The geopoetician who animates my heart, hand and pen never ceases to realise moments in time are held in snowflakes or in dew…
I am continuing to network with kindred spirits whilst the spirit of Ms Crusoe wanders along on an island that sings life through seasons.
April rhymes with freedom, this enchanting earth song elevated through the cacophony of birds – curlews, blackbirds, wrens, starlings (the greatest feathery imitators at 60N!) golden plovers… Skylarks and our everlasting chattering sparrows.
April is the return of the mind-blowing light that overrides wir mørkin (darkness) now we are back in BST. I noticed dusk and twilight are flirting later to my great delight. To the poet, it colours my sense of bliss. And I can only pray Father Sky’s clemency increases as we now walk more confidently towards Beltane.
April allows my child within to reconnect with the now and here.
Today again, I experienced stillness capsules that are tattooed in my heart forever. I watched raingjus glide on water, a pied wagtail tiptoeing on the edge of a burn… I listened to whistling swallows and wigeons. Spring in its glory as daffodils bowed to the fresh South Westerlies…
There is no doubt we are swinging towards summer.
And yet, Father Sky seems to lose sight of the moment. As if he was blending winter and spring a little longer…
On the night of the great eclipse on the other side of the Atlantic, I watched a sky blending colours as I had not seen in moons… A real sunset (pictured above) and prayed we might marvel once more at wir Mirrie Dancers (Aurora Borealis) before May steals them till August.
There are still a few days left till I return to the indoors world…
Mind you, when the last bell rings, I will not linger much inside. 😊
However, let’s keep our bubble of now the most important one, as tomorrow does NOT exist!
Our sea furry mammals are oblivious to a watch… They nonetheless respond better to moon and tides.
Time for humans means something else. If you too obey timetables, you are shackled to a routine.
When school bells ring for a last time, you suddenly feel lost for words. Aye, no more alarm clock for a while! Yule has returned with its magic. Home is ready for the pagan and the scent of the pine tree. Cinnamon sticks and melting wax as darkness has reached its climax…
First day of freedom in the snow, as icicles graced the garden to my delight. It is a moment of reconnection with the natural world I treasure so dearly. Out in my Caribou snow-boots, I wandered off in the perfection of nature, feeding my dear garden dwellers and free water out of the ice.
Their constant presence feels my heart with so much joy, I owe them help for survival in such seasonal conditions. After all, why should we be the only ones to feast at Yule?
What is Yule without its cortège of hellery? 60N at a crossroads with the Nordic realm means everything.
Two mighty storms in between Hogmanay and now, have swept across geos and skerries…
Storm force winds swept the old year away, as one would sweep away old dust.
January welcomes brand new gales.
So I hold tight to candle sticks until the sky turns to bird tunes.
Tis nearly over, this Yuletide.
Nisse will return to the barn for a final bowl of porridge; tinsels and baulbs, back to the den… Blue mantelpiece back to candles without Yöl cairds…
But then, again, Nisse still smiles.
And Aa da best fur da new year.
Thanking you all for your presence, likes and contributions to Arcania.
Not a story from a dusty book, but this island I call my “boreal Eden”, or home for short.
Lookaminnie’s Oo (cotton grass)
The island shone throughout summer, teeming with life, light and colours. Without a doubt, I have noticed an increasing sensation of silence across the land. However, our meadows and hillsides still home an array of avian wonders – meadow pipits, wheatears and shalders to name but a few.
Gannets took their time to reappear around familiar bays by late summer. However, in lesser numbers, our oceanic visitors exited our homeworld without a word or goodbye call…
Whilst our automnal migration gathered momentum, swallows stayed with us throughout September. As if they hesitated to go south… I try to imagine their voyage.
Whereas the world dries up in places, we have been blessed with clement skies that have notably favoured broods…
Unusual visitors
My two most amazing “exotic”encounters this summer: a honey buzzard and a Hudsonian Godwit. Two utterly stunning specimens forever tattooed in my heart.
It always feels a privilege to meet with the unexpected. However, every bird seems to count more and more in this day and age. And summer did not fail to discover the next generation of many familiar birds…
And speaking of unusual visitors…
Parts of world sent off extraordinary sails to the “Venice of the North” on the last weekend of July…
They were awesome: da capital’s Waterfront was ennobled with tongues and port lights from beyond our horizon. Some familiar- others, exotic. The muddy bay has always been open to the world.
They came and left like our birds from the sea.
