Caithness; A Bird’s Eye View

Here we are within the parameters of Spring, as it nudges at our hair and teases us into taking off these thick Winter jackets. Dare we? Signs of Spring are everywhere as I travel across the county, from the blooming daffodils to the newborn lambs. Spring is my favourite season as everything comes to life and I am reminded after the harshness of the Winter that everything passes, and this is a time to celebrate rebirth and regeneration.

Nothing reminds me of that more than the birds, especially in Caithness, perhaps because their nesting is so visible and their cries so audible. Dotted and scattered across the land, yet how many of them do we actually notice? I think perhaps that we are so used to their continual presence that we have grown immune to it.

Birds have figured prominently in some of my paintings lately, from ducks, to geese to doves, but this makes me think that they have played a big part of shaping the landscape for me, and making me feel at home. When I walk on Reiss Beach now, and hear that unmistakable shrill whistle and chirp of an oyster catcher, I am transported back to my first months in Caithness when I stayed at Freswick. Having come from the south I wasn’t used to them, so now their call is a fixed part of the land. The sound is iconic and immediately puts me in a tranquil place.

Other bird sounds that have become particularly ‘Caithness’ for me are the crows cawing in the church yard of St Fergus. I remember walking the riverside for the first time and being entranced by the noise; a loud raucous cry in contrast to the stark silence of the graves. Why they have chosen the trees above to make a home we will never know, but a community has firmly been established, as it has too across the river, behind the police station.

I think too that birds are an integral part of my story in Caithness, especially as one featured so prominently in my early days here. I remember it was a warm, summer’s night and I had left the window open. A small bird had got in and was panicking and flapping about the room. I tried to gently capture it in order to release it, but my clumsy footed dog was there first and had pawed it playfully, but before I knew what had happened, it had died. I was devastated. But the very next day, I was walking on the beach at Keiss and found, in the middle of miles of white sand, a bird’s egg, unbroken and untouched. I took it for the symbolic gift that it was. That in every death, there is rebirth.

As the crows live, the bodies sleep in the church yard of St Fergus,and so the pattern continues. If you find yourselves at Sinclair Girnigoe in the next few weeks, take a peek in the castle ruins. You’ll find two gulls nesting, safe and sound in the protective arms of the walls. And the same too at the Old Castle of Wick, not nesting, but a crow majestically perched on the ruins, surveying his Kingdom. And the thousands of birds that come here this time of year to mate and to nest in the cliffs. They are literally everywhere. I will never forget that deafening roar as I stood on the cliffs, just south of Lybster, and looked down on thousands of nesting guillemots and razorbills. I have never seen so many birds in one place.

And now too in this time of year, I can do what I have always loved, that is to explore the cliffs and crags of this beautiful coast. But my very favourite thing is to choose a high scenic point, and just sit and watch. I recommend it! Viewing from above you can lose yourself in the flight of the bird as they silently drift on the warm thermals, swooping down and round in a seamless dance of instinct. That and the gentle whisper of waves crashing far below, nothing can beat it.