Natural highs and lows

It is said that whilst on holiday there's the chance to do things differently, maybe staying up late and sleeping all morning, or skydiving, or eating and drinking oneself into an absolute stupor. We may have had the odd lie-in, and the occasional meal out, but the one thing we had less of on holiday was sky. No, we didn't go caving or exploring a nuclear bunker, our 'different' is habitat, rather than habit. At home, there are not, as yet, any trees in our garden, so the views are quite unrestricted, less for buildings and neighbours' planting. Consequently, the birds we see in, or from, our garden are not the usual garden birds. In fact, as I've been typing this paragraph, a Great Skua flew by, pursued by an irate Curlew. So our holiday indulgence is trees, and if possible a river. The cottage we were staying in is very much in the category of 'can't see the wood for the trees', mainly Scots Pine and Birch, and the birdage is so very different from

Usually, having spent at least a day travelling to a holiday destination, I like the first full day on holiday to not involve a car. So, having carelessly forgotten to check the weather forecast, we woke to a wet Sunday morning and immediately resolved not to be so carless. Instead, we drove to RSPB Loch Garten to see a pair of Ospreys. The visitor centre has a wall of tv monitors showing camera close-ups of various scenes. Two large monitors showed the Osprey nest and a favourite perch in a neighbouring tree. Another monitor was split-screened into four, giving a view of a bird feeder; a couple of nest cams (Goldeneye and Great Tit); and a mammal box baited with nuts which had a Bank Vole foraging busily. The female Osprey had very recently (within the hour) laid her first egg for the year, so the staff were very excited. Her mate was sat in the neighbouring tree, having just caught a Brown Trout, which he was undecided whether to offer to the female or eat himself. After watching for

Towards the end of April, it was time for our "Summer" holiday, before Megan's busiest months of wildlife guiding around Orkney from May to September. This year we chose to return to a favourite destination, booking a week in a self-catering cottage at Nethy Bridge in the Cairngorms area of Scotland. We had previously only visited in June (in 2021 and 2022, although those two holidays had been quite different owing to the very cold Spring of 2021), so we were keen to see how we would fare several months earlier in the year. The journey south meant an early sailing from Stromness, the mv Hamnavoe easing out of port at 06.30 for the 90 minute crossing of the Pentland Firth. After a quick breakfast aboard, we headed out onto deck to sea watch for birds. I was rewarded with my first Great Skuas (Bonxies) of the year, and also a couple of Puffins as we neared Scrabster on the mainland. Driving off the ferry, most of our fellow passengers headed east for the A9 and the quick wa

Stromness is a small town on the west coast of the West Mainland of Orkney. Its known maritime history encompasses Viking seafarers, the 18th Century herring fishing boom and, these days, a fleet of recreational diving boats taking adventurous folk to explore the World War One wrecks beneath Scapa Flow. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Hoy Sound to the south and the sheltered inlet of Hamnavoe to the east, Stromness faces the sea. We live on the other edge, to the north, just where a town of approximately 2500 souls gives way to fields and moorland. This statement must be tempered with the phrase "for now", for even the peaceful haven that is Orkney is as susceptible as anywhere in the UK to rampant house building and the spread of human habitation at the expense of wildness. Indeed, three houses are imminently to be built around us, lessening the liminal feeling of our home as a place connecting urban and rural.  This won't be completely a bad thing, as the new

In case you're wondering, yes, we survived last Sunday's beach clean at Orphir Bay despite the 40+mph winds. Fortunately (although actually unfortunately), there was so much rope on the beach, we were able to weigh down our plastic rubbish bags quite easily. Smaller bits of plastic were trickier to handle in the gusty conditions, for despite plunging the offending piece of litter into a bag, by some sort of venturi effect, it would be whipped back out by the wind. I had to pick up one particularly annoying food wrapper four times 🙄  At a rough guess, 95% of what the group collected was fishing-orientated: rope, string and netting. There was also plenty of parcel strapping and, new for 2024, some discarded coffee pods. The following day saw Megan and I head over to Deerness to carry out some vole monitoring, with the Spring survey for the Orkney Native Wildlife Project. Shortly after beginning the first of our two transects, Megan found a caterpillar of the Ruby Tiger moth clam

During the previous blogpost I covered the mammalian part of the trip to Hoy, so today we will concentrate on other things seen on the walk last weekend. It seems longer ago than that, mind, as the day's warm sunshine has been replaced by more wintry weather. Indeed, later today, we're attempting a beach clean for Bag the Bruck in winds approaching gale force. But I digress. This particular Hoy trip was to be the first from our new home without using a car, for now we can walk down the hill to the harbour in Stromness and catch the foot ferry across to Moaness in Hoy. In a foreshadowing of the wonderful day ahead, as we pottered down Hillside Road, Blu the macaw suddenly shot out in front of us from behind some houses, before being chased homeward by a confused gull. At the pier, we met up with other folk joining the Orkney Field Club walk and boarded the mv Graemsay bound for Hoy. The crossing, in bright sunshine, gave us the chance to watch auks and Gannets who are returning