And into da hairst (autumn)
Without a word, da hairst settled in… Timidly at first, as men made their hay for winter, and arctic breeders pit-stopped en route to their southern winter quarters…
Mother Nature, so amazing.
By mid-August, the island thrives behind the glass of the classroom… That’s when my world turns for the word “academic” until that early October.
That spell of snow in March hindered the return of colours all around us.
And as Ostara came and went, the promise of spring – wir voar – eventually appeared in spite of cold air still around. Father Sky has its own sense of humour – call it the sword of Damocles… Jekyll & Hyde.
Yet Mother Earth has her own agenda, and urge to burst in many forms. Vegetal or animal, Arcania is waking again. And as April is unfolding, our quintessential harbingers of spring appear under our eyes, filling our hearts with that same joy.
From leaf budding to flower blossom, da voar is surrounding us. Already, my most immediate garden is speaking,
I need to watch when I’m treading when reaching out to the washing line (!) as daisies, dandelions and bluebells (awaiting to flourish) are erupting all around…
At the start of the spring holiday, young Alfie cleared the remnants of last summer’s quadrats of tall grass in an effort to regenerate the meadow. Already, sparrows and blackbirds have begun to make use of cut grass blades left behind for nesting material. Our garden dwellers are establishing territory all around each corner of da tun (groups of human settlements).
Further afield, da voar displays its many threads of magic. Added to the kindness of Father Sky, light shines in every eye and every heart.
As far as the eye can see, the island is welcoming life again. Our avian summer visitors are gradually making way back to their ancestral breeding grounds. Cliff ledges, clefts, skerries or stacks – hillsides, lochs, mires… Heath or peatlands.
They are investing the homeground we share. What more joyous than renaissance?
Every new meeting with a hill sporrow (meadow pipit) laverick (skylarks) sten-shakker (northern wheatear) raingjus (red-throated diver) or a tammie norie (puffin) proves enchanting every time. Our reunion with our natural world.
Those iconic creatures add to those arrived a little earlier in the year: from the multicoloured shelduck to the shalder (oystercatcher) that have been toiling to display love through their courtship. A new cycle of life restated in earnest.
And yet da voar is showing signs and question marks. Whereas swallows and swifts, chiffchaffs, siskins, goldcrests and willow warblers have erupted around the island in precocious ways, entire cliff faces famously occupied by certain species, including gannets and common guillemots or kittiwakes remain deserted in places… Last year’s spell of avian influenza notably decimated gannets & great skuas, da bonxie, so notorious as a thief, and yet so crucial as a muckraker – usually keeping bird colonies healthy by predating on unhealthy, sick or injured birds… The irony. Their function on Earth as keepers of healthy colonies in times of plenty for its own species (the great skua, like its cousin, the Arctic skua) is above all a fisher bird, yet fell prey to a virus created to regulate numbers…
More surprisingly, common guillemots looked a little late back on their stack at my favourite headland on Saturday evening. They usually invest their ancestral breeding grounds before puffins arrive… Only a pair sighted at Smithfield Stack. Unless… Unless, they stayed at sea when I reconvened with their cousins, since guillemot and puffin (together with razorbills) belong to the same family.
Kittiwakes also missing on their abrupt cliff face…
The island’s most southerly tip – Sumburgh Head – so famously renowned for its bountiful wildlife is yet to home a new generation of seabirds, delighting us all.
A point so famous to travellers and sailors, made safer by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father & family builders of lighthouses around Scotland, my favourite headland has this feeling of a world end. It is so precious for life.
I will come back and keep vigil, for every new visit sparks light and excitement in my heart.
It is a magic place to watch the world unfold in its precious and yet at times rawest moments.
Fitful and Quendale Bay from Sumburgh Head, 8 Apr 2023.
Note: All photographs credit to the author and already published on Instagram & FB.
Drinking from the sea…
Some swans from my neck of the water world drink from the sea from either side of the island.
A photoshoot from Peerie Voe (Spiggie) and Boddam Voe (Dunrossness) this spring.
Whereas mute swans favour lochs – such as Spiggie, or Strand at Gott to name but a few – to live by and feed from, they appear to have developed a taste for sea water.
Jet streams, storms and other follies from the wind being a myriad of birds to the island…
An annual or so occurrence, Spiggie Loch homes great white egrets. This one arrived in early March, and had to share the NW corner with a grey heron (wir haigrie) for a few weeks.
Such birds are both majestic but they compete for food.
Haigrie vs egret at Spiggie Loch, Mar 2022.
