Preparation and Opportunity

What an amazing nest location the Dotterel had chosen: around 900 metres up on the Cairngorm massif and with a dizzy view over the Lairig Ghru. We only hope that the chicks have a good head for heights!

Following an ancient line of weakness in the granite, the Lairig Ghru , a mountain pass, with its origins in the last Ice Age, links Aviemore in the North with Braemar to the South. We stood overlooking the extensive debris flows, but have yet to walk in to the Lairig Ghru. The closest we have come was, during a previous visit to the area, when we walked through the Chalamain Gap, a boulder strewn ravine in nearby Glen More, where we caught glimpse of the only herd of Reindeer in Britain. Around fifty of these impressive Arctic mammals roam freely in the Cairngorm National Park.

A warming soup ‘n’ sarnies lunch was sufficient to re-energise our minds (and legs!) for what would be one heck of a long way back for a short cut on our return to the Ski Centre car park. With seemingly boundless reserves of energy, bordering manic proportions considering the truncated nature of our recent sleep patterns, we set off towards Cairn Lochan and a return to some of the most breathtaking scenery anywhere in the country.

We paused awhile to admire the vertical and horizontal nature of the granite joints at the cliff edge of Cairn Lochan before continuing on our merry (weary?) way along the headwall of Coire an t-Sneachda (Corrie of the Snow), at the end of which we faced a steep scramble up to the summit of Cairn Gorm. Negotiating a series of self-made switchbacks over the rocks and gravel proved to be a wise move and, in no time, having encountered little difficulty, we were back again on top of our little world. Cairn Gorm...twice in two days...deja vu!

En route down to the Ptarmigan Rest and our well-earned ride on the Cairn Gorm Mountain Railway, we thought to push our luck and attempt to relocate the pair of Ptarmigan that had accommodated us so well the previous day. After our fifteen minutes with the family of Dotterels prior to lunch, wildlife on the mountain had been at a premium, so our expectations weren’t high. Needless to say, the birds weren’t where we had found them the day before, but we didn’t have time to feel disconsolate about our luck changing, as another hen Ptarmigan was spotted on the other side of the path.

It was a ‘brown’ breeding-plumaged bird, quite different to the previous ‘grey’ pair and, what’s more, she had a brood of seven recently-hatched chicks in tow! For the umpteenth occasion on our trip to the Monadhliaths and Cairngorms we had been blessed with a huge stroke of good fortune. Yes, we thought that if we put in the leg work and climbed up to where these birds could be found, then we stood a good chance of seeing both Dotterel and Ptarmigan. Luck is, indeed, a crossroads where preparation and opportunity meet!

With Privileged Gaze

We had really caught the Cairngorm bug and a particularly virulent strain it was too! We wanted to make the very most of our week off-island and, with the weather remaining kind to our aspirations, we couldn’t resist another venture on to the slopes of Cairn Gorm. This time, though, we thought to avoid the ‘crowds’ by traversing part of the moss heath plateau between Cairn Gorm and Ben MacDui, a well-known area for nesting Dotterel. Our hopes were high after the success of the previous day, but we never could have imagined topping our experiences of the day before. You know what? We did!

Our idea of trying to avoid the ‘crowds’ was excellent in principle but poor in reality, as we found that other likeminds had thought along the same lines. It so happened that many of these walkers were birdwatchers, who were on the mountain for the same reason as ourselves, so we all benefited from each other’s observational skills. The Cairngorm plateau is a large, wide expanse and can take a bit of searching. It can also absorb a lot of people, although, unlike our days on Creag Meagaidh, we never quite had the feeling that we had the place to ourselves!

Our intention was to follow the path towards Lurcher’s Gully and to roam the tundra-like environs overlooking the Lairig Ghru, before skirting the imposing cliff edge of Cairn Lochan and heading back to the summit of Cairn Gorm (then that promised ride down on the funicular!) It had the making of a long, yet, hopefully, profitable day to remember. The weather is capricious, to say the least, in the mountains, even in June and, despite it remaining dry and sunny, the wind had picked up and was blowing from a very chilly, northerly direction. Unlike the day before, we weren’t going to get away with wearing t-shirts for long!

