articles/Nature/regaleagles-page2

Regal Eagles - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

by Andy Astbury Published 01/04/2009

Our tickets from Schipol to Trondheim had been booked and paid for in late November 2008 by Ed, so imagine our panic when we arrived at gate 23 to find we were not registered on the flight! After some terse exchanges in Dutch - they certainly LOOKED terse from where I was standing, at any rate - we all got seats allocated, then we were put on a bus and ferried out to some obscure piece of hard-standing upon which sat our 'ride' - a KLM City Hopper - for a 2.5 hour flight - this wasn't going to be fun, thought I...

And it wasn't!

Still, we got there in the end, as did, miracle of miracles, our luggage, and we were met by our guide for the next six days, a big smiling Viking by the name of Ole Martin Dahle - the Eagle Man of Norway.

We were to be based in Lauvsnes, a pretty coastal village in Flatanger Kummune in the Nord Trondelag region which is a three-hour drive roughly north from Trondheim. Snow was everywhere and there was more and more of it as the journey progressed - I was cursing to myself about not bringing my D2Xs and 14-24mm - this place is a landscaper's 'Valhalla' for sure.

Towering pillars of blue ice cascading from ancient, igneous and metamorphic rock formations that disappear into the clouds - simply stunning, a true visual feast that yours truly never photographed once - what am I like!!

But it was eagles I had come here to photograph...at least that's what I'm telling myself!

After arriving in Lauvsnes, spending nearly 1000NKr on food and settling in to the wonderful accommodation that Ole Martin provides, we were briefed by him on what to expect the following day in the eagle hide up in the mountains at Smalielva, around 16kms to the south. We needed to be in the hide and totally set up for the day at least 30 minutes before the very first glimmer of daylight appeared, otherwise we would be spotted by numerous pairs of Accipiter eyes, so Ole arranged to pick us up at 5.30am the following morning.

The snow ploughs work constantly on the roads in this area but they leave more packed snow behind than it would take to bring the UK crashing to its knees in half an hour! But all vehicles in Norway seem to manage these conditions as if they didn't exist - it does give the firsttime visitor palpitations as the driver barrels the VW minibus into a blind left-hander at 40kph - especially in the pitch darkness! Indeed, the only thing that appears to instil a noticeable degree of driver caution is the sudden appearance of snowy moose tracks in the middle of the road!

Anyway, after a short walk up a hill (or in my case life-threatening scramble - 4 feet of snow and little legs don't mix well) the three of us were ensconced in the eagle hide by around 6.20am; with Ole saying he'd be back at 4.30pm we settled in for a ten-hour stint in the hide.

• Regal Eagles page 1
  
• Regal Eagles page 2
  
• Regal Eagles page 3
  
• Regal Eagles page 4
  

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