Author: Gary Smith.

With our unseasonable dry spell continuing, most of the past week was spent in other gardens. Like many islanders, when it comes to earning a crust, we wear more than one hat. One day you’re selling plants, another day antiques online, the next might be gardening or dry-stone walling. This week, for me, it was gardening, cutting and planting a double screen of grey willow for a new garden a few miles away. We don’t go mad, working part time, happy to work to live rather than live to work, enough to keep the wolf from the door. With willows planted, on Friday, while Jacqui prepped some plants for sale, I took myself off on a favourite walk, to the valley of Heldale. Walk half a mile along the road and then follow a stone track up into the moors. At first, as you leave the road, there’s a flat landscape of mixed habitats, Grasses and Heathers and wet spot Rushes. It’s a home to breeding Greylags (pictured top) and Curlews. At this time of year, the male Curlews rise over the ground like Larks, soaring upwards before falling leaf-like back to earth, marking their territories with a haunting bubbling call.

As the track climbs higher, heather wins out. To your left though there’s a shallow valley, a place where native willow scrub thrives. The willows are rarely more than head high, chastened by the winds. They never leave the valleys, there’s an invisible growth line that’s never crossed. Tucked among them are dozens of bird sown rowan, silver barked and leafless, buds just starting to thicken.

After a mile and a half or so, you rise a crest on the track and a natural reservoir, Heldale water, comes into view. A wide ribbon of silver in a landscape of browns and greys. Supplier of potable water to this end of the island. Out on the water, too distant to photograph, were the black shapes of a dozen Bonxies, Great Skuas, newly arrived from a winter in Spain or Africa.

To the North-west of Heldale there’s Bakingstone hill. I wanted to see Eagles and Mountain hares and close to home there’s no better spot. I cut up from the reservoir, following a fence line that had long lost its purpose, bleached stabs and rusted wire, only useful now to the Meadow pipits who keep a lookout from the post tops. It’s not much of a climb, but despite our dry spell the ground is boggy and soft, making the going far harder than it should be.

As expected, Mountain hares were seen in numbers, most are wary, scutting away at the first sight of man. One though sat up on hind legs and watched as I passed by, if a hare can look wise, he or she did. As with all the other hares seen that day, he or she wore a piebald coat, the Spring moult in progress, half winter white, half summer brown.

At this time of year  Emperor moths are seen. As I climbed higher I saw males on the wing, brightly coloured fast fliers that at a distance are easily mistaken for butterflies. The females are larger and paler, a bluish-grey, and unlike the males they fly only at night. Tucked down amongst the heathers they are almost impossible to spot, given away only by amorous males who are drawn to the females by pheromones. Follow the male and you’ll find the female. Eggs are laid in April and May and the caterpillars, after a summer of munching on heather, will spin a silk cocoon and overwinter close to the ground, they’re the UK’s only native silk moth.

At the top of Bakingstone the ground plateaus and dries out, yet to green up heathers are crunchy underfoot. Here and there are pools of bright water, homes to whirligig beetles that constantly skate and circle. A shimmer of silver upon the skies reflection. To the west there’s the glitter of a sunlit sea. To the North, nothing but open moor, low hills, shallow valleys and countless lochans. The silence, on a still day, is deafening.

At the end of Bakingstone there’s a rock, dropped by a passing glacier, that’s big enough to show up on an OS map. A good place to stop and eat a chocolate bar before setting off home. The rock is covered in a mini forest of brittle lichens, silver greys and soft yellows, each of them decades or perhaps centuries old.

To sit on the stone and crush the lichens would be an act of vandalism, so I sat on my coat on the heathers and realised, after a while, that I was being watched. The watcher given away by a bright eye and a pair of long furry ears.

I went home via the waters shore. From the ridge a steep, and careful, foot sideways descent that occasionally needs the reassurance of grabbed handfuls of heather. As the ground levelled out more hares sprung from their forms, none of them pausing, each showing a clean set of heels. To the West, way up high, soaring on the updrafts, I saw three broad winged specks, white tailed eagles, the hares nemesis, a pair and a single bird.

In addition to the hares and eagles, I’d hoped to see Hen harriers and Red grouse. For the former a sighting is pretty much a given here, at home they’re a bird seen almost daily, either hunting the shore or quartering the moor beyond the back garden. Red grouse are here but are much more often heard rather than seen. As luck would have it the Harriers were absent that day but a few dozen yards from the track that would take me home, a pair of Grouse flushed from under my feet. A glimpse of a brief few seconds, all sunlit red and ginger-black, curling away at fence post height.

April so far, is following the trend set by March, unseasonably dry and warm days with little in the way of rain. Trees in pots awaiting new homes are being checked and watered almost daily. A sack of wild garlic, brought home from a garden where it grows thick as grass, has been scattered and planted beneath the Red alders that shelter the rear garden from the worst of the westerlies. The ground was like dust, once planted, a hose at full stretch with the jet at full power, just managed to reach them.

