Well I nearly caught up. More effort required.

Wednesday afternoon At last!! I finally get to do the things that I came here for. I got a phone call to say that the storm petrel ringing was on for 10:45PM tonight at Birsay.
Pam made me a sandwich, a couple of scones and a flask of coffee and I shot off at 10 PM to pick up Dave Wakefield from Holm and the RSPB warden Alan Leitch from Finstown then up to Birsay.

At Birsay we headed down tracks across a few fields towards the cliffs.
Now my night vision is not the best in the world so I was not totally convinced that driving over a field towards a cliff was a really good idea. I said nothing however as I did not want to cause any disquiet amongst the passengers.

We passed the Birsay whalebone, an Orkney landmark which I had not previously seen so I could at least plunge over the cliffs to my doom with one more landmark ticked off my "to see" list.

We did eventually arrive at our destination safely so all we had to do was to get down a steep path carrying bags, poles and nets as well as our own rucksacks without any lights. Once the mist net was set, all we had to do was sit back and wait for all the petrels to hurl themselves into the net.

On other nights recently they had caught between 13 and 37 storm petrels for ringing so I was sure to see my first one wasn't I??????
The wind then began to rise and the the net does not work properly in the wind so Alan decided that as we would probably not catch anything, we would wait until 12:30 and then pack up and cut our losses. It looked as though I would not be seeing my first storm petrel after all.
At 12:25 a storm petrel flew into the net and the net worked. It already had a ring so it will be interesting to see where it was originally ringed.
I was going to take a photo but I do not think that my camera would have coped in the darkness so I asked Alan if he would mind if I used one of his photos and he kindly said this was OK. Credits for the photo are therefore due to Alan Leitch.
I have seen photos of storm petrels before but have never seen one live. It was a really beautiful bird, a bit bigger than a sparrow but with webbed feet and a tube nose, perfect for life at sea.Its head seemed to be almost covered in fine fur rather than feathers. There was something about it that seemed not really of this world, possibly belonging to the world of the fairies and elves that is not to far removed from Orkney even today.

It was then weighed and measured before being released none the worse for wear.
We then packed up and returned home but at least I have seen my first storm petrel and was enchanted by it.