According to the Met Office, the Shetland Islands are some of the windiest places in the UK, and they’re living up to their reputation. Our planned bird cruise to the gannet colony of Noss is cancelled. Instead we make for Sumburgh Head, the spectactular southernmost point of the Shetland mainland.
White-capped waves crash far below the cliffs and sweep out to the horizon, spindrift tosses up mini-rainbows and creamy plumes of sea froth float up and over. A few puffins – tammie norries in the Shetland dialect, which has its roots in Scots, English and Nordic languages – are still couried into ledges, and a bonxie (great skua) powers past; a lone gannet – a solan – circles briefly at eye level, as small lines of them fly low across the waves, cormorants cutting across their path. I’m always inordinately pleased to see gannets now, after bird flu decimated their colonies. A friend here tells me that some gannets’ pale blue eyes have turned black – a possible sign of surviving avian flu – but it’s too blustery to hold my binoculars steady enough to see for myself.