Despite the warmth, gardening here is a slow burn start, in the rear garden we’re still on phase two of the daffodils, ‘Tête-à-tête’ have gone over, double headed Thalia has opened, but a week or two yet before phase three, Pheasants eye, the last of our daffs, will start to unfurl and flower. A new addition to the garden is a delicate pale blue Muscari, valerie finnis, definitely a keeper.

In the front gardens perennials are starting to clump up. With no trees to shade it, the front catches the most sunlight. When we laid out the garden the decision was made to create three small areas, each bounded by stone dykes, rather than have one long and narrow space. With the sea only a couple of stone throws away it has  worked well, the dykes giving shelter and just as importantly, trapping warmth. Of the plants we grow there, first out of the blocks is a Bleeding heart, dicentra formosa, a magnet for early flying bees, not far behind is Honesty, lunaria annua (pictured top), a useful pollinator that is left to self sow, popping up wherever it wants.

While the sun shone a pleasant task was to walk a mower over the meadow, not to cut the grass, that at this time of year has still yet to turn green, but to top off the rushes. They’re a lover of damp places and we’re lucky here to have a mix of soils. The meadow faces east, sloping gently to the shore, but the ground also undulates north to south, rising and falling like a gentle swell on the sea. High spots tend to be dry, low spots wet. The upside is that you can grow a wide variety of wildflowers, the downside is that the rushes, if left unchecked in the damper spots, will swamp out everything else. When I started to mow a pair of Greylags were grazing the yet to turn green grass. They tolerated me at first, walking away, head to one side, keeping an eye on me just in case I was following. As the mower got closer nerves got the better of them, taking to the wing and settling at the edge of the moor, honking and chuntering at the inconvenience of it all.

At the bottom of the meadow, where the ground levels out before falling to the shore, it is permanently wet, squelchy in even the driest of years. We planted a long thin coppice of grey leaved willow and with an excavator, also dug four ponds, three for ourselves, plus another for a like minded neighbour. At this time of year the willows are a picture, yet to come into leaf they’re clothed in yellow-green catkins.

The ponds are slowly starting to naturalise, well worth the worry and crossed fingers, that the sunk to its belly excavator, wouldn’t get stuck. As hoped, they’ve proved to be a draw for wildlife. Last week saw Curlew and Oystercatchers probing the muddy edges, the first Swallow was seen this week, soon they’ll skim the water, blue darts, drinking and hawking for insects. In the rough and never mown ground between the ponds and the shore, a pair of Mallards are nesting, ditto the Greylags who last year hatched a half dozen goslings. Herons are regular visitors but the highlight this week was a brief visit from a pair of Teal, the uk’s smallest native duck. A bird that gave its name to a shade of green.

Clear skies brought the mirrie dancers, they also brought moonlight and the moon will wash out all but the brightest aurora. An app that pings of a possible display also comes with the caveat of a rising moon spoiling the show. Most nights brought a faint glow of green and nothing else, but one night stood out, the aurora streaking high into the sky above the house. It’s impossible to correctly expose both the moon and an aurora in the same frame. One needs a fraction of a second exposure, the other many full seconds. In the photograph below the starburst top left is the moon. Setting a small aperture on the lens gave the starburst, the overexposed moon did the rest.

As March draws to a close, it feels as if the door to Spring, ajar for a while, has finally been thrown open. It’s still early days, weeks yet before the garden is full of colour but changes are seen daily now, buds are swelling, catkins are open, birds absent since autumn are returning to the garden. With the arrival of british summer time, dusk today will fall well after 8pm. As with February, March brought little in the way of heavy rain or severe gales, the days that spanned the first day of spring were especially beautiful, bright and flat calm. 

It’s an unwritten rule here though, that you can’t have a spell of sunshine without an inevitable haar, an all enveloping sea fog that brings with it a background noise, the low rolling boom of a distant foghorn. Warm days brought a few, each drawing a veil over the land, stealing the view and washing the colour from sea and sky. But a haar is also a good thing, forming when warming air moves over a cool sea, rare in the winter, they too are a sign of spring.

So far we’ve only seen one queen bumblebee, a buff tail, rescued half dead from a bare patch of soil and given a sip of sugary water before being placed on the open flowers of a Ribes. We watched as she revived, shivering and vibrating to generate heat, I checked back a while later and she was gone. She was flying too early but as we move into April we’ll see other queens coming out of hibernation. At the moment there’s a limited menu, there are bulbs in the garden and celandines in the shelter belt but the best early bee magnets here are Ribes, flowering currants. We inherited a few that flower pink, all had gone feral at the edge of the moor, and have since added white flowering icicle. They strike easily from cuttings and offspring from both are now dotted here and there, a half dozen in the garden, more at moorland or shelter belt edge, wherever there’s a space. 