Both species usually do not mix as I have observed them in Camargue… Here, the grey heron feels on home ground, and displayed it a few times to the exotic visitor…
Canadian among greylags…
The joy when patience is rewarded: their backs so similar in any field, when foraging…
And yet what separates the two species becomes obvious when they lift their heads in the open air!
Canada goose, Spiggie, Mar 2022.
A joy to see!
First meeting of 2022 with a N. Wheatear
They, together with skylarks and meadow pipits announce the return of better days, da Voar, spring and longer sunnier days –
A renaissance and hope for life, as they return to their ancestral breeding grounds.
Every spring migration seems more and more precious and precocious, for our summer breeders appear to respond to the urge to fare chicks earlier and earlier every year… Mother Nature has her own ways.
Eye catchers
Magic encounters so far…
And from the sea…
My second sighting of a deep diver – a sperm whale that seemed to be stranded in some bay on the Atlantic side of the island.
Too long have I awaited this joyous month of April, free from March – this month of miracles & tears – even if gales and remnants of winter are clutching at straw…
The island is slowly emerging from its great seasonal slumber to start and display more vibrant colours as daylight is overriding black.
Too long have I looked at my homeworld from behind glass overlooking an empty loch. Even though I love the view, my eyes belong to the younglings facing me during term time.
Vista fae North Loch Drive.
Watched snow come and go, return since our passage through the Vernal Equinox – morning and dusk in many tones, yet always with the same magic, as our sun rise and glow over Mousa Isle, to colour this Western sky in the kerb just before Quarff.
Only one road fae S to N – also known as da meal road by many islanders whose ancestors in the 19th century, at a time of tattie famine, were (like in the rest of the British Isles, and most notoriously reported from Ireland) rewarded with a meagre meal to build roads… Attempting to survive dire times in the history of the isles. The cheapest labour anyone with gold could find…
Two other side roads in the South Mainland linking da tuns (or human settlements) were added to the great North-South road. Those remain my favourites. Teeming with life, mostly wild, they turn magical in spring.
Da Clumlie Road
This is where freedom begins.
For seasonal cycles on end, the magic remains intact. The return of life, skylarks (wir laverick) arriving with meadow pipits & oystercatchers (wir shalders) depending on the year, though after shelducks (our traditional earliest migrants) . Northern wheatears (wir steinshaakers) also land back in our fields and meadows by April.
The elegance of loons, red-throated divers follow suite.
Tis when our land and sky turn cacophonous on a boannie day i’da voar (a sunny spring day).
Skylark, Meadow Pipit and Northern Wheatear, Apr 2022.
April is when our gardens begin to share flowers and buds against all odds. Haily puckles and thin snowflakes might still rage at this time of year, all seem to resist so far…
I love their resilience.
A return to my old belfry – Sumburgh Head where I worked 20 years ago this month as an ambassador for nature (RSPB Nature Reserve) – proved wonderful with a friend on Monday. We lunched in style overlooking the magnificent panorama. Strangely enough, Martin Heubeck roamed my mind as I was watching empty cliffs. Yes, it was barely early April on a day of hellery (adverse weather). Yet kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills are coming back every year in fewer numbers.
Tis no secret.
Our great marine birds signal the return of better days from April onwards. By the time you discover the headland around da Simmer Dim (the summer solstice) you are welcomed by bird calls from every directions, as well as constant gannets fly-pasts on their way to more and more distant fishing grounds. They are striving as a species around our coastline.
Yet barely weeks to Beltane and the galloping to the solstice. Tis when the island really turns cacophonous.
Meanwhile, we make do with chilling conditions, and brace ourselves for days battered by gales and hail that keep you alive (!)
Tis a world bathed by a sea and an ocean, geographically so far away from it all, sheltered, somehow from any torpor…
This place on Earth and in my heart where I belong, because my senses say it so, has recovered seasonal white, or even bluish icicles now we stand so far from the sun.
And yet shorter days can shine.
This morning, I’m waking up to a hot bowl of porridge whilst the cabin heats up a bit. If my duck down quilt kept human and cat warm whilst the temperature plummeted below what can be read on room thermometers, that polar wind from Arctic Tromsø is still blasting… Tis the realm of Yule encroaching on my Nordic world.
Yule, the festive time as we come to a halt – light candles on window sills or on chimney mantlepieces… Share a table free from the pressure of time, tokens of love and marvel at the starry sky from the back steps of our own home.
My bowl of porridge cooled too fast.
