Natural highs and lows

In Orkney, the Nature Festival and Folk Festival both occur during May. Perhaps surprisingly, due to our busy lives, we attended more events of the latter than of the former. We did, however, visit the seabird cliffs at Marwick Head and have a good chat with RSPB staff who had set up telescopes to allow members of the public to view the various Gannets, Kittiwakes, numerous species of auk and Fulmars. For the folk festival, on the opening night we went to see Anna Massie of Blazin' Fiddles and RANT fame (plus BBC Radio Scotland's Travelling Folk trad music programme), who shared the bill with Polenta, a Finnish quartet of three fiddles and an acoustic guitar. The following evening, to indulge our trad/funk/electronica yearnings, we went to see Elephant Sessions in a nightclub in Kirkwall. The gig didn't start until 10.30pm so we didn't arrive home until after 1am. Then, 24 hours later, Megan went to see The Chair, another late gig. I reckoned I wouldn't manage two l...

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. D ue 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. ...

Not the most imaginative title for a post, I'll admit, but this one encompasses several topics, including the mysterious deaths of many seabirds on the north and east coasts of the UK and a day spent surveying for signs of Orkney Voles, as well as also featuring a day's birding in Deerness and several ambles around the bay at Houton. Let's begin with the strange case of the auk 'wreck'. Every Winter, usually after a severe storm in the North Sea, many dead seabirds (often juveniles) wash up on the east and north coasts of the UK. It's depressingly normal, but it's nature, and something that the species involved cope with by their breeding strategies. Recently, many auks have been seen inshore at a time when they're expected to be out in the North Sea. These birds seem to have come back to the coast looking for food, and they have been weirdly confiding, a sure sign that all is not well. Many of them have died and been washed up on beaches. Without a Nort...

A trip to Westray last week coincided with a spell of lovely weather and allowed some time to visit the seabird colony at Noup Head, the Aikerness peninsula and the Castle of Burrian. Noup Head was looking splendid in the Spring sunshine and it was pleasing to watch the behaviour of the birds in the colony.  Guillemots Guillemot bon mot Razorbills Noup Head is home to a gannetry, and a steady stream of Gannets were bringing in nesting material in the form of seaweed. Once your nest is built, I guess the next order of business is to ensure that there will be some eggs to lay in it. How ever precarious that might be. Sometimes there are confrontations between neighbours in the closely-packed colony, but mainly the birds seem to settle into an uneasy peace. Gannets are large and spectacular birds and such a pleasure to watch up close. Another resident of the cliffs is the Kittiwake, a delicate-looking member of the gull family. At a nearby lochan, a large group of Kittiwakes were busy...