Jim Crumley brings attention to the plight of the wildcat
A rare glimpse of this elusive woodland native is well worth the wait as the stealthy Scottish wildcat stares extinction in the face
THERE was something in the woods. Just there, in the upper edge where the trees thin out, fan out, shrink, and start to lose heart as the demands nature makes on mountainsides gets too much for them to handle. We call it the tree line.
It was something blunt and low-to-the ground, the colours of the woodland, so that when it moved it was as if a piece of the woodland moved, threading a path among tree trunks, stepping over the roots.
Tree shadows helped to break everything up, confusing shapes. But something moved there. There was nothing like a clear view, but the thought that lodged was almost unthinkable.
An hour ago, and two or three hundred feet higher up the mountain, there were six ptarmigan where a wedge of yesterday’s half-hearted snow lingered among a bed of broken rocks. They came across the corrie on a flat contour that seemed from the first to have the snow as a destination.
As they approached, there was just enough sunlight to put their pale shadows on the snow, shadows that fluttered as the birds stalled on the air, shadows that all but vanished as the birds landed on them. Shadows were setting the scene of the hour, half-hearted shadows from a half-hearted sun.
Then the birds vanished. Ptarmigan, of all birds, can do that, especially when they are halfway through their autumn-into-winter moult, more snow-coloured than rock-coloured, and they pitch into a patch of mountainside that is briefly more snow than rock. Nature as conjuror: it is a wonderful trick.
In good binoculars the image brightened, and they were revealed again. In flight they were vivid and vital, seconds later they were snow and rock and rock-still. They crouched lower rather than take flight. They became more snow, more rock, less bird shape.
They are of the mountain. This is their belonging, their place on the map of the world, this mountain, these rocks, that snow. So pause, even in retreat from the cold and the fading afternoon November daylight, and admire their mountain-ness.
But in the pausing, in the turning to watch them land and disappear then reveal themselves again and then crouch, that half-glimpsed “something” in the edge of the wood had kept on moving, and may well have seen a flash of light in the binoculars’ lenses as they turned.
“Something moved there ... the thought that lodged was almost unthinkable”
For sure, it would have seen the ptarmigan flight and the landing and the sudden crouch, and because it could see such things in a way that the watcher with the binoculars could not, wherever it had gone it was analysing new information as it went. And might it also be interested in the ptarmigan as prey?
Being higher than the treetops helped. The view was unbroken along the entire upper edge of the wood, but it would only help if the “something” stayed up here. If it was interested in the ptarmigan, it just might.
Sit. Be still. Wait. Watch. Listen. Be mountainside. And so an hour passed, and the “something” of the woods failed to show.
A half-turn revealed the ptarmigan once more, well settled. Might they be there for the night?
The watcher’s dilemma was this. The “something” in the woods might still be there, being still in the edge of thicker trees, watching from cover. It had time on its side, all the rest of the day at its disposal, all the night. If it lives up here all year round, it has night eyes. The watcher needs to be off the mountain before dark.
Time for the watcher had become a factor. For the others, it was of no consequence at all. What changed was the arrival of a mountain hare. There was still some hill grass in the open edge of the wood where it rubbed shoulders with heather, the staple of the hare’s winter diet. The hare contoured across the mountainside among the very highest trees, pausing often to feed. Like the ptarmigan, it was most of the way towards its all-white winter coat, so it too was the shades of snow and rock.
Its presence produced no visible response in the ptarmigan. But suddenly there was a new movement directly downhill from the hare, and for the first time the binoculars were filled with a clear image of that “something”. It was a wildcat. Historically, there were wildcats here. But then historically there were wildcats all across the Highlands. Now they stare extinction in the face.
There is a grapevine. You hear things when you walk the same hills again and again, and there had been covert whispers about wildcats. But they had been absent for so many years that doubts had crowded out serious hopes. Long walks and longer stillnesses over many days had revealed nothing. But this particular something in the binoculars was unambiguously flesh and blood.
It advanced from the edge of the thicker trees into the first few yards of the open edge of the wood. Froze.
The mountain hare grazed on. The distance between them was perhaps 30 yards. But it was all uphill for the wildcat. And when it comes to running for your life, nothing suits a mountain hare better than “all uphill”.
The wildcat eased forward one impeccably camouflaged and utterly silent yard. This could take a while. The hare loped three or four strides from grass to heather, then abruptly sat back, ears tall, stiffened. There was a mutter of ptarmigan voices, like a fingernail running along the teeth of a plastic comb.
In the same instant the wildcat mobilised, the ptarmigan flew, and the hare was gone, straight up and flat out, an uphill avalanche of snow and rock.
The wildcat wandered off back into the trees. Questions: How long had the wildcat been there before the glasses found it? For how much longer had the ptarmigan been aware of it? Had the mountain hare been watching the wildcat all the time as it crossed the top of the wood, judging that the good feeding there was worth the risk, confident in its ability to outrun a wildcat up the mountainside? Or had it only been alerted when the ptarmigan gave voice?
One way or another, the result was a mountainside that felt suddenly empty after the heightened tension and outright joy of briefly sharing in the mountain-ness of its natives. It is, of course, quite a thing to spend some time
at close quarters with six ptarmigan, a mountain hare and a wildcat, then watch them all galvanise in response to a particular set of circumstances, and in such different ways. There is no growing accustomed to such moments.
I am often told by strangers that I appear to see so much more wildlife than they do, and they wonder why that is. The reality is that when it comes to watching wildlife, what you get out of it is in direct proportion to what you put into it.
It has been a long time now since I set out alone to climb a mountain with the ambition of getting to the top. Encounters like the one I just described have become the
“I have never spent a day on a mountain wiser without coming down a little”
summits of my ambition. Almost always, they involve long periods of stillness.
There is also this: I don’t write about the innumerable days when nothing at all happens, at least nothing in the way of wildlife. But there is always the mountain itself, and you can always watch and listen to that; I have never spent a day on a mountain without coming down a little wiser.
Then one day, perhaps months, perhaps years later, you will remember that old mountain day and it will tell you something that is appropriate to where you are and what you have seen on this new day. So when I sit down to write about the new day, I am better informed and have a better sense of the mountain, of mountain-ness.
In turn, that lets me write about the mountain’s natives more thoughtfully, and hopefully more persuasively. The process never ends.
The more often you go back, the more often you open yourself to nature in stillness, the better your chances of making an educated guess about what might happen next when something half-seen moves in the upper edge of a mountain wood. Watch. Wait.
Then something new begins.