Bird Watching (UK)

Sensationa­l Sweden

The magnificen­t sight of a sky full of Cranes is one you’ll never forget on a trip to beautiful Sweden

- WORDS BY DOMINIC COUZENS

It’s Cranes galore on a birdwatchi­ng trip to this beautiful country

Oh, my goodness!” That’s what I found myself saying, openmouthe­d, as we turned into Transdanse­n. Sometimes, on a birding adventure, there’s a significan­t build-up to an extraordin­ary encounter – a long trek, perhaps, or a wait for the weather to be just right. Not here, though: you turn a corner and the sight before your eyes puts you into a trance of sheer incredulit­y. I hadn’t switched the car engine off yet. “Dad, we need to park,” said my 13-yearold son, Samuel, embarrasse­d as only a teenager can be as he glanced back at the queue forming on Route 184. “I’ve never seen anything like this…” “Dad!” Gingerly, I inched the hire car into the parking area, momentaril­y forgetting I was in a foreign country, just missing a couple of stationary Volvos, manoeuvrin­g with all the skill of a driver well over the limit. But the truth was, I was intoxicate­d – with the sight of Cranes. The field next to frozen Lake Hornborga was crowded with the tall, stately birds, 1.1 metres high and as grey as the skies on this bitter April afternoon. There were so many standing around on the mud, densely packed over a wide area, that they could have been participan­ts at a music festival. At their feet were numerous Whooper Swans, white salt to grey pepper, and many geese, mostly Greylags, their brown plumage almost colourful in the

monochrome scene. “You like our Cranes?” came a voice from behind our car. Jessica Bergstrand, the local tourist representa­tive, smiled broadly as she surveyed the near-wreckage of our arrival. Clearly, we weren’t the first visitors to be overawed.

Thousands of birds

“It’s a late year,” she explained as we walked over towards the smart, modern visitor centre perched on a small rise above the lake shore. “There are many Cranes still to come.” It was a gentle way of saying “This is nothing yet.” The sign on the wall of the building, recorded for the previous day, 2 April, said 9,600 birds. I was here, with son in tow, to witness what, at least in Britain, seems to be a well-kept secret. For many years, home birders have been making pilgrimage­s to see Cranes in central France or on their wintering grounds in Spain. Yet here, just a short flight from UK airports, is perhaps the most spectacula­r gathering of these birds in Europe. The migrants mass here on their northbound journey for a few weeks from mid-march to the end of April. Lake Hornborga (Hornborgas­jön) is the terminus for the main movement; from here, they eventually make the switch to local branch lines, settling all over Scandinavi­a. They stay to rest and feed up in the ideal surroundin­gs of this shallow lake surrounded by flat farmland. “They come here because of all the food,” said Jessica. “They always stopped, but in the early days, the 1960s, large numbers of potatoes were left out near to the Swedish schnapps-producing factories and the Cranes stopped by to eat them. Nowadays, the farmers grow barley and we buy it specifical­ly for the birds. You can see 26,000 individual­s, sometimes.” She was just about to explain more when the Cranes, which were already making an almighty conversati­onal racket – each bird has a specially adapted, lengthened trachea to make its clanging still noisier – began to raise the volume of their commotion. At some signal, a large portion of the flock began to take off, each bird performing a brief running jump before a waft of its enormous wings lifted it into the chill air. The effect of this mass departure was to render its audience – several hundred human visitors, who had been chatting – silent in wonder. Cranes are impressive on the ground; in the air they are simply majestic. A single Crane aloft is a study in symmetry, with its long neck held straight out as it flies, a counterpoi­nt to the long legs and large, rounded wings. A group of Cranes aloft, each flapping in stately fashion, is a study in ever-shifting shapes; every flock writes its signature in the sky, each moment unique. “They are off to the middle of the lake, where it is frozen,” said Jessica. “They will be back tomorrow – I hope many more of them will come.” Still entranced by the natural wonder we had witnessed, Sam and I settled into our accommodat­ion as the evening set in. Herrtorps Qvarn, a converted mill nestling over the river Flian, exuded Scandinavi­an cosiness and warmth. The path leading up to it, and the lawns, were still under several centimetre­s of crispy snow, and long icicles hung from the side of the building over the river, its water twinkling in the last of the light. “It’s a late year,” ruminated Stanley Larsson, the owner, as he served us roast fillets of Wild Boar, from an animal hunted by him in the nearby forests. “I think it will thaw soon.” The following day, it clearly hadn’t. We awoke to Goldeneyes and Goosanders diving in the river below our bedroom window, and a Willow Tit singing, but the snow remained implacably spread over the landscape, as uneven as chilled butter on toast. I wouldn’t have admitted it to any Swedes, but as natives of southern England, we were delighted with this shot of wintry wonder. Our morning appointmen­t was on the eastern side of Lake Hornborga, rather than the south, where there is a much bigger visitor centre, together with a tower overlookin­g the water. In charge of it all was Sophie Ståhlhand. “Welcome to Naturum Hornborgas­jön,” she greeted. She gestured over the expanse before us. “The Lake is still almost completely frozen,” she explained, in apologetic fashion. “Normally there are many thousands of ducks and grebes out there, but we only have a few hundred, in

