The White Glen

North Craig - pastel sketch on paper

It is a real joy to be sketching high up in the company of Golden Eagles, when all around is coldly frozen and bound within the violet shadows cast by the standing giants of the Southern Cairngorm mountains. The shadows move slowly in time with the sweeping Sun and the whole mountain landscape turns into a living sun-dial reminding us of our transient place on Earth. 

Sketching today - photo Mike Groves

Tucked away in the Angus hills is a place that is rarely visited and maybe it is one of the smallest glens when compared to the grand glens that surround it. The White Glen was certainly white today with drifts of snow framing it against a blue, glowing blue sky upon which the gathering winter coveys of Red Grouse and Black Grouse flew and, unsettled by the glaring morning sunlight, the feeling that Spring had prematurely arrived no doubt fired up their passions.
The numerous Red Grouse uttered their strange song that is usually heard during territorial spats in Spring and the Blackcock, in a covey of twenty or more, crashed from their conifer roost onto the sunny hill-side to preen and perform dress rehearsal leking displays with puffed, white tails glinting in the light. The Mountain Hares were changing pelage from summer brown to winter white and whilst some had not started, others were in full Arctic gear with only black ear tips showing up on a back-drop of ice encrusted snow. Mentioning ears of hares, the Mountain Hare has shorter ears than the Brown Hare in order to minimise heat loss and it was an observation today that hares in white pelage kept to the snowy areas while those hares that were still brown kept to snow free peat hags and heathery, wind scoured ridges; obvious maybe but another piece in the jigsaw of evidence when it comes to Mountain Hares migrating locally to find suitable habitat conditions for survival. The cynic in me thinks that this deduction would have taken years of expensive, painstaking research for some university boffin to analyse and conclude.

Golden Eagle 

The Golden Eagle pair had already realised that the distribution in snow cover dictated what and where they would hunt. We find them spiralling together over a break in the hills that forms a sheltered saddle where a good population of Mountain Hares have settled out of the bitterly cold wind that, up on the mountain plateau, seems to come straight from the North Pole. We were in the company of this eagle pair most of the day from early morning until roosting time at dusk, one was a youngish female probably coming into adult status next year and the other was a fearless male that parted from his, now, boulder perching 'mate' to came over our heads to have a closer look at us. Most of our observations at the time concluded that this is an adult pair but, after I looked at photo evidence, one sported the remnants of the banded tail and small wing spots of a sub-adult bird. So the possibilities include a new pairing in the area or an adult escorting his off-spring on a hunting trip from a neighbouring territory; hope it's the pairing because they looked so 'close' and eventually headed off to roost together on a rocky face! 

Golden Eagle pair

After finishing a sketch afflicted with frozen finger tips, in fact so wooden dead that I cannot even feel the texture of the paper that I was rubbing the pastels onto, my numb pain dissolved with the excitement of a covey of Red Grouse jetting overhead in panic, wings slicing this way and that in their usual 'rock n roll' fashion. The reason for their desperate escape appears slowly from the chill, violet depths of our White Glen. The male eagle shadows the glen's snow cornice as he rises steadily towards us without concern, but there is no determination behind his pursuit as he sails past us, and the grouse, on rigid wings towards the calm shelter of a rocky face in the distance. We seem to be at one with the eagles, and they with us, because we, in our disturbing travels, reveal the very prey that they pursue and that is the magical, coat changing Mountain Hare.  

Adult male Golden Eagle 

At the head of the glen a couple of busy Ravens bid farewell to the day and a few Common Buzzards are settling to roost in the conifers near the keeper's house, their 'ki-meeow' calls pierce the settling frost that crunches the slates of the house as the freeze penetrates. Feathers and fur are being fluffed up to keep the cold out up on the hills and I can imagine the eagle pair on the rock face watching us as we disappear down the glen and as they finally bury heads under wings to survive the long hours of sub-zero chill, I remind myself that we have walked over a fairly intensive 'east-coast' shooting estate today. This glen estate is undergoing various invested changes and habitat diminishment, yet we have experienced a wealth of life that encompasses large raptors, a very healthy population of Red and Black Grouse and a good distribution of Mountain Hare and, whether the keeper likes it or not, a good few Red Fox tracks. Enough said, the conclusions are up to you.

Golden Eagle

I follow the Moon once again over the cold, white mountains that are such savage friends and peruse our destiny within nature's system, perchance to understand that Godly blue void that I stare into. We are such specks in this grand machine that forges kingdoms for life and then eventually erases them, formatting the mess conclusively, and likewise, as I scrub primitive pigment onto paper to create another excuse for artistic existence, it will remember that the other side of the ''paper' is fruitfully blank in anticipation of a new creation. 

Golden Eagle

I find a most magnificent view has been spoiled by the Drumderg wind-farm near Alyth. To cast your eyes over the rolling, flowing hills and then, abruptly, that delight is fouled by the vertical forest of white steel, whose rotors blades lazily turn with a disrespect for the stillness appreciated elsewhere. 

It is with a degree of puzzlement that I wonder why most of the current raptor persecution debate is focused on shooting estates as being the main cause for raptor deaths, whilst wind-farm related raptor deaths are seen as being somehow acceptable. I can only see the further devastation of large raptors in Scotland if more and more wind turbines are erected near mountainous territories. The eagles that we saw today will forage down to the area of turbines seen in the photo below and soar at the height of the rotor blades when hunting. Most wind-farm operators predict the deaths of at least two Golden Eagles during the operating life of twenty-five years for a fifteen-plus turbine scheme in a highland area, for example the Nathro Hill proposal. 

Time will tell, but the real legalised threat to large raptors is already here and condoned by government renewable energy targets; sounds a bit like smoking cigarettes, we know it will kill you but as long as money is made who cares. As Joni Mitchell's song BigYellow Taxi goes;

"Don't it always seem to go 

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone 

They paved paradise 

And put up a parking lot" 

The March of the Windfarms - Drumderg near Alyth.
How to spoil a good view.

Red Grouse

Blackcock

Mountain Hare,  winter pelage 

Moon over the White Glen - Astronauts in Nature

Towards Backwater

The White Glen

Golden Eagle in the White Glen

Notes;

All sketches and photos done on the day and are artist copyright.

Please be aware that it is illegal to disturb nesting eagles or other raptors and you may do so inadvertently in your journeys into the highlands. I do not recommend searching for any of the species mentioned in this blog because this may cause undue disturbance to them. With my knowledge of the areas described in this blog I can locate and observe protected species at a respectful distance usually from about 1000 metres for short periods of time only.

Eagle photos taken on zoom 50x - 100x.

Blackcock is a male Black Grouse, the female is called a Greyhen.

No map for conservation reasons.

Weather - wind direction north-westerly strong, snow 450m >clear and very cold in the plateau wind