My fourth winter on the island was, as I’ve come to expect, long and wet, the wind grabbing doors as you turn the handle and flinging them open. We’ve had false starts before, but this week the change in the season finally felt real – a spring we could trust. Almost a whole week of sun, barely a cloud in the sky. All around, skylarks are lifting as smoothly and cleanly as elevators into the still air.
Yesterday evening, I loaded the horse into the trailer and trundled down the road to the community arena. The Old Finstown Road cuts inland between Keelylang and Wideford Hill, through pastureland then open heath. The road is winding, so I took it steady, windows open, soaking up the late golden light gilding the soft curves of the land.
The conditions were perfect for bird-spotting. They came, one after another, swooping over the road like dancers parting in a musical number. First a short-eared owl, a day-flying owl with a pale face and dark, intense eyes. They call them “catty faces” here – two small tufts of feathers pop up like eyebrows or small triangular ears – and they haunt the rough grass along the edges of the fields, looking for fat Orkney voles. He flapped, then soared, head down and intent on his task.
Almost immediately afterwards, a curlew – soaring smoothly in parabolic flight, immediately recognisable with its long, curving proboscis and its fluting, accelerating call. There are so many here that it’s easy to forget about their freefalling numbers; across the UK, populations have fallen by more than half in 20 years. A wagtail, a starling, another curlew, all on their way elsewhere.
Our next act was something a little different: a female kestrel hovering about 30 feet in the air, wobbling slightly as she balanced on the breeze like a tightrope walker. She made constant quick adjustments – barred tail swivelling, wings stretching then retracting again, an image of total bodily focus. She too had her eyes fixed on the rough land beyond the road, where heather met verge. It was a bad day to be a vole. And to think I’d normally zoom right by. Sometimes it pays to go slow.
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