The first of the Siskins and Lesser redpolls have arrived, both are small and feisty, taking on all comers at hanging feeders. They punch well above their weight. They’ll stay for the summer and at the moment both can be counted on the fingers of one hand, before too long we’ll count them in tens.

In late Autumn a male Great tit arrived, a rare bird for this neck of the woods. We expected him to move on but he has stayed, claiming a (house sparrow) nest box and calling for a mate. I’ve a feeling he’s in for a lonely summer.

Other birds are singing of spring, a pair of Robins have claimed a nest box that’s hidden amongst the lichen covered boughs of an old garden edge Rowan. The male standing guard and singing a warning to a second pair who have claimed a box fastened to the trunk of a Sitka spruce.

A Starling has decided a cleft in a stone dyke would be an ideal des res, in his case though not so much a song, more a collection of squeaks and whistles.

In the wider landscape the first primroses are being seen. One day last week I walked a circuit from the farm of Snelsetter, cutting first across grass fields and then coastal heath, before returning back along the cliffs. In a few weeks the grasslands and heath will be bejewelled with yellow rattle and spring squill. At the moment that’s hard to imagine, it’s an exposed spot and after a winters scouring by salt laden winds, the land has yet to turn green. For now a landscape of bleached grasses, lichened fence stabs and a well worn sheep track. The hardy sheep that graze the headland use their common sense, the track leads to a sheltered hollow, on cold winter nights when I’ve been along there to photograph the aurora, I’ve shone a head torch into the hollow and seen dozens of eyes shining back at me.

The Primroses were growing amongst cliff edge scree, a dusting of creamy yellow. Tucked down low, like the sheep.

From the track that leads to Snelsetter I’d seen two flocks of Barnacle geese, each of a hundred or more. They were on pasture that in summer will be a home to cattle. All were head up and alert, as if waiting for a sign. It was a surprise to see them, the previous weeks had seen skeins of them fly north over the house, we’d assumed they had all left. Later, as I cut across the heath, I heard them start to yap, taking to the air as one, sounding like distant hounds on the scent of a fox. The first skein passed way to my right, the second skein came low, directly overhead, so close that you could fill the viewfinder with just a couple of birds.

They were heading due north, to the tundra of Greenland, where they’ll nest and rear young in a summer even shorter than ours. From where I stood, our house was also due north, as the goose flies perhaps four or five miles distant. Jacqui was in the garden, splitting plants for a garden gate sale, and I wondered if, in a few minutes time, Jacqui would also see them. She did, one skein out over the bay, the birds that passed to my right. The second skein, still flying low, went directly over the house. 

Watching them leave felt like saying a goodbye to winter, a confirmation of the arrival of spring. As I headed home, another confirmation, a small raft of Razorbills bobbing on the swell, returning to the cliffs after a winter at sea.

Yesterday dawned grey and wet, the first real downpour we’ve had for a while. Low grey cloud, clinging to the land like a wet shirt to skin. Despite the gloom, the rain was welcome, a local weather station recording Hoys driest and warmest February for 35 years. I’d agree with the driest, but at home many a day in February brought cutting Easterlies, straight off the sea with a windchill that you felt in your bones. Yesterday though was warm and calm, the rain clearing by midday to give an afternoon of mist and soft light.

I wrote last year of a Ravens nest that sits tucked on a ledge in a steep sided geo,  close to the farm of Snelsetter on the island of South Walls. I’ve kept an eye on it for a few years now and have become almost protective of the birds, seeking them out each Spring like old acquaintances. Hoping that they have made it through the winter.

The nest is an untidy pile of Kelp stems, every year winter storms wreck it and every spring the birds patiently rebuild it, collecting kelp from the shore and, when the major works are done, lining the nest with beakfuls of wool picked up from the heath.

Last year you could see the nest from the clifftop, a narrow squint giving a birds eye and slightly vertigo inducing view. This year the rock that you stand on to look through the squint, has a fissure as deep as your arm, slowly but surely pulling away from the cliff face. The nest is in no danger, the rock, when it falls, will miss it by some margin but to stand on the rock now would be an act of folly. Plan B, to see if a clutch had been laid, was to fit a long lens, hold the camera in an outstretched hand, point down and shoot blind, firing the shutter repeatedly until the screen at the back showed that a lucky shot had captured the nest.

There were five eggs in the nest, four were near identical, the fifth, paler and speckled with black. Had it been early summer and a smaller species of bird, blame for the odd one out might have been laid at the feet of a Cuckoo. I knew the birds weren’t sitting, both had watched from afar as I walked along the headland. Only when I got close to the nest site did they acknowledge my presence, the male leaving the female to circle and kronk a warning. When I walked off he followed, settling a few metres away, scolding me from a tussock of yet to flower sea pink.