Stopping every so often to scan the boulders and moss heath for potential sightings of Ptarmigan and Dotterel, we had drawn a blank and were contemplating huddling behind a small cairn to find some shelter from the cold wind, in order to have lunch. Then, as if out of nowhere, there it was, a male Dotterel! On seeing us, had it slipped off its nest unnoticed? We edged closer and closer, until we were at a discreet enough distance to view the bird well without disturbing it. Only then did we realise that this bird was tending three chicks, sufficiently small to have only recently hatched. It was difficult to curtail our excitement, but we did, and spent some fifteen minutes watching in wonder at a safe distance and with a privileged gaze.

It wasn’t that long ago that the British population of these role reversal (the dowdier-plumaged male undertakes the incubation duties and the caring for the young) mountain plovers was thought to be only 100 pairs. Recent studies have shown this figure to be nearer to 900 pairs in some years, but there can be considerable movement between breeding hills in Scotland and...Norway! Birds that have failed in their initial attempt to breed on Scottish mountains have been known to lay a replacement clutch in nests, not on an adjacent hill in Scotland, but across the North Sea in the Norwegian mountains.

Mull Magic in the Cairngorms

After our close encounters of the Ptarmigan kind, we rather elatedly picked out a granite slab on which to park up and have lunch in the sun-soaked, rarified atmosphere of the Cairn Gorm summit. Talk about feeling on top of the world! At that moment, there really was nowhere on this Earth that we would rather have been. Despite its popularity, the top of Cairn Gorm is a truly fascinating and spectacular place and we sat awe-struck by the majesty of the mountain scenery that was unfolding in front of our eyes.

To the immediate South, the dark shadows of the dramatic, ice-eroded cliffs of Stacan Dubha and Carn Etchachan stood prominent, with Loch Etchachan beyond. At 3,025 feet, this is the highest water body of any real size in the whole of Britain and remains frozen for nearly six months every year! This was a really wild, rugged and truly inspiring landscape which was calling out to us and, no doubt, the subject of a future adventure.

Over our shoulders and a little way to the North-East lay the tourist destination of Aviemore, beyond Loch Morlich and the wonderful, aromatic remnant Scots Pine woodlands of Rothiemurchus, with their understory of juniper and blaeberry. We had explored the native pine forests around Glen More and Loch an Eilean during a previous late Summer visit and have retained such fond memories that tell us that we will do it all again sometime...soon!

We could have chosen the easy option and a ride back down the mountain on the funicular railway, but our adrenalin was still pumping strongly after our chance meeting with the Ptarmigan, so we decided on the walk back to the car park. Cairn Gorm mountain is the most popular visitor attraction in the Cairngorms National Park and the volume of human traffic visiting the area outwith the skiing season, means that a Visitor Management System is in operation. This helps protect the summit area from erosion and its wildlife from unnecessary disturbance. Those who wish to ascend the mountain in Summer on the Cairn Gorm Railway are unable to access the wider summit area and have to return to the car park on the funicular. The 2 kilometre journey lasts only 8 minutes, but sounded like a whole lot of fun, so we decided that next time we would give it a go. Little did we realise that the next time would be the next day!!!

Back at the car park, after yet another day that words just couldn’t possibly describe, we found it difficult to take in that we had been watching Ptarmigan in t-shirt weather on top of the 6th highest mountain in Britain. Incredible when we recall that we were stood in the same car park less than four months previous watching a flock of Snow Buntings fly around the feet of skiers during the most severe Winter in living memory!

On Top of the World in a T-Shirt!

