Redstart song in the Scandinavian Taiga by Listening Earth

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.

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