pungent. No complaints from me though, you have to take the good with the bad – no poop, no birds!

Once off the boat we parted ways, Andrew with the microphones and I with the camera and telephoto lens.

I have wanted to see puffins all my life. This bird has captured my imagination, they can look so sad and serious. Maybe it is their ‘clown-like’ face that gives them a sense of self-containment. Whatever it is, I have a great affection for them.

Unlike the other birds on the Islands, puffins are pretty much silent, but according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Atlantic puffin is “silent above ground, but in its breeding burrow makes a growling sound like a chainsaw buzzing”.

Puffins come to breed and raise their young on these islands during the spring, along with huge populations of Kittiwakes, Guillemots, Shags, Arctic Terns and Razorbills. By mid summer, they have departed the islands for their migration, and will be out at sea for the next nine months of the year.

So in a month the islands will be bird-free – we are here at the right time!

This last week, Sarah and I have spent at the small village of Drevdagen, in the highlands near the Norwegian border.

The upland taiga of Sweden is so beautiful – wild and desolate, yet delicate and ephemeral.

Woodlands of confers and birch form stands on the higher, more well-drained, rocky areas. These mature trees are many hundreds of years of age, their slow growth rate a response to cold climate and poor soils. Moraine boulders deposited during the last ice age lie here and there between the trees.

Between these woodland swathes are expanses of lowland peat bogs. They look easy and convenient just to walk across, but we soon realised these open glades to be completely waterlogged and sodden underfoot. Their surface is covered in a thick carpet of spongy mosses, lichens and prostrate plants, a micro-garden of fascinating colours, forms and textures. Negotiating these areas was like walking across a wet mattress.

Punctuating and winding through this landscape are broad lakes and streams, where we saw beavers swimming slowly in the early morning, and moose feeding among inundated grassbeds.

For much of the week, we have had rain and a cold wind blowing off the Norwegian highlands. However we’ve been privileged with a few still mornings, when we’ve been able to record a mixture of passerines (Redstarts, Spotted Flycatchers, Tree Pipits, Bramblings, Willow Warblers…) and waterbirds (Greenshank, Curlews, Ducks, Swans…).

This recording features a Redstart, often one of the first birds to begin calling in the early dawn twilight. On this occasion, a freezing wind was sighing through the conifers, while the Redstart gave its pleasant song from a high perch. Small groups of Siskins can be heard occasionally, calling as they fly overhead.

As an interesting inter-species comparison, we recorded a Black Redstart in Turkey, and it’s song features on our recording from Demerkazik Gorge, which we’ve posted in an earlier blog. The unusual ‘hissing’ sound that often precedes the Black Redstart’s song is absent from the European Redstart, but the pleasant, rippling quality of song they both have in common.

We are staying in a cottage that backs onto a long distance wilderness walking track that meanders its way through Sweden’s national parks and forests. We were rained in the first three mornings, but today I was up at 2am, and made my way along the track.

Forest in Drevdagen

You can imagine my childlike delight and joy to discover the landscape was inhabited by these creatures. I have no idea how they got there – but some imaginative and creative people have definitely had some fun. I don’t mind not knowing – I love the playful mystery of it all! Needless to say, I got totally distracted and spent the morning in search of tiny doorways, houses, ladders, watchful rocks and kept my eyes open for the occasional Gnome sighting – I hope you enjoy my playful and slightly silly photo blog.

Woodland Gnome

Off for his daily constitutional

Ever watchful for Snotgurglers

Fairy Tree

Ladybug

Beaver Rock

Forest Sprites

Scary monsters, supercreeps!

Oh no… captured by the Snotgurglers!

The moss man

Shy Sprite

Lovely Sprite

A Gnome at Home!

Driving out of Stockholm, our first impression of Sweden was of a landscape that seemed like a never-ending golf course.

That doesn’t sound very appreciative, does it? It is probably inspired by the mixture of woodlands and grassy fields, and the sense of a landscape tended with care for generations. Add in the quaint farmhouses with traditional red-stain wood buildings, and a proliferation of beautiful lakes, and Sweden is a very picturesque country.

After arriving here utterly exhausted from the Turkey leg of our field trip, we took a few days to recover, staying with our dear friends, Colin and Jackie. They’re an English couple who have recently retired to the town of Avesta, about 100km northwest of Stockholm.

