Christine's walking & birds blog

Having arrived on Orkney Mainland, we drove straight to Skara Brae from the ferry and whiled away an hour at this famous Neolithic settlement.


On the sea, a cormorant was doing its best to swallow a wide, white fish. In the end the fish came out again and the cormorant flew away!


A memorial to General Kitchener stands on the cliffs near Marwick Head; but a curved wall at the foot of the outsize tower holds the names of all who died (737) when the HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine during the first world war.



The cliff-tops were rough and unstable, with cracks and holes in the surface and slumped patches where rainwater collects. It's easy to see how stacks are eventually created. A few fulmars were circling below us or crouching on ledges.

On the way back, three wheatears foraged ahead of us on the path with a couple of meadow pipits.


We liked the Stones of Stenness, which stand on a natural causeway between the lochs of Stenness and Harray. In the background are the hills of Hoy.


This is a small henge compared with the impressive Ring of Brodgar, but we spent more time here as the site includes the remains of Barnhouse Village - a late Neolithic settlement. There were also, it has to be said, plenty of birds on Loch Harray, including loads of pochard and tufted ducks, and several Slavonian grebes. And this was something that brought everything to life for me - the idea that 5,000 years ago there would have been the same birds, and almost certainly in even greater numbers. So the constant cacophony of greylags and other waterfowl that drifted across the water would have been heard at this time of the year by the Neolithic people who lived here. Did they like to hear the birds? Did they exploit them as a source of food?

You are never far from farming on Orkney Mainland. Just across the fence, a man on a quad bike rounded up a large flock of sheep remarkably quickly, moving them to the next field along. Which left these two rams (in the same field as us) standing sadly watching as their chance of a love life receded before their eyes!


At St. Peter's Pool on the south coast, we climbed the dunes to face the sea. A dead seal lay half submerged in the sand, while long-tailed ducks effortlessly rode the waves on the wind-heaved water.


On the way to the north-west corner of the island, I spotted a white-winged bird fly up from the road and over the wall into a cemetery. I walked along the wall and was able to snap a snow bunting on a gravestone.


Huddled at the base of the cemetery wall was a poor blind rabbit. Myxomatosis, I suppose. We drove on to the Brough of Birsay - an island connected to the mainland by a concrete causeway across a fascinating tidal area pitted with rock-pools.


We walked up to the lighthouse and scanned the sea for birds. A great northern diver flew swiftly past followed by two barnacle geese; and a flock of twite flew restlessly around. On the drive back to the hotel two hen harriers were spotted quartering fields and a low ridge.


The last day was windy and wet, and we just drove about - getting a soaking on this road as huge waves surged over carrying seaweed and small stones that rattled against the car.


Light was fading as we boarded the ferry, and the black guillemot we looked down at from the deck didn't come out well in the picture - but it's still the best pic I've taken of a "tystie".


The birding interest of our five days lay mainly in numbers - in the constant spectacle of swimming and flying flocks, in the music of curlews and golden plovers - rather than in anything of a rare or special nature.