I had no idea that she was so close to me. Absorbed by the sweep of the arctic terns overhead, I crouch down to get a closer look at the flowering plants near the path, and suddenly start back when I realise a female eider duck has been inches from my feet all along. Her plumage is mottled, camouflaging brown – a distinct contrast to the male’s eye-catching black, white and green attire – and she seems entirely unfazed by me.
During the breeding season, the density of oceangoing animal and bird life packed into the Farne Islands – a small cluster of volcanic outcrops barely rising above the swelling and crashing North Sea – is overwhelming. Tens of thousands of cacophonous guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and shags crowd on to dark, guano-streaked cliffs, nurturing nests on minuscule ledges. Puffins scurry in and out of burrows amid swathes of sea campion. Grey seals slink through the waves around isolated outcrops. The air around the islands is dense with traffic, birds streaming through the sky on an endless number of errands, many carrying fish freshly plundered from the water.