The geo is on a favourite walk but for the next few weeks I’ll cut across the heath to leave them in peace. A typical clutch is five to seven eggs, it may be that more eggs are yet to be laid before incubation begins. In a few months I’ll seek them out again. Hopefully there’ll still be two adults, with a least five youngsters in tow.

February has, so far, brought unseasonably dry days. We’ve had the odd spell of driving rain and the usual shower-sun-shower, rinse and repeat. But generally the days have been dry though often bitterly cold. Today, as with recent days, there’s a straight off the sea south-easterly, a cutting wind that goes through you rather than around you.

There are stirrings of life in the garden. Snowdrops are just starting to put on a show. At the moment, flower wise, they’re few and far between. Green spears of new growth are everywhere but it will be another week or two before the greenery is topped with nodding white bells. The Goldfinches that arrived earlier in the winter are still here, ditto Greenfinches and Chaffinches. There’s not quite the four and twenty Blackbirds required to bake a pie, (in reality they were probably Rooks), but again they are counted in numbers, one, a last years youngster given away by a beak that has yet to turn to adulthood orange, meets you at the shed door each day, following you inside to pick up titbits that are dropped as feeders are filled up.

In the wider landscape, after a few months of absence wandering the seas, Fulmars have returned. At the end of January we saw one or two and wondered if a storm had driven them temporarily to the coast, but numbers have since swelled and now, on any headland or clifftop walk, they’re a regular companion. They’re awkward on terra firma but are masters of their airborne environment, however blowy the weather, they ride the winds effortlessly, gliding past on set wings. 

The Fulmars nest wherever they can, some on towering cliffs, others, like the birds closest to home, on a low cliff that in reality is more a vertical grassy bank. A favourite spot to see them is close to Snelsetter on South Walls. There’s a sea stack called The Candle that in early medieval times was topped by a small hermitage and was a home to Christian monks. The monks probably didn’t know the Fulmar, the birds didn’t spread into Scotland until the 19th century, but where men once prayed Fulmars now nest. They generally get along, nesting in close proximity to each other but now and then, as small territories are reclaimed, a loud and guttural squabble will break out.

As some birds arrive others will soon leave, following an irresistible and instinctive urge to move on to pastures new. A favourite winter visitor is the Barnacle Goose. Smaller than the now resident in Orkney Greylag, they have striking black and white plumage and get their name from a medieval belief that they hatched from similarly marked Goose Barnacles. Before migration was understood, an easy enough two plus two makes five, especially if you only saw the birds in winter and never saw them nest. In autumn I was lucky enough to see them arrive, skein after skein, heard long before they were seen. They roost on the small island of Switha and I watched, in the half light of dusk, as each skein, at around a half mile distant, dropped from height to sea level, approaching Switha at wave height, like aircraft intent on avoiding radar. They’ll leave soon, back to Greenland to nest and rear young. A bird that in Orkney marks both the arrival of winter and the coming of spring.

Another favourite visitor is the Wigeon, rare summer breeders whose numbers in autumn are boosted by thousands of Icelandic, Scandinavian and Russian birds. They’re a bird of coasts and marshes and on Hoy we see them mostly in sheltered bays. Usually by the dozen or two but occasionally in rafts of many hundreds. As with most duck species the females are feathered for concealment when sitting eggs, all mottled browns and greys, without binoculars, and at a distance, they’re easy to misidentify. Not so the males who sport a chestnut head with a tell-tale mohican streak of creamy yellow. Add in a pink breast and silver-grey body and you have a bird that, binoculars or not, can’t be anything but a Wigeon.

Oystercatcher numbers are also up. They’re here all year, but we see a rise through winter and spring, courtesy of visiting Norwegian birds They spend their days feeding on fields of sheep shorn pasture, prodding and poking the wet earth with long, carrot coloured, bills. They’re usually in the company of curlews and gulls and obligatory for grassland here, large flocks of starlings. Oystercatchers were once seen as only a bird of coasts, but during the last century they started to breed inland. When we lived in Yorkshire they were just as much a bird of moor and dale as they were of the shore. In Orkney they’re the Skeldro or the Chaldro, a scolder or teller off. An apt name for a bird that if you wander too close to its nest or young, will scold you constantly with a shrill and distinctive high pitched peeping.

February also brought the Snow moon, so called because in Northern hemispheres Februarys full moon often coincides with snow. To the Celts it was the storm moon, but my favourite comes from native Americans, the Bear moon, the time when cubs are born. 

When we first moved to Hoy we lived in the village of Longhope. Our next door neighbour, who lived in what would once have been the customs house, had moved here from Germany many decades ago. Chatting over the wall one day, I asked what had brought him to Orkney. He said he had read of islands where men burnt earth and wanted to see them for himself. It sounded very poetic and what he meant of course, was the cutting and burning of peat for fuel.

