Encounter birds of the Cairngorms
The high plateaux of the Cairngorms is a rugged place with a subarctic climate. But when spring sunshine melts most of the snow, this rocky upland bursts into life with rare alpine wildflowers, cold-loving birds and hardy mammals, writes Cairngorms ecologist Andrew Painting
On a fine spring day, there is no place more welcoming than the high, snowy plateaux of our largest mountain region: Am Monadh Ruadh (red hills), the Cairngorms. But when the wind gets up, the cloud comes down and the temperature plummets, there are few places more miserable.
The Cairngorms are less a range of peaks than one giant, ancient lump of pink granite. Over millions of years this lump has been eroded, scoured out by ice and cleaved into three by two mountain passes. It is topped by miles of flat plateaux. This is a place of extremes and contradictions, and the species that make this hostile place their home have found ways to use these contradictions to their advantage. If you can withstand the cold, then you will have little competition up here for resources. A subarctic highland surrounded by temperate lowlands, it is both a sanctuary and a prison for its cold-loving inhabitants.
To see this place for yourself, you’ll have to pass through a series of ‘ecotones’ – the ecologist’s word for the transitional zones between different biological communities – each less hospitable than the last.
Find a burn among the Caledonian pinewoods in the lower glens and follow it upwards. As you cross the treeline into the open ground, passing through a band of wind- and cold-stunted pines, you might spot reindeer. These semi-wild animals were brought to the Cairngorms in the 1950s as
an anthropological experiment. They liked it so much, they stayed.
Keep following the burn, into the heaths. Here, wind-clipped heather, blaeberry, cowberry and crowberry slink low to the ground. Bearberry sticks to the dry areas, while cloudberry, with its large, floppy white flowers, hides under heather. Snow-slicked burnside gravels burst with rarer plants: mountain sorrel, washed downstream from the highest hills, colonises bare patches, while starry saxifrage adds some glamour to proceedings.
Push higher, legs aching, and you’ll reach the corries. These glacial amphitheatres harbour small pockets of richer soils. Here, great woodrush and lemon-scented fern form tall herb communities that are generously sprinkled with goldenrod, globeflower and alpine saw-wort. Linger a while among the buzzing bumblebees in the blaeberry and you will be serenaded by singing ring ouzels and wheatears, while peregrines stare down from the cliffs above.
Those seeking botanical rarities may never make it to the plateau. Instead, they will find themselves distracted by the corrie walls. Here, where snow leaches precious
“Snow-slicked gravels burst with rarer plants: mountain sorrel and starry saxifrage”
nutrients out of base-poor granite, grow gems: alpine willowherb, alpine speedwell, Arctic mouse-ear. Hardy plants usually found near the sea also make a living here, such as roseroot, scurvygrass and thrift. Rare montane willows cling to cliff-edges and steep burnsides. Once almost lost due to high levels of grazing, these shrubs are now making a tentative return, thanks to the efforts of dedicated conservationists.
CLIMB TO THE LONELY HEIGHTS
Ignore these distractions, if you can, and you will top out on to the roof of Scotland, over 1,000 metres high. Here, at the source of your burn, you might find yourself at a snow patch. In most years, the Cairngorms holds its snow all year round, in small patches that generate their own miniature ecosystems. As the snows melt, they reveal vivid carpets of greens, reds and yellows. This mass of mosses and liverworts is comprised of species that cannot survive anywhere else. They are joined by remarkably beautiful flowers: dwarf cornel, monochrome, elegant; marsh marigold, bright yellow, vivacious. Dotterels pick at the icy edges for insects.
The plateau stretches out into the distance, shimmering in the haze. Up here only the smallest flecks of soil accumulate around windswept runnels, and plants