This little light we cling onto as darkness vanishes juist a few hours to let our star hover below 10 degrees of elevation either in a shameless crystalline sky (or sometimes in a halo that fills a light metallic sky) feels so precious. Tis the moment to wander through mires an braes (mossy areas of fields or meadows and hillsides) and reconvene with our own bays bathing in light.
How I love walking to the sea.
It fills my heart with happiness, this inner peace that has no price. Tis this moment when we reconnect with the higher self, the child within eager to reach edge of the most magical world.
Because it really is magical!
The blue of sky and horizon so inviting, the playful selkie (seal) inside kelp – the gentleness of water flirting with pebbles as tide retreats at a slow pace… Our Earth’s rhythm allows it all.
All around us, what looks barren and just dormant under snowflakes will wake again in a few months. Yet, for now, my whole world shines in blue and white. As as snow melts on higher grounds, wir local burn swells and runs down to the sea. Cycle of water, source of life.
Late.
Our first snow came late this autumn, not till the end of November. Mother Earth has her own agenda. Unusually warm, Hairst (autumn) felt a long Indian summer… Only to vanish inside flying gales the island knows at this time of year. We brace ourselves for the season of bleaker times.
First snow feels a welcoming sign winter with its palette of own colours has its own grip on us.
First snow invites us to get out and reconnect with Mother Earth, Nature and life we can take so much for granted… Blessed with the place that holds so many treasures, the call of the wild is strong.
First snow has come and gone, yet each return of icicles draw us so closer to the magic of Yule. My heart rejoices at each furtive appearance from our boreal sun. Today, it is shining in a glacial NE wind, and as the cabin warms slowly, I will make my trek out, refill my heart and let da bairn inside to reconnect with the natural world. It feels my shield against the artificial world – that manmade realm shackled to the material, where gold prevails above sand grains, shells and pebbles.
So much water run through da burn (stream) down to the sea and the ocean, gushing, flowing through da burra, hedder (heather) an paets (peat/turf) keeping us lush beyond nightless nights, Simmer Dim, our eclipsed stars for a moment.
The island has recovered its magical colour palette, Van Gogh luminous style. Through May and June, yellow dominated our roadsides, anchored on water (like Marygold) or mires…
Hues of pink, shades of our Earth preceded white, blotching the greens of our meadows. Delicate petals decorate the narrowness of the landscape; and yet homing our seasonal opera house to the delight of wanderers.
Tis a privilege to listen.
Our ground nesters braved continents, gales, rain and hail to duplicate love in their genes . They picked ancestral patches of peatland, brae (hillside) or grass where they disappear until July…
Wild home world
And yet summer feels short for us all on the island, humans and avifauna.
Banks’ broos (cliffs) lochs an lochans (lakes, big and small) have been teeming with life too, as parenthood fledged around irises or thrift and sea mayweed.
Fresh water world
A privilege to hear them call, or watch them so vulnerable. Our headlands turn operatic till mid-July.
Life on the precarious edge of ocean…
And already, in this season of abundance, da hairst (harvest) has begun, as silage tumbled and wrapped for da winter.
We, islanders on such northern latitude, are privileged with a single hundred days of crop growth in open ground. Silage cut offers open air restaurants to both local and migrating birds from all around the boreal region. Our position in the ocean remains pivotal in their survival for the great trek back south.
Preparing for winter whilst sharing with nature.
And until night returns and we veer back towards the autumn equinox, tis a window of teeming life and overgrowth, on the land, on beaches where colours thrive; inside our wicks an voes (wide and narrow inlets of sea) wildlife flourishes and flows.
Tis simply magic!
Life on this dear Auld Rock.
Now I am fully reconnected with it all.
And wishing you, each and everyone, a wonderful summer fae 60N!
There are moments when we just need to step back and dream…
Step back and sleep, dream in the arms of the dragon. April the joker, the trickster, that turned the island back to ice.
Our spring buds deprived of sap, light and that warmth, had to yield to the wrath, shenanigans from a planet déboussolée…
It all happened within minutes…
Even Saoirse the Cat had to give in to da bliind moorie -a violent snow storm – that engulfed us in its millions of horizontal icicles.
I’m pretty sure she dreamt of bees and bugs she loves so much to play with… She looks a meerkat on her back limbs. So comical at times.
I was dreaming of summer.
Voar – our springtime – is a season to respect. As Mother Earth turns generous once more, life in all its forms begins again. The island back in a sky filled with birdsong – oystercatchers, curlews, skylarks and snipes to name but a few… We seed to harvest and yet we are aware of its harshness.