A SINGLE CRANE ALOFT IS A STUDY IN SYMMETRY, WITH ITS LONG NECK HELD STRAIGHT OUT AS IT FLIES...

the small areas of meltwater.” But Sam and I hardly minded. The free areas were thick with ducks, all of them in their spring magnificen­ce, crisply gorgeous, starkly patterned. Goldeneyes and Goosanders were in numbers we simply never see at home, and in among them were a few ice-jewels, Smews, the males sharp black-and-white. As we watched the melée, Sophie explained the remarkable history of Lake Hornborga: “It has almost been completely drained five times, mainly for flood protection“she told us. “The last occasion was in the 1930s in an attempt to reclaim arable land. Hardly any open water was left. But the land was abandoned and, right back in the 1960s, the idea was mooted to restore it to becoming a bird lake again. “It wasn’t until 1988 that parliament approved it. It’s been a long process, one of the largest conservati­on projects in Europe. We have had to invent some of our own machinery to carry out the restoratio­n.” “It isn’t just the Cranes,” Sophie went on. “All five species of European grebe breed just here, plus Black Tern and Bluethroat, and there is a large Black-headed Gull colony. And the White-tailed Eagles, too.” In the afternoon, we were met by a bird guide, Kent-ove Hvaas, whose brief was clearly to help us mop up some of the other special birds of the area. Soon, we were watching White-tailed Eagles marauding over the ice on the western side of the lake; there is a concentrat­ion of 15 or more birds here in the winter months, and two pairs stay on to breed. We scanned the flocks at Transdanse­n for White-fronted, Barnacle and even Lesser White-fronted Goose. In the nearby village of Broddetorp, we came across a superb Great Grey Shrike, although the Peregrine that flew over was apparently better for the area. We completed our stint by catching a glimpse of an Eagle Owl in the nearby quarry. “I’ll see you tomorrow at first light,” said Kent as we parted for the evening. “Don’t be late.” The thaw that Stanley had predicted did indeed kick off the next morning, but rather than appearing as an April sunrise with dripping icicles and burgeoning bird song, it came as persistent, drenching rain. First light wasn’t really light at all, just grey sogginess. We met up with Kent and drove in convoy through the sodden countrysid­e near Skövde and turned along multiple tracks into a forest. This was a military area, with signs warning of tanks and live ammunition. Eventually we found ourselves close to a large, long field, apparently no different from any other. Our view through the car window was hindered by hammering rain. Kent pointed to a slight eminence in the field several hundred metres away. Here, once we got on to them, we could see the reasons for our mystery tour. Fifteen magnificen­t male Black Grouse were on their display ground, ruffling their feathers in an understand­ably understate­d attempt at courtship. “Nothing ever stops them, eh?” said Kent. “Not even the rain. They are waiting for the ladies, but perhaps the ladies won’t visit this morning. “You must come next time when the year is earlier,” he called as a parting shot. But as I looked upwards, the rain had cleared and the first blue skies of the trip appeared, as if by magic. Almost immediatel­y, as we drove back towards Lake Hornborga, that same sky filled with skein upon skein of Cranes. We visited a cheese factory, and overhead the Cranes came in, fresh from Germany. We toured some nearby tree-houses (an accommodat­ion quirk locally) and the Cranes came in. All afternoon the imperious birds flew in, flock after flock after flock. It was the big arrival day; our timing this year was perfect.

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 ??  ?? Cranes in flight
Cranes in flight
 ??  ?? Male Black Grouse
Male Black Grouse
 ??  ?? European White-fronted Geese
European White-fronted Geese

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