A Walk with Wildlife

Remember those? Remember air blushing when living lungs exhaled, puddles lidded with ice that sparkled in the slow sunrise, how grass was sleepy and stiff and spiderwebs white, how good it was to sip hot chocolate under bright stars?

It feels like a lifetime ago, that world where cold crept in through my fingertips and snow played at what old Derbyshire dialect calls flinkering – drifting down in light abandon. But as a pause from the grinding dryness, I offer memories from earlier this year, from places aglow with better flames. Because if Europe is a body, then the Alps are its heart – a heartbeat pounding sky high, perhaps in wonder at this.

Fire lily, cool and bright. The glorious peaks of Hohe Tauern in Austria sport colour on their toes but hold snow in their hands, even in June, even where the mountain streams claw at it.

For humans, the Alps are science, scenery and sport. They are also water, military strategy and a museum of extraordinary things, from prehistoric passes to the broken ropes of early mountaineers. And for foxes? I have yet to actually meet one in the mountains, but I have often found their scat. Curiously, researchers have found that Alpine foxes might have “vertical” territories – that is, they adopt a cross section of altitude gradient to provide high meadow carrion in summer and forested shelter in winter.

A riddle of sheer rock can do many things to wildlife. Foxes may be mobile, but some winged residents are not. The mountain apollo Parnassius apollo exists in an incredible number of subspecies, some restricted to a single valley.

Butterflies in general have a feast in the Alpine flowers. This is one of the fritillaries, possibly Nickerl’s but I’m far from certain.

They share the skies with those who could dwarf them with a single feather. These mountains are swept over by Europe’s greatest raptors: golden eagle, griffon vulture, bearded vulture. The latter two have wingspans of nine feet, but they soar so high that even with a 600mm lens, they are just regal oblongs. Here instead is a statue perched more approachably on the ground.

They must feel cool, so far above the world.