In their life-driven waves, our seabirds feel magnetised to our cliffs. Guillemots, razorbills and puffins had to battle a polar flying gale to reconvene in our boreal world.
Life back on land
April still clawed by cold air.
And yet nature is resilient. From daffodils to primroses, from Skylarks to Meadow Pipits or Northern Wheatears, wir voar means life.
On and around the island, magic occurs. Last weekend alone was graced by a pod of orcas on Saturday followed by a showcase of wir tammie nories (that delightful local name for our Atlantic Puffins) at sundown.
Magical.
We really live on an extraordinary planet.
It does not take much to tear down preconceived ideas and marvel at the diversity of life. The trick being to open our eyes and heart, and feel part of it.
Life is everywhere: in the wild, in cities – Mother Nature finds her ways in the most incredible places, from a stone wall to the great depths of our oceans…
We are all guests on our planet, that has a twin, so different.
Now, the following piece of verse is all about our Earth’s sister.
Planet Walk (Venus)
YOU ARE HERE,
between Mercury and my world, one grain of sand on a lone beach, in easy reach to solar winds, rotating eye around stardust; you, Earth’s sister, encased in hell and toxic clouds, sun, volcanoes and hurricanes – you too look blue from the distance through a filter. So far away from Tahiti, you caught the eye of a captain when you appeared as a black disc, so elusive before the sun. Amazing grace, your rotation in slow motion – each sunrise lasts, days outclass years on your surface – the odd one out waltzing clockwise in our West sky. You are beauty without seasons, hottest of all, void of water, rocky-basalt in a cocktail so Molotov… Satellite irresistible, you are goddess among the stars, no one will dare to plant a flag; but still wonder if there is life, love in your clouds.✨
Imbolc welcomed Brigid as a maiden, clad in immaculate snowflakes.
Tis beautiful, so beautiful to look at. Who has not ever marvelled at such wondrous land, sky and ice scapes? Till now, February has been generous to us in terms of calm white & blue days. Yes, we just need to leave home a little earlier to de-ice the car… But what a pleasure to breathe in that crisp air and allow the sun to warm our epidermis and our hearts…
And even if our boreal sun strengthens in power through longer daylight and elevation, we, islanders from the great far north, have to make do with these polar conditions. As weird as it might sound, we have yet to learn that waddling technique so natural to penguins to stay up on our feet (!). A recent report from one of our local newspapers recorded a higher incidence of some 40 admissions to A&E linked to ice… Broken limbs, strains & sprains – as well as sledging accidents. Whereas folk still seem to favour the famous wellies (those yellow or khaki rubber boots) to tread on ice, I have adopted snow boots and grippers… And they have proven so lifesaving on many occasions.
And if wellies, waddling or grippers fail, then, our Antarctic flightless birds have also shown us another safer way to move swiftly… The belly sliding technique, as frequently used by, notably, Emperor penguins (!). And what more fun than this? Just look at kids having fun on ice… They use a similar technique. Note: I very much doubt many of us – human bipeds – adopt such a technique except for fun. 🥶
We have been so iced since January the whole Kingdom Animalia (including us, humans) depends on adaptations for survival.
Ice has continued to infiltrate our lives around our island world, and no creature is spared. Our winter survivors have to endure such harsh conditions. They may have developed their own adaptations, yet they still have to bear the brunt of it all.
Whereas ponies have thick winter coats and thick hooves to provide insulation from iced ground, air and wintry showers & storms, birds rely on their respective layers of feathers called down. Some often stand on one leg to maximize insulation from freezing water or ground… All need to shelter to ensure survival. They don’t dwell very long on open ground, unless heavily coated – like ponies or highland cows – or fleeced like sheep.
Birds need all the tall grass, thickets and trees they can find around our valleys, hillsides and human gardens to survive.
Recently, I have not only noticed more visiting starlings, sparrows and blackbirds to the feeders at home, but far less common visitors, such as a young Song Thrush and a Redwing.
The human obligation to work from home (even on a part-time basis) allows for better nature watching from the comfort of our own home, as well as providing food for avian ground feeders on a more regular basis. Our Chief Executive encourages us to reconnect with nature for our own wellness… In my case, she is preaching the lifelong converted (!).
Each sunrise feels a new adventure!
Like you all in the northern hemisphere, I am becoming a little eager to welcome Ostara, the Vernal Equinox. It will come in due time, however, I am also savouring the magic of snowflakes, as well as Mother Earth’s slow re-awakening and the gradual return of some of our summer migrating visitors… Our avian friends!
nordicblackbird 