From 9,000m up, the view of a seemingly infinite stretch of boreal forest gave rise to the realisation that our brilliant idea, hatched over a pint in the Green Dragon in Bungay, might not be so brilliant after all.
Meeting us at Helsinki airport, our guide and friend, Ossi Saarinen, quickly confirmed our doubts. “Most people go their whole lives here without ever seeing one,” he’d said. “I know you guys like a challenge, but finding a lynx is a bit… different.”
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We’d spent the past couple of years haunted by Ossi’s ethereal images of Eurasian lynx in the Finnish wilderness. We were desperate to see these cats for ourselves and had finally pinned down a two-week window to track them down. Cameras packed and expectations duly managed, we headed into the forest.
There’s something magical about the lynx. It’s as if it has stepped out of the pages of a storybook – a creature drawn from old tales and myth, slinking through the trees with effortless style.
The bears and wolves of these forests usually get the limelight, but being smaller and less present in popular culture, lynx carry a more mystical, ethereal quality.
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Like all cats, their demeanour is confident and assured, their movements deliberate, their appearance elegant. They are a quiet pinnacle of evolution.
Lynx are close in size to a labrador. No two coats are the same, ranging from soft greys to rusty browns and often patterned with spots. Indeed, lynx have the greatest coat variation of any wild cat.
A broad ruff of fur frames their golden-eyed faces, directing the faintest sounds of prey towards their distinctive tufted ears. A short, stubby tail completes their svelte silhouette.
‘The world’s hardest game of hide-and-seek’
Around 2,250 lynx roam the wilds of Finland but their vast territories, wide-ranging movements and absolute secrecy mean sighting one is nigh-on impossible.
More than 75 per cent of the country – an astonishing 23 million hectares – is cloaked in boreal forest, making this the most forested nation in Europe.
The stage was set for the world’s hardest game of hide-and-seek: searching for a tufty-eared needle in a boreal haystack.
It was late March and winter’s icy grip was loosening. After months of snow coverage, the ground was finally exposed, revealing the muted brown tones of the undergrowth.
The snowmelt had occurred unusually early this year, much to Ossi’s amused frustration.
“To find lynx, I would usually look for tracks in the snow, but there’s no snow. So, um, yeah…” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He seemed to relish this extra layer to the challenge.
We spent the first few days scouring the landscape for obvious trails and setting up remote cameras. With lynx expert Ossi’s advice in mind, we tried to ‘think like a lynx’ – choosing sites such as a rocky outcrop or a busy crossroads of animal tracks and trails where lynx had been seen previously.
Along the way, we found the droppings of the forest’s other mammals – raccoon dogs (a twisted scat), white-tailed deer (clusters of small pellets), roe deer (oval pellets) and moose (massive pellets).
Close encounters
Walking through the forest brought with it a charged, eerie awareness, a sensation you don’t find in places without predators. The thought that lynx could be close, watching unseen as we moved through their realm, was a reminder that this forest is theirs, not ours.
A red fox quietly slipped away into the undergrowth, its presence fleeting. The species is kept in check by lynx and we soon found evidence of this predatory behaviour: a skull, gleaming as a warning totem in the boggy ground.
“Another good way to find a lynx is to find a kill,” Ossi said. “Lynx hide their meals and spend four or five days feeding on them.”
The Eurasian lynx is a solitary carnivore. Its diet consists primarily of deer, supplemented by hares, rodents, birds and, occasionally, small predators such as red foxes, badgers and pine martens.
Without the stamina to exhaust its prey in a chase, lynx launch surprise attacks, concealing themselves until their targets venture close enough to strike.
The presence of lynx creates a ‘landscape of fear’ among prey species, hurrying deer along in the landscape and reducing the constant grazing pressure on regenerating trees. Even the scent of a lynx will prompt a deer to take flight.
Lynx are most active after dark, and we were kitted out with thermal binoculars for nighttime searches. Ossi sketched some representations of the heat ‘signatures’ we might see.
Hares, he warned, can conjure up all kinds of false hope – their ears give off almost no heat, so appear to melt away. When a hare sits upright, all that’s left is a compact, feline outline that can easily be mistaken for a lynx.
Ossi described, in great technical detail, how we’d know if a glowing blob was our quarry. “A lynx moves… well, like a cat.”
The days passed quickly as we continued to look out for well-used animal trails among an ocean of conifers. Scots pine, Norway spruce and birch dominated the woodland, which seemed to sport a different outfit each day. Sometimes, a misty cloak hung low until the wind whipped up and angry clouds rolled in.
