Saturday 26th May 2012

A LOVELY DAY OUT TO A LOVELY ISLAND


Well Rodney and Libby got away on The Pentalina on Saturday and phoned us later to say that they were home for about 8pm. Not bad time.
 After they had left, I went down to Kirkwall and joined a trip out to Auskerry.
 Auskerry is small island a few miles off Stronsay that I have long wanted to go and see. Many years ago, when Gareth and I used to come up to Linga Holm for the RBST round up of the North Ronaldsay sheep that the trust kept there, Simon Brogan, the owner of Auskerry used to come across and give us a help. He is a really nice bloke and for many years, until he married, he used to live alone on the island with a boat just dropping in every 6 weeks to fetch his mail. He now just spends 10 months of the year there with his family.
 When we worked with him, he was so used to being alone that after a while he had to move up the beach a few yards away from us for a time every now and again. This from a man who used to be a road manager for "Jethro Tull" and involved in concert tours by "The Who".

 Anyway, I finally managed to get over to the island and we were greeted by Simon as we landed. After a biy of a reminder, he remembered who I was and it was nice to see him again, and this time on his own beloved island. The island is indeed beautiful, with just the lighthouse at one end, Simon's house at the other end and loads of North Ronaldsay sheep and birds in between.

 I was very keen to see what his sheep were like. I was not disappointed. He has some spectacular animals and they look brilliant, especially on the shore where they really belong.

The rams were really something special. I have never seen so many superb looking rams. They were much better than those on Linga Holm.
 Simon and his family sell wool, fleeces and skins and they have several hundred sheep living on the island just as they should do.

The trip was organised by the RSPB and so I thought that I had better take an interest in the birds as well as the sheep. Simon was saying that there used t be many more terns and puffins than there are now, but there were still a lot of terns and I have only ever seen more puffins on Swona. There were hundreds of shags and tysties, a couple of arctic skuas which are great looking birds even if they are theives.

We had our flasks and butties sat on a grassy bank at the top of some low cliffs and without realising it, we were sitting in the middle of a whole load of puffin burrows. I spent a few minutes wondering why every now and again one of the puffins would leave a raft of about 50 birds in the sea below us and would fly up close to us and then back down to the sea before I realised that they were just wanting to get into their burrows.
 I tried to be clever and get a photo of a puffin in flight as they came close to us but most of what I got were empty blue sky. This is the best one so no photography prizes yet then.


The highlight of the day was a Red Backed Shrike. These no longer breed in the UK and though a couple have been seen in Orkney over the last week we were very lucky to get such a good look at one as it sat on a fencepost in Simon's garden while we were having a cup of tea.

Another blurry photo but still it is rare so you will have to put up with blurry.

Simon's house is just what you would expect. I think that most of it has been built by Simon onto a very small original bothy. It has wind turbines, solar panels and of course well water. We were not even allowed to wash our own cups as he thought that we may waste water and I think that the well does not have a huge supply.

 A lovely place to live on a nice, calm, sunny day for today but a little bit isolated for me especially in winter storms. Still it must be nice to wander about knowing that it is all yours and that you are not going to bump into anybody else.