From the way the bird was moving, it was obvious she was distressed. One wing held out at an awkward angle, tail fanned, she piped loudly to attract my attention. But I knew that despite appearances, this ringed plover was not injured, but using all her wiles to lure me away from her nest.
Moments later, we found the object of her concern: a tiny chick, so well hidden amongst the stones and pebbles we almost trod on it, before beating a hasty retreat.
This took place at Skara Brae, the Neolithic village on the edge of Orkney. Although I found the remains of this ancient settlement fascinating, I was constantly distracted by the array of birds along the beach.
Sand martins fluttered past, grabbing insects from the summer air to take back to their chicks, safely hidden in their cliff-face burrows. Offshore, great skuas – known by the Shetland name “bonxie” – cruised by, eagerly eyeing up the elegant Arctic terns, each carrying sand eels for their own hungry youngsters. Occasionally a bonxie would give chase, harrying and harassing the unfortunate tern until, panicking and exhausted, it dropped its precious catch.
Elsewhere on Orkney, I enjoyed close encounters with virtually every other British seabird. The bonxie’s sleek, streamlined cousin, the Arctic skua, frequently appeared in my sightline, a fighter plane compared with the bonxie’s jumbo-jet silhouette. Fulmars hung on the wind at the top of sea-cliffs, while shags, resplendent in greenish-black, held their wings open to dry on every clump of rocks.
But the real treat – in both history and natural history – came on a visit to the small island of Papa Westray. The fun started even before we made landfall, as we travelled on the shortest scheduled flight anywhere in the world – just two minutes long.
On touching down, we headed straight to the Knap of Howar, one of the few human settlements that’s even older than Skara Brae. Entering a restored church nearby, we encountered local naturalist Julian Branscombe.
With a kindness typical of island dwellers everywhere, he offered us an informal guided tour, via the rare and localised Scottish primrose to the sea cliffs at the RSPB’s North Hill reserve. Here, over a picnic lunch, we had wonderfully close views of all four of Britain’s auks – guillemot, razorbill, puffin and black guillemot.
The last of these – known by birders by its Old Norse name, “tystie” – is one of the most underrated yet charismatic of all our seabirds. Sooty-brown rather than black, with bright white wing-flashes and crimson legs and feet, it has a special beauty all its own.
Watching these seabirds was made all the more poignant by the location: Fowl Craig. This is where the last of Britain’s breeding great auks – or “garefowl” – was killed in 1813, and where back in the late 1980s local children erected a small but touching memorial to this long extinct seabird.
More than two centuries later, the great auk’s cousins are in trouble again. Overfishing and climate change have drastically reduced the number of sand eels, the engine that drives the seabird colonies of Orkney and the rest of Britain. Without sand eels, these birds’ days may be numbered.