I’ve known Colin for over 30 years, but this is the first time we’ve visited them in their new Swedish home. It came as a pleasant surprise to realise that they live in Dalarna, the Swedish Dales district, a gently undulating landscape of farmlands and woodlands. So we have been enjoying their hospitality and using their home as a base to explore the surrounding lakes and woodlands.

We’re here at the right time – spring is happening with great rapidity. Each day the foliage on the trees is noticeably denser than it was, and the deciduous woodlands are a vibrant green the likes of which we don’t see at home.

The birds are singing strongly too, but in that there is a small problem – they’re just not keeping decent hours.

Being nearly midsummer, and at this latitude, we are getting nearly 24 hours of daylight. Even at midnight it is not really dark, with a twilight of green-blue glowing across the northern horizon.

So after a brief quiescence, the birds are beginning their day around 2am. For us to get into the forests to record them in time, we are having to wake up around 12.30am, after trying to get to sleep around 6pm. Not only is this ruining our social life, we are feeling like we have permanent jetlag.

But its worth it, the dawn birdsong is rich and extended. This recording comes from our first morning out, and was made in mature Birch woodlands on the edge of a lake.

After two months of travelling through Turkey making nature recordings, our final morning in the forests turned out to be a wonderful culmination of all that we have experienced here – a lovely conclusion to our time in this fascinating country.

In the afternoon of the day before we were due back in Istanbul, we pulled off the motorway at the town of Bolu. Being only a few hundred kilometres east of the capital, it left us a manageable final day’s journey.

Despite being relatively close to such a metropolis, the countryside around Bolu is blanketed with forests. In the surrounding hills, a secluded lake is popular as a picnic, fishing and holiday spot, and nearby we found a family-run pension for the night. Hoping for some morning recording, we set off in the late afternoon to see if we could find a suitable location.

As we drove down a narrow, rural track leading to what promised to be a good area of forest, a dog shot out from a farmyard and gave chase, barking furiously.

I’ve written previously of our concern regarding Turkey’s fearsome sheepdogs, the Kangal. They’re big, intimidating and unpredictable. However the canine now trying to eat our tires was no Kangal, but a scrappy, Terrier-like object.

After 2 kilometres, the little animal had still not given up. Eventually I had to stop to inspect a dubious creek crossing. Necessitating getting out of the car, I was expecting a nip at my ankles, but instead the fearsome hound just wagged its tail before haunching down with an air of self-satisfaction. It seemed a faintly ridiculous end to our apprehension of Turkish dogs.

Once in the forest, the location we found was indeed beautiful, everything that one imagines of picture-perfect European woodlands. There were even a pair of cheery Bullfinches to greet us.

The next morning, I set up the microphones in the dark and captured this rich dawn chorus. By now, the spring season is well advanced, and the birdsong rich and diverse. I chose to record at the edge of a forest glade, with a bubbly stream flowing through it not far away.

Thrushes are prominently to be heard; Blackbirds and Song Thrushes. Also living in the glade and surrounding forest were Robins, Bullfinches, Serins, Greenfinches, Chaffinches, Wrens, Greenish Warblers, Chiffchaff, Grey Wagtails (which flitted among the river pebbles), and Common Rosefinches (the first time we’d come across these beautiful little birds). Many of their voices can be heard in this recording.

Before we’d come to Turkey, most of these European bird species were unknown to us. But over the last two months, we’ve come to recognise and get to know them quite well. So to find them all together in one place (plus the lovely Rosefinches), was a great way to finish off our time here.

It felt like a gathering of friends to wish us farewell.

Actually, we are already planning a future trip to Turkey. It has been a beautiful and fascinating country, with the most hospitable people. So we will indeed have friends to re-visit.

After many weeks of exploring Turkey’s forested and more wilderness landscapes, it came as a pleasant surprise for us to discover how rich in birdlife her agricultural landscapes were.

This is not the case in Australia, where birds found in our rural landscapes are recent colonisers, hardy adaptable species such as Galahs, Cockatoos and Magpies.