We left Longhope some six years ago and, as the crow flies, the peat banks that would once have have served our new home are around a half mile away. Walk through the back garden shelter belt, carry on up the moor to the boundary fence, jump the fence and go over a brow and they’re spread out before you. A longer and better route is to go through the front garden gate and walk a mile or so along the road, hook a right, go through a five bar gate and follow a stony track that climbs gently into the moor. As the ground rises the landscape opens up below you, the Pentland Firth & Caithness, its own moors dotted with rows of turbines, coming into view. 

I walked up to the peat cuts one day last week. The weather had settled and had brought, before storm Eowyn rolled in on Friday, bright days and crisp nights. Once through the five bar gate, instead of following a track that leads directly to the cuts, I opted for a longer route, following a fence of bright wire and sun silvered stabs, that loops around to the North and if followed to its end, leads to the islands reservoir. In small ravines and sheltered valleys you’ll find Rowans and native Willow scrub but once on the tops, where the soil is thin and the winds relentless, the stabs, and the occasional accompanying gate, are the tallest things for miles.

Up on the moors Red grouse are usually heard but rarely seen. They’re generally scarce in Orkney and on Hoy were possibly deliberately introduced for sport. Last week I got lucky, a covey of six birds crossing in front of me. Two of them paused, just long enough for a photograph to be taken, before running on, quickly lost again amongst the Heather. A half mile further on a pair lifted literally from under my feet, gliding away at Sheeps back height.

As you follow the fence and climb higher, the peat cuts come in to view below you. A friend along the road tells of days when the cuts would ring with voices, an entire community cutting and drying fuel for the Winter. Bar the call of wild birds, and depending on the day, the whisper or roar of the wind, the cuts are silent now. Oil replaced peat, just as heat pumps and solar are now replacing oil. From above, in the low angled light of a January afternoon, the works are obvious, long shallow rectangles, cut here and there by a track that allowed access first by pony and later by tractor or quad. Our own cut is among them and at home there’s an area of ground that’s black with a deep layer of peat dust. The spot where fuel, once dried on the hill, was brought down and stacked for the winter. By one of those odd coincidences, it’s the exact same spot that we chose for a solar array. Same needs, different times.

Nature doesn’t do vacuums and the cuts have, in the space of a few decades, regrown. A Harris tweed mix of easily overlooked colours, heathers and moor grasses, bright mosses and silver grey lichens.

Mountain Hares are common here, they were introduced a century or two ago, and as with the Grouse, probably by the Lairds for hunting. At this time of year their white winter coats make them easy to spot, a pause and a quick sweep of binoculars gave a count of twenty or so, some in the cuts, others on a west facing slope, making the best of the late afternoon sun. They’re protected by law and as there are no foxes in Orkney their only threat here comes from the sky. After more than a century’s absence White tailed eagles nested on Hoy in 2015, Scotlands 100th breeding pair, and since then, after a forty year absence, Golden eagles have also successfully bred here.

At this time of year the hares must be an easy target, at least to spot if not to catch, bright white against brown moor. Occasionally, on a raised or flat area of grass or heather, you’ll come across the bleached bones of an unlucky hare. The eagles aren’t choosy of course, I know of another spot, at the North end of the island, where the remains of Greylag geese will be found, a flat topped grassy  mound, littered with plucked quills and down.

As the light faded I cut back down a slope, intent on picking up the track  that I’d ignored a few miles back. At the bottom of the slope, and at the very edge the cuts, there’s what’s left of an old caravan, the place where the cutters would brew tea. Over the years the winds have done their worst, and with the track to it long overgrown, it has the look of a piece of space junk, randomly dropped in the middle of nowhere.

As I found the track and followed it home, dozens of snipe flushed from the cuts to either side of me, small wisps of half a dozen or so at a time, rising and jinking away with a quiet and nasal “kraaaat”, backlit against a pre-sunset sky. Woodcock were also seen, rising silently from under your feet. Long billed and dumpy bodied birds whose feathers, in shades of browns, buffs and greys, make them invisible until almost stepped on. On the raised banks of the cuts, Hares, too distant for a photograph, sat up on hind legs so that an eye could be better kept on the interloper.

With the sun already below the hills to the West, while the light just about allowed it, I took one last photograph, kneeling in a cut and getting wet knees in the process. A photograph of the mosses and heathers that have claimed the ground back.

January has brought a mixed bag of weather. Days of wild winds and relentless rain with occasional days of flat calm and sunshine, but mostly days of snow and frost. New year’s day itself dawned grey and wet, the view from the garden akin to a half finished watercolour, the bones were there but the colours were missing, shades of grey instead of greens and blues. A Sparrowhawk arrived mid morning, resting for half an hour on a nearby fence post, wet and slightly bedraggled but ever alert.

