Blue Hares and Bonxies.

Not far from home there’s the valley of Heldale. At its base is Heldale Water, a natural reservoir that supplies drinking water to this end of Hoy and to the linked island of South Walls. It’s a favourite spot for a walk, a low rolling landscape of heather clad hills cut with tinkling burns, whose sole mission in life is to rush rainwater down into the valleys and on towards the sea.

The valley is approached by a long stone track, a left turn on the road from Longhope to Lyness. If time allows I’ll walk from home, if not I’ll take the van, clattering over cattle grids and passing the wide shallow graves of peat cuts. Most of the peat cuts are long abandoned. Of the dozens that line the track, a single cut is still worked, the cut peats are stacked in threes, like sheaves of corn, relying on summer winds to dry them. As I  took the photograph below I got caught in a shower, the rain drops pattering on the hood of my coat and dotting the front of the lens.

On a calm day, the moors are beguiling, silent apart from the burbling call of a Curlew or the cro-ak, cro-ak, of Red grouse. On days of rain and wind they are bleak but still beautiful, the birdsong lost to the whistle of the wind.

In Summer Golden Plovers are seen, they nest amongst the grasses and heathers and at this time of year anxiously call a warning to hidden chicks as you pass. Pipits are common but often overlooked, their streaked plumage a perfect camouflage, only catching your eye when they take to the wing.

Above the reservoir is Bakingstone hill, whose west facing slopes are a favourite spot for Blue, or Mountain, Hares. In early March, with the hares still dressed in winter white I counted thirty-one of them, each tucked low amongst the heather, making the best of the late afternoon sun. Back then they were easy to spot, dots of white in a brown landscape. At this time of year spotting them is harder, white winter fur has been swapped for a coat of grey-blue. As I walked up to the ridge of  Bakingstone I saw a few, but probably walked past many more, their summer coats hiding them well against a backdrop of heathers and grasses.

The moor tops are also the haunt of Bonxies, Great Skuas, powerful thickset and aggressive birds that are around the size of a Lesser black-backed gull, who, if they were human, would be prop forwards or nightclub bouncers. They are one of natures killers, taking everything from eggs and chicks to juvenile Greylag geese.

They nest in colonies and will dive bomb anyone who strays too close. I give them a wide berth to avoid disturbing parents with chicks, but Bonxies being Bonxies, they’ll dive bomb you anyway. More than once I’ve been buzzed by a bird flying from A to B, breaking off from their journey to buzz me for the sake of it, coming in at knee height before rising to head high and turning away at the last minute, almost close enough to touch.

I walked up there again yesterday evening, the day had brought gales and driving rain but in the evening the weather brightened, still blowing a gale but the persistent rain had given way to showers. After taking the photograph of the peats,  I took a track to the top of a hill named Binga Fea, that, in better weather, in one direction gives a distant view of the thin grey line of the Caithness coast and in the other, the Pentland Skerries, a group of four uninhabited islands some 14 miles away, the largest of which, muckle skerry, is home to two white painted lighthouses.