But in a land which was part of the ancient fertile crescent, the diverse birdlife we’ve found in farmland should not really be surprising. Birds in Turkey have had many thousands of years to adapt from native grasslands to exploit the grains and fields that mankind has nurtured.

The place we have been recording is in a wide valley, cultivated for many millennia. Indeed the ruins of the ancient Hitite capital city of Hattuşa lie on a hillside at the head of the valley, overlooking the well-tilled fields.

At first we thought this would be a problematic recording location, with tractors and other vehicle traffic being heard over a wide area. However after a little exploration, we came across a ‘hidden valley’ tucked into the hills, with a stream flanked by old orchards and dense thornscrub. Here we found Lesser Grey Shrikes, Orioles, Cuckoos, Corn Buntings, Lesser Whitethroats and a whole colony of Nightingales.

In the surrounding fields and hillsides were abundant Calandra Larks and Black-headed Buntings. The slopes were cultivated wherever the gradient would allow and left wildflowered and rocky otherwise.

It was on one of these hillsides that we spent a morning recording. The stream, and the songs of Orioles that kept territories along its banks, can be heard faintly from the valley below. Overhead Calandra Larks gave their twittery calls during pre-dawn songflights, and Black-headed Buntings sung from rocky perches.

During our time in Turkey, we have often found recording a good variety of birdsong difficult and perplexing. Forests where we anticipated symphonies of birdsong were eerily quiet, or we’d find birds singing heartily, only to realise we were hearing species found commonly throughout Europe.

At times like these we’d console ourselves with our antipodean ignorance (as in; we don’t know this place yet, we’ll find where the birds are with experience…), and the anticipation of finishing our trip on the Black Sea coast, an area with a variety of unusual species and dense primal forests.

Well, we’ve finally arrived at the Black Sea coast, and in terms of forest, it is everything we’d hoped it would be.

The coast and the mountain spine that runs behind it attracts abundant rainfall, and as we drove up into one of the many valleys that lead up into the range, we passed through a landscape devoted to tea plantations. Houses and small villages could be seen perched high on precipitous hill slopes, accessible only by tracks that must have been built for donkeys not vehicles.

Deeper into the valley, the tea plantations gave way to dense deciduous woodlands. Huge old trees clung on slopes, moss hung on everything, and the forest understory was dense and impenetrable – even if one could climb the slopes.

However we soon realised that the rainfall that gave rise to these wonderful forests was to create a difficulty in recording here. Every valley, no matter how minor, had a raging torrent of white water running through it, and the roar of rivers echoed everywhere. As evocative as this was to experience, the roar would obliterate any birdsong.

So our challenge was to find a recording spot away from the river, without following donkey tracks up the mountains.

Eventually we found ourselves high on a hillside above a lake, the only still water in the whole valley. Setting off well before dawn, we walked deep into the forest, following a barely discernible foot track in the dark. Traversing steep slopes and climbing granite outcrops, we eventually found a mossy shoulder of less steep ground, and set up to await the dawn birdsong.

The forest we were in was wonderful; old and dense, a mixture of deciduous and conifers. After the effort, the eventual dawn chorus was a mixed pleasure; disappointing because it consisted of common species rather than any unusual ones, but enjoyable because the combination of their voices was delightful.

Listen to the delicate, rippling cadences of Robins, the disyllabic calls of Coal Tits, and the insistent song of Wrens, as the ever-present river in the valley below forms a backdrop.

Those of you in the northern hemisphere who have endured a grueling winter will probably be over the novelty of snow. But for us Australians, it is great to be playing in the white stuff for the first time in many years.

We are currently in northeast Turkey, up near the Georgian border, on the snowline in the Pontic Alps. The snow is melting gradually, giving rise to the streams that grow into raging, white-water rivers further down the valleys. Here though, it is a trickle seeping out of the snow pack.

At this altitude, the few birds are either specialists, or adventurous individuals from the nearby coniferous forests. Wheatears are relatively common, feeding on the mossy ground left by the retreating snow. We’ve also seen Snowfinches and Crested Larks picking their way between snow and scree slopes. We’ve yet to see a Lammergeier, but Golden Eagles have been an impressive alternative.

On this recording you can hear the sounds of snowmelt, as a small stream flows out from under the snowpack. Nearby, a Wheatear or two feed and their delicate contact calls are audible.