Natural highs and lows

It's January, so as is the way of things these days, I remember that I am not immune to a little competitive birding. After all, when you're the worst birder in the house, you have to take your chances when you see (or hear) them. Essentially, if I wake early on New Year's Day, I can be ahead of the game for about two hours, or until Megan surfaces from her slumbers. For the remainder of the 364 days and 22 hours, I'm fighting a losing battle as, short of a miracle, I'm not going to see (or hear) as many species as she is. Now, for the first few months, most of my list seems to come from birds seen whilst driving about for work, or the weekly food shop. But the other night, I did have one moment of complete chance which, if I'd kept quiet, would've been quite the domestic coup. In the wee small hours, I couldn't sleep, worrying about some of those little things which beyond all reason keep folk awake. Outside in the pitch black and freezing cold, I heard...

Serves me right, I shouldn't have mentioned 'Spring', it brought virtually instant retribution in the form of several days of southeasterly gales. However, just before they arrived, there were a few more pleasant moments. A walk at Brodgar was graced with a Skylark singing from on high for all he was worth, in defiant opposition to (in no particular order) other male Skylarks, hungry raptors, the gusty wind and gravity. There were ducks aplenty on both Harray Loch (freshwater) and Stenness Loch (brackish), as well as in field pools and scrapes. Just over the brow of a low hill from the Neolithic stone circle, a piece of rough ground offered up a Short-eared Owl on a fence post. When I tried to film it, the owl immediately took to the air, and all I managed was 7 seconds of shaky, wind-blasted footage. Back home, I was able to turn off the wind noise, and slow down the footage so that it wasn't so jerky, resulting in a slo-mo SEO. Some of the afore-mentioned waterfowl, T...

Travelling away from Orkney during the pandemic has obviously been severely limited. Aside from attending my dad's funeral in England and a 'same tier' trip to Inverness, my only lockdown journeys have been to do with work. I realise how fortunate I am in being able to have a change of scene (even in the midst of sea-sickness somewhere in the North Sea), as these trips reduce the mental stress of cabin fever. Last week was a case in point, with a visit to attend in Shetland. Twenty four hours outwith Orkney, thirteen of them at sea. With the Covid restrictions, this means that a bleary-eyed blogger was unleashed upon the empty streets of Lerwick at 7.30am, way too soon to be knocking on a customer's door or, perhaps even more importantly, before the shops open. Salvation was at hand in the form of the New Harbour Cafe, which opens its doors at 7am and is a haven until a more sociable hour (not to mention the possibilities for breakfast). On this trip, there was only one...