The days following New Year brought better weather, a couple of  fleece and Tee shirt days. A temporary wind break, put up to shield solar panels and their yet to grow screen of young Willow from the worst of the Westerlies, had come a poor second to a pre New Year 90mph gale. While the sun shone, windbreak Mk2 went up, longer stabs, driven deeper into the ground. Despite the loud rhythmic clanging of the post driver, a Robin spent the day with us. Checking the ground around our feet for goodies, and perhaps giving marks out of 10 for fence straightness and height.

We finished the fence just in time. The following day brought Northerlies, horizontal hail and bitter cold, when the winds eased, the hail turned to snow. Each shower brought no more than a dusting, never settling to any great depth, just enough to give a cold beauty to the land.

Each night brought a frost, not the -16’s and below that central Scotland has suffered but enough to make gravel crunchy and stone steps lethal. The wildlife ponds, dug a couple of years ago at the bottom of the meadow, freezing each night and thawing each day.

The cold snap has brought more birds to the garden. Finches cluster on feeders like Ants on an unlucky Caterpillar. Shyer birds have also been seen, a pair of Reed buntings, who in Spring will nest in a briar filled boundary ditch, have arrived most days. Below the feeders, Wood mice are enjoying a cold weather bounty, feeding on husks and dropped seed.

Although the garden won’t really wake from its slumber for some months,  there’s still old and new life to be seen. At this time of year, Lichens are noticed, brittle clusters of soft grey-green that have a growth rate of a millimetre or so per year. We’ve noticed that they are already starting to form on trees planted only a few years ago, those on the trees we inherited must be many decades old. A forest in miniature.

There’s younger life as well. In a sheltered spot, a perennial Poppy, planted in late Summer, is already pushing up through the earth. Bright green against last years fallen Alder leaves.

Clear frosty nights brought faint views of the Mirrie Dancers together with crystal clear views of the night sky and the Milky way. One evening, at close to midnight, I took a couple of frames, one from the edge of the garden, another from a spot where garden ends and moor begins. The silence was deafening, only broken by the click of the shutter or the occasional murmuring of Greylag geese roosting out on the water of the bay.

The weather has changed today, northerlies replaced by south-westerlies. At sunrise I walked down to the shore and took the photograph below. The grass was crunchy underfoot, white from an overnight frost, but the bite had gone from the air. Next week will bring warmth and a thaw. As I crunched down to the shore a small bob of ever inquisitive Harbour Seals appeared, homing in on the human, to see what he was up to.

The solstice, for us, dawned grey but bright, an almost monochrome start to the day. As the day moved on winds increased to gale force, the lifeline inter-island ferry managing a single early morning trip. With more wind to come tomorrow, with the exception of a medical emergency, it will be Monday now before anyone can leave or return to the island. Previous days have brought much of the same, spells of relentless rain and seemingly daily gales. Yesterday though brought a brief lull and the chance of quick trip to mainland to stock up on supplies.

Despite the wild weather, today marks a turning point, a harbinger of better things to come. The word Solstice comes from the latin, sol – sun and sistere, to stand still. For the rest of the month, at sunrise, the sun literally will stand still, rising at 09.05 on the same compass point, but at sunset, the days will slowly lengthen, by a few seconds at first but then by a minute here and a minute and a half there. By the first days of January the sunrise will also be earlier, the sun slowly tracking back eastwards. By the end of January the gloom will be behind us, in a few short weeks we’ll have gained two hours of light, spinning towards June and the seemingly endless daylight of the Simmer dim. 

At this time of year, for a few weeks through December and January, on those rare clear days, we get to see the sun rising in the Offing. The distant point on the sea where the view is lost to the horizon. The word coined the phrase “in the offing”, describing a returning ship coming into view. 

For the rest of the year the island of South Walls hides the sunrise. The island lies low in the sea and in the right light and with a little, or perhaps a lot, of imagination, it becomes one of the Orcadian poet and author, George Mackay Browns, whales – “sleeping in a silent ocean of time”.

In the garden, Jacqui cuts back most of the plants before the gales do it for us but here and there, in sheltered spots and on stronger stems, seed heads are left be. In the lee of a dry-stone dyke Hydrangea flowers have turned crisp as brown paper, nearby Rudbeckias are a deep blue-black, as if dipped in ink. Others that were also deliberately left haven’t fared so well, Moor Grasses that lit a front garden with sprays of straw-gold seed heads have finally succumbed to the winds, their broken stems scattering the ground like randomly thrown pick-up sticks.

