Tag Archives

siberian jay

Northern Finland: The magical winter-land (where nature still rules)

willow tit Finland
A very fluffy willow tit keeping warm in the snow. We have them in England too, but their numbers are in decline because of habitat reduction and nest stealing from other species of tit.

Kettu (my Finnish friend) and I took the cameras and some cheese to a fell, a hill that stood out above the flat landscape. I was assured that it was a fell, and that it ought be called a fell, and not a hill, although I would have used the word hill if I weren’t told otherwise.

We also took two pairs of snowshoes, a flask of tea, a large sausage (chopped in two), a cheese sandwich wrapped in foil and a couple of small bars of chocolate. We wore woollen socks, thermals and fleeces and layered up on the gloves. The temperature being somewhat chilly and the snow rather deep.

And then, at the bottom of this fell we got out of the car

The first thing you don’t realise about snow is how quiet it makes everything sound. Sat at my desk there’s a whirring of fans, an electric hum, and the rain, quiet but steadily drumming. Cars drive past, sloshing through the puddles, their engines engaging beyond the wall to climb the hill that leads away from the house. In the kitchen the Mother clanks china against china, the Father coughs, something somewhere beeps. Even as I write this, I’m firing my fingers against the keyboard, the thump down against the sensors in an unsteady beat, so loud you can hear it from the hallway.

But outside, on the edge of a fell, surrounded by a deep snow that hugs the trees tight, wrapping them up like Christmas presents, there’s a lullaby of silence. The strange thing is that you don’t always notice such silence. You stand there and everything feels fresh. The sunlight, low and bright casts huge shadows. But there’s so much snow that the light seems to come from all around.

And then you moved

When I stopped and listened I was amazed by the sound of the snow creaking under my boots. I’ve never heard snow behaving like this before. The snow in England is typically of the damp variety. It doesn’t squeak or moan. Occasionally a thin layer of ice might crunch, but not this noise. I was supposed to be quiet so that I didn’t frighten away the birds. I crouched, the layers of my waterproof trousers rubbing against each other, unsilently, and watched as a willow tit attacked s feeder hung from a nearby tree. Kettu scattered out some cheese, staging her shot, whilst I crunched around the trees, following the paths, in some sort of elated daydream.

Luckily, despite my incessant need to ask questions and the squeals of the snow as it compacted beneath my weight, the birds came fluttering by to say hello.

Siberian Jay
And this fluff-ball is a Siberian jay, not a creature you find in England.