Undeterred and buoyed by the excitement of our time spent in the Monadhliaths, we now turned our attention to the Cairngorm massif, one of the most renowned and majestic of montane landscapes in the British Isles. A rather static looking cloud base had draped itself over the shoulders of Cairn Gorm (4,084 feet) on the day that we chose to walk to the top of Britain’s sixth highest mountain. However, we decided to trust the weather forecast and set off up the initially steep climb from the Ski Centre car park, hopeful that the sun was going to burn through the thin veil of cloud by the time we ventured nearer to the summit. And, as if by (Mull) magic, that’s exactly what did happen, with the last wisps of cloud dissipating in time for a lunch rendezvous that left us, quite literally, on top of the world!

Thousands upon thousands of people appear to want their little bit of the Cairngorms and arrive each year to walk, climb, ski...and birdwatch! This can put a whole lot of unwanted pressure on an already fragile environment, jam-packed with some of the most magnificent scenery in Scotland (outside of the Isle of Mull!) and of enormous importance for nature conservation.

Pink or red granite is the bed rock which has been shaped by monumental natural forces over hundreds of millions of years to form the present day Cairngorm mountains. The extreme climatic conditions that prevail on Cairn Gorm continue to shape the contours of this amazing landscape and influence the unique wildlife that resides there. Thin, poorly developed, acidic soils are common and, consequently, a highly specialised lower plant community of mosses and lichens exists in the Cairngorms. We found rather few plants in flower as we made our way up the mountain, but one that we did encounter was rather special. The Trailing Azalea is a mini-shrub that was festooned with a mass of beautiful pink flowers. Carpeting the gaps between the outcrops of granite boulders, it is well-adapted to the fierce winds and bitingly low temperatures that are often a feature of Cairn Gorm.

Late lying snow is not unusual near the summit of Cairn Gorm in mid-June, although we must have cut rather incongruous figures as we trudged through the snow in our t-shirts. The temperature was in the mid-50’s Fahrenheit and with little or no wind to mention it felt positively balmy at 3,700 feet! As predicted by our friends at the Met Office, the cloud on the tops really was ephemeral in nature and, by the time we had the weather station and summit cairn in our sights, it was sunshine and blue skies all the way.

We call the Ptarmigan Mull’s mythical white grouse, as the island appears to have little more than a relic population of this peculiar bird of the high tops and, try as we have, we never ever see them! With a British population of around 10,000 pairs they are not uncommon, it’s just that their choice of montane habitat rather restricts the opportunities that most birdwatchers have of seeing them on a regular basis. We didn’t think that a walk up the tourist track to the top of Cairn Gorm offered us the best chance to get to grips with this fabled bird, yet how wrong we were to be proved!

Close to the summit and even closer to the path, we saw an unmistakable head and neck sticking up between the cold, grey lichen boulders. Excitement took over and trying to keep our binoculars steady proved difficult, as we revelled in these views of a hen bird, still in what looked like the grey and white plumage of Spring. For the next 20 minutes, if not more, we were treated to the most amazing close-up views of a pair of these magical birds. The delicate grey, black and white plumage could not have been better camouflaged, as the birds fed among the similarly coloured rocks, barely 20 metres ahead of us. All this and we hadn’t even had our lunch yet!

Wild Mountain Time

The mid-Summer nights at Laggan never seemed to get truly dark and the still of night was forever being punctured by the noise of farm animals and breeding waders that were nesting in the rough pasture. A fitful sleep is never the best preparation for anything, let alone the prospect of a full day’s walking and watching on Creag Meagaidh, yet we shared the concerns of the wheezing Lapwings and irked Oystercatchers, as we knew that they had youngsters to protect from the jaws of hungry foxes.

With the weather set fair, we readied ourselves for a marathon day out in a wild, beautiful and rugged, yet readily accessible, part of our Highland heritage, where we were to enjoy a mosaic of upland and montane habitats on a truly marvellous mountain. As aesthetes, we rarely target individual species, whether it be bird, plant or animal, forever content to appreciate a representative slice of what an area has to offer. However, we had come to the Monadhliah mountains and Cairngorms hoping to catch up with two birds that are decidedly rare on the Isle of Mull: Dotterel and Ptarmigan.