The weather has brought an influx of finches to the garden, a mixed flock of perhaps sixty birds, goldfinch, greenfinch and chaffinch, are here most days. At the moment they’re getting the full fairground waltzer experience, clinging to feeders that spin and swing in the wind. Other birds are less easily seen, in a new willow coppice planted close to the shore, Wrens are occasionally glimpsed, a brief view of a bright eye and a cocked tail as they go about their business, searching grasses and bracken for hidden goodies. Closer to home, Dunnocks, who in Spring will lay pale blue eggs in a cup of moss, flit among shrubs and undergrowth at the edge of the garden. As a child they were hedge sparrows but in reality are no relation of our house and tree sparrows. They belong to the accentor family. They get their common name from dun, brown, but their posh or Sunday name is Hedge Accentor. Of that family they’re the odd one out, all the other species preferring mountainous regions and altitudes of 1000m or more. 

Another favourite wren haunt, is a boundary ditch that runs from the top of the meadow to the shore, six feet deep and never designed to carry water. A crofters Ha-ha, designed to keep livestock either out or in. Stock fence and barbed wire have made its original purpose redundant but now, overgrown with bracken and briar, along with the wrens, it’s also a perfect home for stonechats and reed buntings and others. The bracken at this time of year is the colour of burnished brass, it’s our marmite plant, tolerated in ditches and under trees but due to its invasiveness and smothering habit, unwelcome anywhere else.

At this time of year calm spells are grabbed with both hands. Last week, after a day or two of rain, I took a walk close to home, along a nearby headland that has views across the Pentland Firth towards the Caithness coast. It’s the year round home of a group of shaggy coated cattle who seemingly shrug off the worst that the weather can throw at them. Normally they ignore you, too busy feeding to pay much attention, but occasionally a beast will walk over for a nosey. They appear harmless but are semi-feral, so caution and common sense says put a fence between you and them. Environmentally they have a strong and positive impact. A few animals are spread over many acres, their grazing keeps the sward short and allows wildflowers and orchids to flourish, their feet will also push seeds into contact with the soil and create small areas of poached earth, bare ground where seedlings can germinate.

With the sun setting at not much after three, an afternoon walk usually involves walking home in near darkness. Last week, after checking geos for newly cast up driftwood, time was spent photographing the sea, lit by the last few minutes of afternoon light. The photographs were taken out of curiosity, to see how a new camera,  if a 10 year old camera can be new, would cope in low light. The results were better than expected. Despite the gloom each image was tack sharp, the out-takes let down not by the camera but my rusty timing, more often than not the breaking spray was captured either too soon or too late.

By the time I set off home it was just about dark. In the orange afterglow of sunset, the cliffs of Dunnet Head on the Caithness coast, some ten miles distant, were pulled close by a telephoto lens. Its lighthouse, built in 1831 by Robert Stevenson and dwarfed by the cliffs it stands on, has a beam that, on a clear night, is said to be visible from 23 miles away.

For the last few weeks, Grey Seals have been giving birth to doe eyed pups in nearby geo’s – an inlet or gully in the face of a cliff. There are two species of seal in Orkney, the Grey and the Common. Greys are larger and favour more exposed coasts. The shore of the sheltered bay below the meadow here is home to a small bob of Common Seals, but out on the headlands, and in the wilder spots, the larger Grey is much more likely to be seen. The two are easy to tell apart, the Common seal has a rounded cat like face, the face of the Grey is longer, with an elongated muzzle, a “roman nose”.

Unlike Common Seals that in Orkney pup quite sensibly in June, Greys choose the wilder winter months. On Hoy they start to give birth in late October. By mid November, local geo’s will be host to dozens of dozing pups and watchful mothers. 

Care has to be taken when approaching the seals, the mothers, if spooked, can quickly panic and toboggan back into the sea, squashing all before them. The rule is to walk slowly and quietly to the edge of the geo, and if an adult makes eye contact, back away just as quietly. For photography, a telephoto lens is essential. All the photographs here were taken from the cliff tops.

Once born the pups growth seems almost exponential. On a diet of milk that is 50% fat, the pups will, in a few short weeks, grow from around 12kg in weight at birth, to 50kg at 3-4 weeks old, a gain of up to 2kg per day.

With growth comes the moult, the pups start to shed their white coats at around two to three weeks old, a process that will take around three weeks to complete. Unlike Common Seals, who moult whilst still in the womb and can swim at a day old, grey seal pups need to moult before they are sea worthy. Moulting pups are easy to spot, the ground around them dusted white with cast off fur. As adults they’ll moult once a year, in Spring.

Generally the geo’s are a scene of calm, mothers and pups snoozing the day away on a bed of rock or sea rounded cobbles, protected from any discomfort by a thick layer of blubber.

But there’s death as well as life of course. In one geo a small white body bobbed in the surf, watched from a nearby outcrop by a pair of Black-backed Gulls, waiting for the tide to recede and give them their meal. In the early days of life a few will always be lost but the most imminent threat is the weather. In 2021, on a Scottish reserve, storm Arwen took over 800 pups. This year though, despite a few days of wild seas courtesy of storm Bert,  losses, at least locally, seem to be few and far between. By mid December most of the pups will have moulted, greatly reducing the risk of loss.

