Sitting with Ptarmigan

I have been surveying ptarmigan in the Cairngorms over the past week. Now is a good time to count them as the pairs are all formed, set in their territories, and the females are laying up. This is when they are most conspicuous, well they are never conspicuous, but less likely to not be seen. The males, above, sit on prominent rocks and the females spend much of the day feeding. I found this confiding pair, so I sat about 10 m from them as they went about their business.

They have now moulted out of their white winter plumage, the females are mottled brown and grey, and the males are mostly grey. Although there was fresh snow every day last week, they spent their time feeding on snow-free clumps of herbage and rested amongst rocks. So their colouring didn't expose them to predators. Nor to me except after watching for movement for a long time - about half an hour. They had probably been watching me and decided that I was no threat before they began moving, it was only then that I saw them.

The males spend most of their time watching over their hens as they feed. Watching for predators and chasing away rival males. There were males about a hundred metres either side of this pair, one had one hen and the other had two.

The only food plants not covered by snow were up on wind-swept ridges and the most abundant food in such places is crowberry, Empetrum nigrum. The hen picked the developing leaf and flower buds from the very tips of the shoots.

It's not only food that the hens need to make eggs. They also need water as they might lay 7-10 eggs, which is a lot of water volume, and the most readily available supply was the snow lying all around. So this hen was eating snow.

After about twenty minutes, the hen stopped eating and clambered up into some rocks to rest. Always closely followed by the male. She was heavy at the rear, a sign that she had eggs forming inside her.

The pair settled down to rest, the hen to digest her meal, and the cock to sit alert on top of a nearby rock. His pie-bald spring plumage perfectly matching the rock and snow landscape.

Carn Ban Mor 
(Big white stony hilltop)

Time for a post on a wildplace.

My first week in Scotland 2019 has been a wild one with the wind constantly blowing from the north and bringing lots of snow to the mountains. Much of the wildlife was lying low, so I went for a walk up onto the hills, just for a look around. My route went into Glen Feshie, then up the hill track to Carn Ban Mor. The path goes up from Achlean and follows the ridge above the Allt Fhearnagan. The cascades, above and below, are where the burn runs through a stand of old pine woodland at Badan Mosach.

The view from half-way up the falls. All was quiet as snow was falling. There was only the sound of the water and soft phat of snowflakes melting onto the branches.

Near the summit ridge at c 1000m with the snowline lying about 700m.

When I reached the summit ridge, this was the view: the broad plateau of Braeriach and Einich Cairn completely covered with fresh snow, which would have been lying on top of extensive old snowbeds from the winter.

The summit cairn of Carn Ban Mor was the only feature on the ridge. All else was under the snow.

One long white silky landscape.

There were high clouds above, but the snow-filled clouds were mostly below or blowing across the ridge, obliterating the view now and then. That was when it all felt very very wild. Lovely.

I had a look for ptarmigan in the rocky flanks of the ridge, but didn't see any birds or signs of them. So I simply sat in the snow for a while and grabbed glimpses of the glen when the cloud broke, stalling the moment when I knew I had to go back down.

It's good to go wild now and then, and I'm so glad I did. Another wonderful day in the hills.