Literally littery and literary

Maybe a bit too much alliteration in that title? Anyway, it does lead us nicely into today's topic.

Last Saturday, a week of beach cleans began in Orkney, the Bag the Bruck campaign ('bruck' being the Orkney dialect word for rubbish). The Orkney Field Club chose Orphir Bay as their designated bit of shore, with folk from peedie bairns to sprightly grandparents turning out to help remove some of the plastic pollution which has been gathering these past few pandemic years. In a couple of hours, we had amassed twenty or so bin bags full of bruck and lugged them from the beach to a designated pick-up point for the local council to collect.

So focussed was I upon my wombling duties that I forgot to take any photos, but the bulk of the plastic waste was rope, string and creel gubbins. Due to oceanic currents, some of the detritus will have come from the other side of the Atlantic, but a fair proportion is likely to be from fish farming and creel fishing in Scapa Flow itself.

The following day, a Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) count in Houton Bay saw me with camera in hand once more, as this photo of a pair of Twite feeding on the shore demonstrates. It also provides an example of the level of bruck which washes up. This particular bay is due its clean by another community group this weekend.

Also during the survey, a migrating male Wheatear perched briefly on some railings at the pier. Whilst birds are generally above the messy world of human politics, this individual seemed to demonstrate sympathy with the beleaguered people of Ukraine.

In the week, a work trip to Westray allowed a few hours of wildlife watching between ferries. There's a very bumpy track to the RSPB reserve at Noup Head, which hosts a seabird colony on the spectacular cliffs, with Guillemot, Razorbill, Fulmar, Gannet and Kittiwake among its seasonal residents. As the quote from the film goes... "I love the smell of guano in the morning." Y'know the one... Apocacliffs Now.

Some of the Gannet nests contained colourful plastic, a sad indictment upon humanity that we can bring our discarded waste to the even the wildest of places.

I find it difficult not to take photos of Gannets at this site, even during a rain shower. These majestic birds are at eye level as they glide by on air currents, and always fill me with awe.

Of course, the problem with a very bumpy track is that it has to be traversed twice, so my poor van was gently coaxed to ever so slowly trundle back towards civilisation. Whilst mainly concentrating on the rock-strewn surface, I couldn't help the occasional glance at the birdlife on either side of the track: Oystercatchers, Great Skuas, some Fieldfare and a Mistle Thrush.

One such glance was of a largish brown bird hunkered down in a field, but before I could muse upon its identity, we drove behind a stone wall and lost the view. It took a couple of seconds for my brain to revert to bird ID mode, bring the van to a stop, engage reverse and even more slowly trundle backwards into view again. It was still there. Phew!

The bird was facing in the other direction, but its size, markings and the fact that we could see both of its eyes was a big clue to its identity. This was a creature which normally inhabits wet woodland and is usually only visible for a fleeting second as it takes flight from beneath your feet and whirrs away before you've finished swearing in shock. I had never seen one in the open in daylight, so as the sun came out and the bird stood up, I was in absolute rapture. To be fair, cryptic camouflage doesn't work so well in a grassy field, but here is a Woodcock, foraging during a break in its northerly Spring migration.

I was grinning inanely for the rest of the day.