Blackbird worth the high drama
Dusk was descending and the alluring calls of countless thrushes rippled over the murky chalk landscape.
Like the sirens of Greek mythology, the hoarse chacking of fieldfares and the soft whistles of redwings enticed me ever upwards to their hillside retreat.
There the grass, damp and freshly nibbled by sheep and rabbits, made for perfect foraging with juicy worms and grubs supplying much-needed energy for the birds’ pending flight north.
For some, the journey had begun in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, but now the undulating Chiltern Hills were a backdrop for their odyssey towards Scandinavian nesting grounds. Only 40-odd miles north of London, the Chilterns’ serene slopes are also a traditional haven for another migratory thrush to rest and recuperate.
Ring ouzels are known as mountain blackbirds, and a cursory glimpse reveals many similarities to our much-loved garden visitors. Their crescent-shape breast markings – dazzling white in males, a coffee colour in females – are the only visible difference. Behaviour and choice of habitat set them wider apart. Ouzels – the name derives from “osle”,
Old English for a blackbird – are shy, retiring birds, easily disturbed by humans and preferring windswept uplands to suburbia.
Each spring, a few handfuls consort with migrating fieldfares and redwings to encourage what has become my annual pilgrimage to catch sight of these special travellers. It means struggling up scrubby hillsides for a fleeting glimpse or, if lucky, a chance to fire off a few camera shots.
As the sun dipped and the fieldfares and redwings called loudly, I caught sight of a dashing male ring ouzel some hundred metres above my vantage point.
I climbed. The ouzel flitted. Each step upwards, the ouzel remained tantalisingly out of shot until finally it perched in a bare hawthorn. My camera finger pressed gratefully. My weary knees were less accommodating. I became stranded on a precipitous slope and pondered calling the emergency services.
Luckily, I stumbled across an old sheep path and worked my way, crab-like, back to ground level. The ouzel encounter, however, was worth every agonising step.
They are shy birds, preferring windswept uplands to suburbia