Around 20 years ago, in the corridors of Novartis in Basel, four like-minded individuals (Mike Neale, Dick van Hees, Steve Skillman, and my good self) were drawn together into a birding group which Mike would later christen BBC (Birds, Beer and Chips).
Local BBC trips in Switzerland soon blossomed into overseas expeditions. This March, a planned trip to the Gambia became our first covid casualty - and since then momentum has ground to a halt. This is the time to reflect on past glories, before once again the world opens up to us.
In 2003, in the height of summer, BBC first went global with the vanguard expedition of Mike and myself to the Arctic Circle. We flew to Oulu, 170 km south of the Arctic and, after beers in the midnight sun amongst the student population, we drove north.
Reindeers (Rangifer tarandus) wander these lands in a circumpolar distribution. There are twelve subspecies of Reindeer - in Finland it is R. t. fennicus, the Finnish Forest Reindeer.
The forests showed us a number of local specialities. The Willow Grouse (
Lagopus lagopus) shares the geographical distribution of the Reindeer, but also occurs as far south as Britain. In winter it will become completely white, to blend in with the snow - whereas the Bristish subspecies
scotica (known as the Red Grouse) does not develop a full white winter coat, and only has white legs.
The Siberian Tit (Poecile cinctus) also has a circumpolar distribution in coniferous forests. It can be told apart from the Willow Tit, which is found all over Europe, by having a paler head (the subspecies in North America is known there as the Grey-headed Chickadee). This one is nesting in an old woodpecker hole.
Our guide told us he could take us to see the king bird of the forest - the Capercaillie (named after the Irish for 'horse of the woods'). Their main distribution is over Scandinavia and Russia, but isolated populations are found in mountain ranges over Europe - including Switzerland. They feed on forest berries. The females are quite modest grouse-like birds, but the males are much larger black beasts which can reach over 7 kg in weight. Males call in females to mate in what are known as leks (Swedish for 'play'), where they are very competitive. The male we found was sitting on the stump of wood he uses to stake his courtship territory, displaying by raising and fanning his tail and pointing his neck upwards.
On seeing us he moved forward in an act of confrontation.
Luckily our guide was a trained Capercaillie matador, and kept the beast at bay with majestic sweeps of a pine branch.
The main purpose of our trip was to see the owls of the arctic forest, and we saw five species. A Tengmalm's owl (Aegolius funereus) observed us from its nest box.
Through the trees we watched a Great Grey Owl (
Strix nebulosa) watching us. It is the world's largest owl by length.
We were taken to the nest of an Eagle Owl (
Bubo bubo), in a shelf of a rocky clearing.
As we drove further north, the trees cleared. On the lakes we saw Red-necked Phalaropes (Phalaropus lobatus) which breed in the arctic, and spend their winters in tropical seas. Their sex roles are reversed - the females are larger and more brightly coloured than males, and they pursue and fight over males. The males sit on the nest and raise the chicks, while the females may attempt to find another mate. Girl power!
The end of the road, the easternmost coast of Norway - further north than Iceland and Alaska, and closer to the north pole than to Scotland. We laid on our backs on the grass, looking up at the cliffs, and watched the puffins flying out to sea over our heads and return with sand eels. And the final act - a great black-backed gull, cruising past the cliff, grabbed a puffin out of the air and took it to ground to eat. Nature, red in tooth and claw.
We saw 125 species of birds on that trip, including other arctic specialities such as Red-throated and Black throated Divers, Whooper Swan, Steller's Eider, Long-tailed Duck, Velvet Scoter, Red-breasted Merganser, Rough-legged Buzzard, Gyrfalcon, Temminck's Stint, Arctic Skua, Long-tailed Skua and Pomarine Skua, Brünnich's Guillemot, Hawk Owl, Red-throated Pipit, Red-flanked Bluetail, Greenish Warbler, Little Bunting, Lapland Bunting, Snow Bunting and Pine Grosbeak.
The BBC roadshow had begun!
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