Extending from the shore of freshwater Loch Laggan, with its incongruous golden sandy beach, to the wide, near summit, plateau of rock and wooly-fringe moss heath, the Creag Meagaidh complex is one of the most diverse and thus important upland environments in the country. Rather than retrace our steps of the previous day, we decided to tackle the mountain from an alternative route along the Moy burn. Although, quite literally, an uphill struggle at times, the hardest part was accessing the ridge that was to lead us all the way to the summit cairn of ‘Craig Maggie’. Any reluctance in our legs, however, gave way to unbridled exuberance when, after a re-energising lunch, we found ourselves alone on our very own private mountain for the day.

Dotted along the path, which cuts through dwarf shrub heaths of blaeberry, crowberry and cross-leaved heath, are miniature forests of clubmosses. It is not difficult to imagine a scene, some 300 million years earlier, when giant clubmosses would have dominated the Earth’s vegetation. During the Carboniferous period of our geological past, such primeval forests would have attained heights of up to 100 feet. Today, these non-flowering plants are much more vertically challenged, but that doesn’t take anything away from their appeal.

With a branch system of upright, fertile stems, the Alpine Clubmoss had a distinctive look about it. The paler terminal spikes contain the spore-bearing organs. Another species of these erroneously named plants (they are not mosses, rather a primitive type of fern) that we came across was the Fir Clubmoss, which are often found growing below the zone in which true alpine plants occur. Interestingly, the dust from the spores of clubmosses were previously used as one of the earliest forms of baby powder, presumably in days before nappy rash was a problem!

The high altitude and extreme exposure to the elements make life difficult for those plants, birds and animals that make their home on the wide expanse of plateau that exists below the summit of Creag Meagaidh. Much of this area is covered in low growing woolly-fringe moss, interspersed with bare patches of loose rock and provides a perfect Summer retreat for one of Britain’s rarest and highly specialised breeding waders. Few birds live at such altitudes, so any strange and unfamiliar sounds are always worth investigating. As if on cue, a soft ‘pweet-pweet-pweet’ call could be heard breaking the silence of the near wind-less day and we were able to feast our eyes on our first ever Dotterel before completing the final ascent to the summit cairn with a noticeable spring in our step!

Monadhlaith Magic

Mull Magic has recently returned from a week- long trip to the Cairngorms National Park, where we spent two days walking and watching in the Monadhlaith mountains, before venturing on to the Cairngorm plateaux, in search of the unique and highly specialised wildlife that resides on the roof of Scotland in Summertime.

Our initial base was established at the Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve, near Loch Laggan, on the immediate periphery of the National Park. This area provided the setting for the popular BBC TV drama series ‘Monarch of the Glen’, where several Munro summits (mountains over 3,000 feet), a great whale-backed ridge and ice-forged scenery combine to provide the “complete mountain experience” for climbers, naturalists and walkers.

Creag Meagaidh, at 3,701 feet, is the 30th highest of Scotland’s 283 Munro’s and a strenuous walk, so we decided to build up our stamina with the ascent of a neighbouring mountain in the range to test our leg muscles and lung capacity first. All be it, our decision to climb Carn Liath, a mere hillock at only 3,300 feet, was both impromptu and unconventional. Having started out along the 3 mile footpath to view Coire Lochan, nestled in the corrie below the impressive cliffs of Coire Ardair, we suddenly felt the urge to scramble up the steep heather slopes for a better view of the surrounding area. Life would have been so much easier if we had only noticed the small cairn depicting the path up to the top. Needless to say, we didn’t make the same mistake on the way down!

