Tartan, Patchwork, Mohican

Photo: Jo Sinclair

This time last year an arrow of golden plovers pointed me in the direction of the Cairngorms. I'm reminded now by the mini murmuration ( or dread) I see over local arable fields. In the evenings a flock of twenty birds flashes like a knife. Catching the light, the birds move as one and disappear on every turn. They are nervy in the last of the sun, the moment when the day is stoked in a final brief burst of bright. When they land they dissolve instantly in a camouflage of clay and chalk.

The collective noun for plovers is a deceit, but I think of golden plovers as a shimmer. I once pulled up for a lunch break at a sunny spot on a hill. A dread of golden plover wheeled and settled. On this occasion what they were dreading was a hailstorm.

Like snow buntings, ring ouzels, wheatears, and dotterels, golden plovers are birds of mountain and moorland. All are visitors that winter in East Anglia or pass through on their way north in spring. Wheatears perch on my roof, and the postman reported that a ring ouzel once came to stay. Dotterel Hall Farm, a few miles away, was traditionally a stop-off point for the eponymous plover that rarely appears in modern times.

Spring 2018, and I was one step ahead on the journey north. I'd seen an ad for a volunteer residency. I made an impulse decision and let coincidence lead me on. I passed a narrowboat named The Cairngorms, found a collection of pocket guide books in my village Oxfam, and let the fidgety golden plovers be my good omen. A month after the initial enquiry I made the 500 mile trip to live in the middle of the Caledonian pine forest.

In the book Landskipping by Anne Pavord the author describes an aversion to the flatlands of East Anglia. A chapter on Wells-next-the Sea is abruptly abandoned; she runs for the hills. The more you are hefted to the land the greater the culture shock. Born and raised in Cambridgeshire, I arrived in the forest in the black of night. I got lost of course; there were no landmarks among the infinite avenues of trees. Cambridgeshire is in the top three least wooded counties in England. I was charmed by my new home deep in Abernethy Forest, but as I waited for spring I found the walk to work oppressively dark and cold.

I went with a slight apprehension of mountains. I had to wait until April but climbed 810 metres up Meall a'Bhucaille into the mist. Cairngorm mountain was a clamber two foot deep in snow but I was cheating; I trod in other people's footsteps. At 1,097 feet I was greeted by a new tune and saw the tiny silhouette of a snow bunting perched on the apex of the Ptarmigan cafe.

In winter snow buntings peck their way along East Anglian shores. In Norfolk in November it seemed as if the colours of the Highlands had come south. The birds of scree and arctic tundra were sandy with a pinkish tinge, black and white and tawny, and all the colours of Holkham's grains of sand.

Another reminder of the Cairngorms since my return was the small, nondescript grebe I saw in the Fens. It hurtled by in a panic, swiftly followed by a kingfisher. My friend lives on a narrowboat and had a hunch this was not a variety she sees everyday. I was sceptical. My friend was laughing. 'It looks like a bouncing bomb'. Zooming in on my photo I slowly identified it as a slavonian grebe. Little escapes the attention of local birdwatchers; this bird in drab winter colours was the same one reported by Cambridgeshire Bird Club members at this very spot. Another north-south connection jogging my memory of Scotland. Now I was transported to a blue lochan in April where nationwide birder gossip betrayed breeding slavonian grebes. About thirty pairs breed in the UK, all in Scotland. I saw them, in fabulous summer plumage: ruby-eyes, black head and 'horns' like an orange mohican.

Photo: Jo Sinclair