I’ve visited the same geo’s a half dozen times through November, seeing not just the pups but other wildlife as well. At this time year there’ll be Greylag and Barnacle Geese grazing the headland, on the shore Rock Pipits will be seen in numbers along with the occasional Snow Bunting. Rarer visitors may also blow in, last week, feeding in the shallows of a small pool, a Great White Egret was seen. Sods law dictating that on that particular day, I’d chosen not to take a camera because the light was so flat and overcast.

Orkney folklore tells of another breed of seal, the Selkie, the largest of all. Said to be able to shed their skins and shape shift into the human form. A local story tells of a man who stole the skin of a beautiful selkie woman and took her for his wife, she came to love him but loved the sea more. She bore him seven children but one day while her man was at sea, she found her hidden coat. Kissing her children goodbye she returned to the sea, seeking out her husbands boat to bid him a final farewell before slipping under the waves….

The past couple of weeks have done their best to live up to Thomas Hoods poem of November,  no sun -no moon – no morn – no noon – no dawn, etc, etc. Not quite true because we have had the Beaver moon and occasional days of sunshine but generally grey days and rain, with, over recent days,  snow and hail thrown in for good measure. Yesterday brought storm Bert, wild seas and sheets of rain. Today though, looking out towards South Walls, the sun is starting to light the landscape, the sky a clear deep blue. No matter how grey or wild, there’s always a silver lining.

As mentioned in the previous blog, early month dry days allowed the meadow to be cut. Once dropped, before being raked into winrows, it was left for a few days for the winds to dry the grasses and flower stems. When we first cleared the field, with a view to reinstating a wildflower patch, so thick was the growth that the raked up winrows were more like berms, snaking chest high across the field, ready to repel seaborne invaders. Now, after a few Summers of nutrients being sucked up and not replaced, the seed-heads of once chest high grasses, even in the lushest spots, can barely tickle your knees. The winrows still snake across the field but are now shin high, not chest high.

The grasses, once raked up, are collected by the pitchfork full and dumped either at the edge of the low cliff or amongst young Willow coppice. Mini haycocks, left to slowly rot down, a home for mice and bugs. As I worked a Rock Pipit arrived, leaving his or her natural habitat of the shore below the meadow. Flitting from post to ground, picking up uncovered goodies too small for the human eye to see.

In the garden the last of the flowers have succumbed to the cold. The only plants still trying to put on a show are red Hesperantha’s, for us, they’re the last man standing. The cold, or perhaps just the time of year, has brought an influx of Goldfinches, one or two pairs breed here but in Winter, although numbers ebb and flow from one week to the next, we expect to count them in tens rather than in one’s and two’s. If I wore a watch, the birds that I could set the time by would be Starlings, they arrive mid morning, bathe, squabble, eat – rinse and repeat, and stay for the rest of the day, leaving, like clockwork, a half hour before sunset to roost in a thick stand of conifers at the edge of a nearby garden.

The snow didn’t last. By Thursday, although we still got the occasional flurry, only the hills at the North end of the island still had a cloak of white, the winds, swinging back from North to South, warming and losing their edge. 

A favourite walk takes you from the farm of Snelsetter on South Walls, through a spot known as The Hill of the White Hammars, and from there along the coast of Cantick Head. It’s an area of coastal heath kept short by scouring Winter winds and the teeth of a flock of Shetland and Shetland cross sheep.

In Spring, the ground is bright with Yellow Rattle, a semi parasitic plant that feeds on the grasses, and along with the Winter nibblings of Sheep, together with the winds, helps keeps the sward short and allows wildflowers to flourish. In Summer it’s a tapestry of colour, alive with the call of Curlews and Lapwings, at this time of year the Lapwings are absent but the Curlews still call. The flowers are gone until Spring. The seed-heads of Rattle though are still visible, backlit by a low sun, shook empty by the wind.

Just off from the walk, in a field that in Summer is grazed by cattle, there’s what remains of a But and Ben house, a simple two room cottage. Only one gable remains, its hearth still intact, the coursed stone that would once have worn a coat of lime plaster, laid bare by the elements. Just beyond the house, on the heath itself, there’s the remains of a byre. If the light is low and angled just right, to the side of the byre the bumps and shadows of an old ridge and furrow system can be seen. The rest of the house is long gone, probably incorporated into a newer house, also now roofless and empty, that stands, as the crow flies, a mile or so away.

On Friday afternoon, before Bert  blew in, I walked the route again, Snelsetter to Cantick, intent on photographing Grey Seals and their pups, a subject for next weeks blog. It’s dusk here now by 3pm and by 3.30 the sun has set. The seals, pups especially, are photogenic and I spent too much time and walked too far, getting back to Snelsetter in near total darkness, mental note to self, next time, remember a head torch.