What brought me to Sweden was an image from a BBC wildlife documentary, in which a ghost came gliding out of the shadows, heading straight for the camera until its face almost filled the screen and its staring eyes seemed to be looking deep into my soul.
It was a great grey owl, rated as one of the world’s top five must-see birds, and Naturetrek, the Hampshire-based ecotourism company whose tour I had joined, knew exactly where I might find it.
In May the land was awakening after the long Scandinavian winter; the birch trees were a froth of green. The great northern migration of Arctic waders was in full swing, and as the breeding season got under way the valleys echoed to the bugling cries of cranes, signalling the time when great grey owls emerge from the forests to hunt in the lengthening evenings.
Our destination was the Black River Valley, the southernmost breeding area of these enigmatic birds. It lies in Vastmanland, on the fringes of the great boreal forests whose fathomless stands of sombre pines fall like a cloak around the shoulders of the world, and is home to six other owl species, including Ural owls, eagle owls and pygmy owls – feathery goblins scarcely bigger than a greenfinch.
Within 15 minutes of leaving Stockholm we were picnicking beside a vast Scandinavian fen, where Temminck’s stints – the tiniest of waders – scuttled like clockwork mice around the lakeshore and a white-tailed eagle sailed on 7ft wings over endless acres of whispering reeds.
Central Sweden was a revelation, low-lying for the most part and quite different from our own chequerboard countryside, with wooden farmsteads painted oxblood red and endless walls of forest. More than 65 per cent of it is covered in trees, and the rest is a mosaic of lakes and marshes and open fields in which granite boulders dumped by Ice Age glaciers lay in the grass like sleeping elephants.
For two hours we drove north, past roadside ditches thick with kingcups and forest edges where wood anemones bloomed like fresh-fallen snow. Our base was the Satra Brunn, near Sala, a warm and welcoming spa hotel with huge buffet breakfasts and wholesome suppers whose main courses ranged from Arctic char to succulent local beef and lamb. From here, provisioned with picnic hampers, tea and coffee, we set out with Daniel Green, one of Sweden’s top birding guides.
Every excursion brought fresh surprises, including an extraordinary encounter with a cock capercaillie – the giant grouse of the Swedish pine forests. Pumped up with testosterone, throat quivering with lust and tail spread like an operagoer’s fan, this preposterous, turkey-sized creature preened and strutted before us, uttering strange creaking and champagne-cork popping sounds in the hope of attracting a mate.
On another morning a gathering of wading birds caught our eye. They were ruff – the males resplendent in full breeding plumage – going through their frantic courtship rituals in a kingcup marsh. But not all of Sweden is so pristine. In a working gravel pit, dug deep into the bowels of the earth, Green showed us a female eagle owl brooding its solitary chick on the platform of a rusty elevator.
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Spring is also the time when Sweden’s woodpeckers are easy to find as they are at their most vocally active – hence our visit to the Burnt Forest where the worst fire in living memory devastated an area the size of 25,000 football pitches in 2014, leaving a desolation of charred trees and blackened stumps. The dead trees were soon infested with wood-boring beetles, attracting woodpeckers from miles around, including species not seen in Britain, such as the three-toed woodpecker.
Elsewhere, black woodpeckers with scarlet punkish crests looped over the treetops. Great northern divers floated above their perfect reflections, and one day we picnicked beside a Viking rune stone, carved 1,000 years ago beside a gunmetal lake alive with flocks of wood sandpipers that flew up in alarm whenever a merlin, peregrine or marsh harrier appeared.
But it was the long, light evenings I loved the best, with woodcock flitting like souls through the down-pouring dusk, and roe deer coming out of the woods to feed in the open. And this was when we set off to a forest clearing where a pair of great grey owls was known to be in residence.
Green, a Swede despite his English-sounding name, is passionate about these elusive birds. “One of the most mysterious creatures you will ever see,” he declares. “No wonder we Swedes used to believe in trolls.”
Its numbers fluctuate from year to year, he told us, depending on the abundance of voles that are their prey, and it is one of the world’s biggest owls (males measure up to 33in from head to tail). It also has the largest facial disc of any raptor. Wrapped in a cowl of feathers, the owl’s flat visage acts like a satellite dish, channelling sounds of voles to the sharpest ears in Sweden.
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Now, wrapped against the evening chill, we sat and waited. Apart from two roe deer feeding at the far end of the meadow, all was still. One by one the birds stopped singing and the forest fell silent, as if gripped by an air of expectancy – until a sudden glimmer of movement caught my eye.
Out of the dark trees a pale phantom came drifting. It flew slowly, light as thistledown, floating through the air on its 5ft wingspan, and came to rest on a stump in the middle of the meadow.
Its feathers were the colour of hoar frost and sheep’s wool. Its eyes were yellow, like those of a timber wolf, and there was no mistaking Strix nebulosa, the phantom of the north with its big round head and solemn gaze.
For what seemed like an age we watched as it sat before us, its head turning this way and that as it looked and listened for voles in the grass until at last it flew off, as soundlessly as it had come, and vanished into the fathomless gloom of the pine forests from which it had first appeared.
Naturetrek (01962 733051; naturetrek.co.uk) offers regular wildlife holidays to Sweden. Brian Jackman’s four-day, long weekend guided birding trip to central Sweden in May cost £1,395. Focusing mainly on owls and woodpeckers, it included comfortable accommodation (all rooms with private facilities) and return flights from London Heathrow to Stockholm.
Mike Unwin’s latest book, A Parliament of Owls, is a celebration of more than 50 different owl species worldwide, with stunning images from leading wildlife photographer David Tipling. Published by HarperCollins, priced £25.