Degraded by centuries of grazing by sheep and deer, the ancient woodland on the lower slopes of the nature reserve has been given a welcome and restorative boost by control measures employed by Scottish Natural Heritage in recent years. In damp areas, we were delighted to find several small colonies of the exquisite Globeflower, a large member of the buttercup family. Bright yellow petal-like sepals hide the nectaries contained within the true petals and are curved over the top of the flower in a sphere resembling a globe, hence its name.

The white, star-like flowers of Chickweed Wintergreen were commonly encountered on our walk and not just in the wooded lower reaches. As a woodland indicator, this attractive perennial is also found on acid moorland at Creag Meagaidh, suggesting that woods formerly clothed a more extensive area in the past that has since converted to open land. We noticed that some of the leaves were already showing a reddish tinge, ahead of assuming their characteristic copper hue of mid-Summer.

Another plant that we came across growing in the damp woods and on wet moorland was the Marsh Violet, whose pale lilac flowers are usually borne on stalks that emerge from large, kidney-shaped leaves. The lowest petal of this delicate flower is boldly suffused with darker veins and readily caught our eye as we made our way towards the top of our spur-of-the-moment Munro.

Blessed with fine walking weather, the views from the summit cairn of Carn Liath were impressive: to Loch Laggan, with the largest inland beach in Scotland, and Ardverikie House below; East to the Cairngorm massif and Grampian Mountains; and West to the ski centre at Aonach Mor, with Ben Nevis still holding on to the snow scars of Winter in mid-June - Brrrrr! Our appetites had been well and truly whetted for our week in one of Scotland’s last true wildernesses.

Drought on a Rain-swept Island

Many people were perplexed when Mull Magic started conveying to the wider world what tremendous weather the island has been enjoying. A lack of rainfall isn’t something that most would associate with the Isle of Mull, yet the island is starting to, quite literally, pay the price for the months of dry weather that have bamboozled and delighted in equal measure. Private water tanks may be running dangerously low, yet, thankfully, the marvellous wildlife experiences that we encounter on our walks show no sign of drying up. Even our local birdlife are getting in on the act of chilling out and soaking up some sunshine. This male Blackbird was oblivious to our approach as it sunbathed, the ultraviolet rays helping to convert the preen oil on the bird’s feathers in to valuable Vitamin D. Or, maybe, it was simply topping up its tan!

Cold-blooded insects, like butterflies, are most active during warm, sunny days, so it was no surprise when a Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary glided past, fast and low, before alighting on vegetation close to the path that we were walking along in North Mull. These orange and black butterflies are exceptionally attractive inhabitants of woodland clearings on the Isle of Mull, where it is far more likely to be encountered than its rarer relative, the Pearl-bordered Fritillary.

The same damp wooded areas are home at this time of year to the beautiful flowers of Water Avens, which we always stop to admire. Held on long stalks, the peach-infused petals are supported by purple sepals, which give this plant a certain aristocratic grace, as the flowers nod in the Summer breeze. The feathery seed heads are burr-like, which aids their distribution, as they often get caught in the coats of passing animals. This is a plant that we have a particular fondness for.

Considering the ‘arid’ conditions, we were surprised to come across our first Russula fungi of the season, tucked away in the woodland leaf litter. Past its best, the olive-green cap suggested that it was a variety of the Charcoal Burner, which although common and edible is a highly variable mushroom. Without wishing our lives away, it won’t be long before we will be back in these self-same North Mull woods searching for even greater culinary treats, in the delicious forms of Chanterelle and Horn of Plenty!

The emerging clusters of the funnel-shaped, pinkish-white flowers of Common Valerian are proving to be ‘heaven scent’ to hoverflies. Several large and very attractive Pellucid Hoverflies allowed us a very close approach. So much so, we were able to tell the sexes apart, just by looking at the insects’ eyes: males have larger compound eyes, which almost touch each other in the middle. The Pellucid Hoverfly is a bumblebee mimic and extremely visually aesthetic to us humans. Makes a change from some flies less than endearing habit of feeding by vomiting the contents of their stomach and sucking the liquid back up again. Yeuch!