The Lone Swan

Tracking the comings and goings of Orkney’s birdlife as the temperature drops

Winter arrived on Saturday 16th November.

Just like that.

Tuesday 19^th November

The dog woke me up this morning with her relentless whining and so, at 7.17am, I am here on the sofa, laptop on lap having been out for a garden adventure, put the dishwasher on, re-potted my orchid and made a cuppa. You'd be forgiven for thinking I'd been up for an hour but it's amazing what can be accomplished in 36 minutes!

It's still dark, there is a layer of…snow, or frozen hailstones, I can’t decide, and according to the Met Office it's -2 degrees (28 F). That's cold even by our standards. Our average low in November is 2 degrees and as you get towards the less comfortable ends of the temperature gauge, 4 degrees is a lot. Well, it is in the UK. For those of you in the mountains, Northern Europe and parts of North America you'll be wondering what I'm complaining about!

AI making me look 25, slim and with healthy hair.

Storm Ashley came and went without a bother. Interestingly, the winds we had in mid-Oct were more disruptive. As I've spoken about before, the wind itself isn't always the problem, it can be the sea swell, which quickly puts all travel plans to bed.

The Hoy Head carried on no problem (Hoy to Mainland), but the Hamnavoe which brings people between the South (Scotland mainland) & Orkney had to come through the slightly calmer waters of Scapa Flow travelling rather than its usual route around Hoy.

Saturday 23^rd November

And now Storm Bert is here, but he’s also pretty low key, no dramas. We tend to get a lot of messages at storm times with good wishes but to be honest, they rarely touch the sides. Things here are built to stand - everything is concreted in within of an inch of its life and most rural houses are single story. We live in a narrow single story stone cottage that’s been here for a couple of hundred years or more…it’s not going anywhere, trust me!

Nature update

October brought us a lone visitor for a couple of weeks, a Whooper Swan. It dared to come close to the house once or twice, that is until it spotted Kiki & I galloping about the garden. Then it decided to hot foot it over to another field. Sensible. When I first saw the white dot, I was quite taken aback, no sheep has ever looked that shiny. Then I got the binoculars out and realised it was a swan. We have a number of mute swan families, mostly in inland lochs and smaller bodies of water around the islands, but I've not seen one here before and never alone, so I was quite surprised. After more straining through the binoculars and on inspection of my bird books, I realised it was a whooper.

Whooper swans have a gorgeous yellow beak and are rather noisy compared to their mute swan counterparts, so named because they are quiet. Mute swans also have orange beaks and are residents in the UK whereas whoopers are winter visitors, tending to use a few places in the UK to over winter away from the harsher climates of their breeding grounds, primarily in Iceland but also in parts of Scandinavia & northern Russia – they like it cold apparently.

In winter they travel south with common UK hotspots including Caerlaverock Wetland Centre, Lochs in Aberdeenshire or Perthshire and Northumberland or Cumbria. So, the whooper wasn’t here to stay, rather making a pitstop to rest its weary wings and grab some much-needed sustenance. After 10 days I began to worry it had been injured but it was soon off. Well, that's what I'm telling myself, the alternative is that it has died in a corner I can’t quite see and has been picked apart by hooded crows and gulls. As much as I love the hooded crows, I really do hope it continued on its way.

The UK also has another swanny visitor, although not to Orkney, the Berwick swan. Smaller than the whooper and more delicate in looks and their calls, it also has a glorious yellow beak. Like the whooper, they to are fans of the cold and breed right up in the Russian Arctic, over wintering across Eastern Asia and Western Europe. If you want to see them in the UK head to places like the Ouse Washes or Slimbridge Wetland Centre in eastern England.

Whilst the jazzy whooper swan has gone, I continue to see crows, greylag geese, starlings, and blackbirds - hard to miss when your dog insists on chasing them round the garden. My pied wagtails have gone, I would often see two but didn’t see any youngsters which makes me think their nest failed or as soon as they fledged, they were off. There are far fewer gulls around now, the black-headed (favourites) and common gull have gone on their way but some species remain, in our neck of the woods it’s mainly the massive black-backed gulls.

And then there are the ducks, we don’t have so many in our little bay anymore but driving around the island I see them in greater numbers. My favourite, the Shoveler, is a winter visitor in other parts of the UK but resident here. That said, migratory birds do come and join the residents for winter and I was delighted to see a good sized flock of them in the water last week. The males have a deep rich green head with bright yellow eye and a large shovelling kind of beak, hence the name!

Other that I can hear the peeps and songs of a host of day time birds I’ll probably never be able to identify, then a night it gets a bit more haunting with the screech of the barn-owl and the melodic calls of the curlew. We have a number of curlews nesting near us during spring and summer but come winter they disappear from sight, only their calls giving them away. I expect they’re hiding out, well camouflaged in the nearby heath.

And here we are, 6pm on Friday 29th November, another 6 days have passed and I am only getting this out to you…I had intended it to be with you on Thursday 21st and then Sunday 24th…

I love to write but I can’t seem to get to it with any consistency - bear with!

Han 🧡

PS. You’ll notice there are no photos pf birds, there are 3 reasons for that:

1. I’m not a good photographer, all photos are taken with my iPhone.

2. They are generally too far away, especially as I usually have a dog in tow.

3. They are quick, I am not!