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…
Tis already time to return… Cross back oceans, straits, continents. Here is a piece I offer you in high summer from my boreal latitude. It is entitled “Survival” as inspired by Red-Necked Phalaropes, Oystercatchers and all those great avian migrants in search of warmth, food, survival.
juv Tern, Shetland, 5 July 2020. En route to a journey clocked at some 12,500 miles…
Last Tuesday night, I heard the shalders call in flight well after dusk for the first time. Too well known avian voices that notably signal a return to warmer days and crystalline dusks… How many days to the Vernal Equinox? For months on end, my nearby playing field filled with silence. And as Mother Earth lives in cycles, hissing gales are gradually giving way to a more clement earthsong. Tis the time for familiar crooners, such as the curlews and oystercatchers, we, on the island, call shalders.
There is an air of impatience, as blackbirds begin to advertise their will to love on chimney stacks – sparrows quarrel around willows, and even robins play dare-devils out of their hide-away stone walls. And if we are still to get away from treacherous March (with its last spells of icicles) rose bushes have begun to display their first leaves. Already, a few daring migrants have made their way to the Island, such as a stonechat in the Westside yesterday… Wildflowers too begin to bud and display their colour, such as the Lesser Celendine and the Coltsfoot showing a bit early!
On our way to Aith Meadows
The daily trip home at the end of the day can now divert away from the main tarmac artery that links South to North. At last, longer days allows us to meander around much more timeless corners of the shared wild and civilised. A drive along the coast, meadows and still heavily waterclogged fields to catch a glimpse of a skylark still to sing. Life is creeping back around our shores. Already golden plovers’ and curlews’ calls fill the still crisp air. So enchanting.
The first sight of a black guillemot in full regalia always feels a priviledge.
Sunrise over Mousa
This will to get out of darkness, witness a glowing sun after eight above a well loved offshore island is contagious.
March remains our month of rainbows, with its cortege of shine and hail, squallid showers & icicles. And as Imbolc now feels a distant memory, our dear great celestial star begins to dominate our world with less shame. It is wakening this hemisphere of Mother Earth with its flamboyant warmth, only to strenghen as we speak and cross the Vernal Equinox, when night and day cross swords to reach out parity. This dormant world needs to emerge and reveal its beauty! For Mother Earth has only one goal, life.
Spring has multiplied signs throught that long and still ice-bladed month of March. If light has reached parity with darkness on the 20th day, and our migrating visitors called at night and settled back in our fields and meadows whilst others pursued their incredible journey north, the island still needs to wake to the promises of the season.
April, April… Life rekindles
March now behind us.
Tonight I heard eight puffin scouts have been located west of my favourite headland in our inshore waters. Earlier, friends reported the magical ascending song of a skylark as they wandered by abandoned crofts… Common Eider drakes already sit by their concubines… On inspection of the ground, daisies and bluebells have long braved snow, ice and thaws, re-icing and equinox gales. Even within the perimeter of my sanctuary, the grass has grown and would deserve a serious cut. Spring, voar, so precocious.
Eider drake and its concubine reunited at Aith Voe.
Light reappears on the 60th North Parallel.
I read somewhere that between the two solstices – and more precisely as we approached the Vernal Equinox – we were gaining up to two hours of light every month… Now, as April has entered in the great cosmic ballroom, my sunrises and sunsets are becoming more epic.
Turnstones by the edge of water…
Strangely enough, fog has already been rolling on from our local hills. “Exotic” and “curious”, for fog remains an oddity before April… February and March both felt odd in places.
Peculiar episodes of fog we, islanders, usually experience from mid-April…
Yet April promises (or do I really take this for granted?) liberation from many claws – storms, gales, and other signatures from the icy months. And if I have yet to listen to my first skylark, I know it will not be long. The sky just needs to quieten a little more and our star to warm up those acres of storm-bent grass around our meadows… Wake, wake, wake, wake!
April is when you return to me.
The magic of walking to my favourite headland.
As I am typing you are gradually falling asleep. Your case is packed. Your passport lies in a pocket of your handbag… Tomorrow, you too will begin your migration north – north by NE, as you will cross that stretch of your Irish Sea to find your way back in Glasgow before making your way to my North Sea from the mouth of a sheltered harbour. We can travel the world like swallows… or Storm Petrels. But to journey, we need a boat.
I may not wait for you from my favourite headland on Saturday, But I will gladly watch that great blue Viking efigee on the white hull we call da boat approach my favourite offshore island of Mousa at about 6.30 in the morning and drive parallel to you, as the bow kisses each wave from our sheltered waters. If we are lucky enough, Mother Sea will let you enter the Bressay Sound with grace.
Happy common seal in the surf. Selkie life…
It will be your first time. Selkies and seagulls will salute you on your passage. You are about to return to me as seabirds find their way across miles of oceanic deserts, da Roost to reconvene with my headlands, bays and meadows.
Now, my turn to find sleep from my northern latitude, as I will be by your side tomorrow, in voice and spirit. I have prepared home to welcome you on my northern island.
In anticipation to your arrival, I wrote a piece entitled North Voyager. It sounds and reads like a leitmotive… And yet it does epitomise that promise from Spring.
When you are passionate about something, you voice it.
It is exactly what I penned – a poem – inspired by a History lesson yesterday- a reminder of how folk can be treated, and wondered why a great democracy like the US is still treating some of her people the very same way it did in the 1830s… Canada has led the way with her First Nations. Then, in 2009, President B. Obama made an apology via a Bill. A step forward, even though footsteps got lost inside politics… As history obeys circles.
Featured Image: Cherokee Indians are forced from their homelands during the 1830’s. (Credit: Alamy)
America was built this way…
Native folk pushed by aliens in the name of money…
Trail of Tears
Rounded at gun point to force you…
Walk through the path of
the un-
known, un-
wanted, un-
humane
track,
as
others
needed your
home, land to grow cotton and
make their
gold off
what they felt
lushest of
earth.
So
they
pushed you away from
your ancestral ground, where
you,
the one who
occupied
this land;
and
made you walk across meadows, mountains and snow that
lied
across
others’ nations, on the other
side of
the
gigantic river, where
Sitting Bull,
Red Cloud and
Crazy Horse
lived by…
For every four, one of you
died.
Marvellous moments of lightness, privileged times among paired swans, preening and sharing love in grace at last light… Statuesque haigries (herons) around our bays, the joy to reconvene with our beautiful Earth. I observe them from the distance, with that humble feeling, so intimate the moment. The light is soft, nearly sunset. The air is charged with tenderness and love in that autumnal sense of rawness…
Intimate. So privileged, I feel.
Sensual, magical.
This north end corner of Spiggie Loch gradually welcomes them back, as the Arctic winter dictates. They will flock in and preen, share a few weeds with a few ducks – gather on the shore for bathing and arrange their feathers, and roost by twos… A bit of love inside a world so few can taste.
nordicblackbird 