Bird life was everywhere. By day, we were joined by parties of crested tits and goldcrests chattering to each other in the firs. Crossbills perched above us while the trumpeting calls of common cranes echoed across the bogs.
Red squirrels darted through the canopy, their fiery coats flashing as they leapt between pines. By night, tawny and ural owls swooped through clearings in search of rodents.
We even stumbled across mass migrations of toads, moving to the lakes to breed.
On one particularly clear evening, a magnificent curtain of green appeared as the Northern Lights rippled across the sky.
Visibility was excellent, so we scanned the edge of a large forest clearing with our binoculars. A determined-looking mammal was moving eagerly through the trees.
Our hearts raced as we confirmed that we had caught a glimpse of… a badger. Never mind.
“The lynx is a beautiful animal, there’s nothing quite like it,” said Ossi, as we took a break from the search.
“After seeing my first one, it was three years before I spotted another.” He had, until now, not mentioned this pertinent piece of information. Our hopes were starting to dwindle.
We still had our trail cameras, though, which we returned to check on day eight, full of anticipation. Once we’d waded through the footage of nervous deer and strutting cranes, a dog-sized, furry shape wandered into frame, prompting a sharp intake of breath.
Our excitement dissipated as we identified our find as a rotund and fluffy raccoon dog.
Following the trail
It was on the penultimate day of the trip that we finally had our breakthrough. We were trekking in a hilly section of forest punctuated by deer trails and came across an exposed rocky outcrop decorated with a large, dark mammal scat.
Packed with animal fur and neatly tapered at the end, it was clearly the work of a lynx. We’d had an inkling that this area could support lynx and our finding confirmed that one had passed through.
Lynx often leave scat in exposed locations such as this, as a way of marking their territory. By choosing this prominent spot, the lynx maximised the chance that another individual would detect it.
Scat carries strong chemical signals that reveal details such as sex and breeding condition, helping to communicate which individuals live in an area.
As midnight approached, we were scouring the tree-lined edges of a clearing when we noticed deer barking frantically. Something was awry, but after four hours of peering into the darkness, no large predator graced the scene.
We returned early the following morning to check the area and, after a short search, we found a major clue: a roe deer carcass. The evidence was telling – mud was churned up where the deer had been taken down, its body dragged into a small ditch and hidden carefully beneath birch leaves.
The predator had begun feeding on the deer’s haunches, another tell-tale sign that this was the work of a lynx. It was a tiny glimmer of hope – in venison form.
We camped out in the nearby forest that evening – far enough from the carcass to avoid any disturbance but close enough to spot our suspected killer. Hours passed. Perhaps the lynx had moved on. Its territory, after all, can span hundreds of square kilometres.
Then, out of the treeline, a glowing shape materialised. The triangular head, tufted ears, long legs and fluid, catlike movements were unmistakable through our thermal binoculars. Lynx.
Our hearts were beating in overdrive. We were both thinking the same thing, that surely nothing could ever top this, when two kittens padded into view.
A mother with young! She had almost certainly taken down the deer and now her kittens were following her to feed.
We watched in awe as the trio sauntered through the shadows, feeding, resting and lying together in a tight-knit huddle, offering a tender glimpse into their hidden world.
We could see the mother scent-marking rocks and the youngsters grooming each other. Captivated, we watched the family into the early hours of the morning, before they finally melted back into the forest.
One last sighting
Driving out of the wilderness the next evening, we reflected on what had been the trip of a lifetime. We were among the privileged few to have witnessed lynx in the wild, albeit with the restricted view offered by thermal binoculars.
Our reflections were interrupted when a local flagged us down from her car. With our highly limited understanding of Finnish, we listened as she spoke with Ossi.
She was speaking hurriedly, with a big smile on her face and to our surprise she uttered one word that we did recognise: ilves. The Finnish word for lynx.
We gestured our deepest thanks, along with some poor repetition of whatever Ossi was saying and, as the light drained from the sky, we hurried to a vantage point above the treeline.
We were greeted by the view of our dreams: a female lynx and her kitten, out in the open.
There was no need for equipment this time – we could see the cats clearly with our own eyes. In the setting sun, it was as if their secrecy had melted away.
The three of us watched on, making as little noise as possible. “Seeing two at once is very rare,” whispered Ossi, a grin spreading across his face.
The two cats strolled past, scanning the horizon with confidence, completely unfazed by our presence. It was a moment none of us will ever forget. In the final minutes, our quest was complete.
The animals had lived up to their reputation. Lynx truly are the ghosts of the boreal. Not dangerous, not menacing; just elusive and perfectly at home here.
To see them at all felt like a gift and a reminder that some mysteries are worth the chase.
