"Now she asks the trees,” my guide Petri Kokkonen tells me. I smile and reply how poetic that sounds. Unintentional, perhaps, but it somehow captures the magic that is embedded in these seemingly enchanted forests. Ella the Finnish spitz has been silently hunting while we sit and wait, giving her space to work. Our ears pricked up to her rapid barking, the indication that she had located a capercaillie.
Petri can tell from the rate of her barking whether she has found a male or female capercaillie; for that dark silhouette of the male she cranks out close to 150 barks per minute. The barking stops. I look to Petri; he is looking at his phone, which is tethered to Ella’s GPS tracking collar. “She is making a circle,” he explains. Ella circles the area in which she has treed the bird, in order to ensure that it does not relocate. It
