Wings on the wind
On the broken cliffs of St Abb’s Head, a different kind of magic can be seen – if you know how to look.
Words by Ceris Aston
Illustration by Bethany Thompson
January
I stand some distance from the cliff edge, shoulders bowed, legs braced. It is a point where land meets sea meets sky; where ragged rock has long endured the beatings of seas and wind.
The great unyielding mass of water delivers crashing blows, grey waves against grey rock, throwing white spume high into the air. The wind takes the spray and gives it teeth. Together they make a mockery of layers, slice through to the skin, gouge an unerring channel through my warm flesh-and-blood body. My face is wet, pink and raw, my eyelids bruised.
I catch a gasping breath, stumble to the car, brace myself to open the door and again to stop its slam. My ears ring in the sudden stillness. It feels as though the earth must shudder and shake and break apart.
And then, rising, a grey and white shape – a bird? Impossible, for nothing living could endure this. Yet there it is; flying in the teeth of the wind – soaring, banking, gliding, impossibly at ease. It moves with casual, breathtaking grace – playing with the wind, which from tormentor has turned dance partner. They have danced this duet before, and wilder ones than this.
They exult in the air, flying for flying’s sake. There is something uncanny in it. Can they be made of feather and hollow bone, or are they a creation of the wind and sea?
This is the northern fulmar. Cousin to the albatross, they are subject to the same superstition – that they are the spirits of drowned sailors. Wandering the seas, one might accompany a vessel for a while, seeking the comradeship of its past life. Then, all too soon, disappearing from sight.
Subject to the whims and mercies of the sea, sailors are known for being superstitious – and some of the beliefs linger. Perhaps it is nostalgia, perhaps the fear of tempting fate. No whistling, no vicars, no green aboard ship. Turn always to starboard after leaving harbour.
Seabirds too signify luck – good or bad, or – in the case of the storm petrel – both. These tiny, martin-like birds are associated with bad weather, but opinion is divided. Do they bring only warning, or do they bring the storm itself? You can almost believe it of these strange elementals. Seabirds belong to sea and sky. Necessity alone draws them to land.
June
The cliff tops are blanketed with pink thrift, each tousled head nodding peaceably in the breeze. It is a picture postcard day – blue skies, blue seas and sunshine. I step beyond the rocky rise above Foul Carr.
It is an assault on the senses: a barrage of sound, movement and smell. Thousands of guillemots jostle and gargle; kittiwakes call their names, whirling and dipping, fetching mud for nests. Razorbills in their crevices give throaty purrs. A guillemot flaps frantically, lands on the steep rock – another takes off further along the crowded shelf. Move aside – my spot – over here – look out! The air is full of flapping birds – it seems impossible that they should avoid collisions. Where is air traffic control? The breeze carries the smell of guano in waves.
How do they find one another? How do they find their nests, be they burrows, shelves or crevices of rock? How do they keep eggs safe on these steep cliffs? They could scarcely have found a more inhospitable place to begin life.
A crow swoops down to a row of kittiwake nests, and if these graceful gulls were loud before, now they are shrill with panic, shrieking and diving. Undeterred, the corvid lowers its beak to the perfect egg, eats. She has her own young to raise. On these precipitous cliffs, I see it all – spite, affection, courting, rejection, loss. They are like us and unlike us, as compelling in their similarities as in their differences. A few feet from where I stand, a pair of razorbills rub heads, share intimate, unintelligible murmurs. As with the birds themselves, understanding feels almost, but not quite, within reach.
Gliding at eye height, a fulmar observes me with a large, dark eye. I watch the effortless sweep of her flight until she lands clumsily beside her mate. The two cackle together – a bawdy, mocking, companionable sound.
August
The cliffs are empty. They might have always been thus, but for the streaks of white guano on the rock. All is silent – though the ringing cacophony of just a few weeks ago seemed like it must echo on forever.
I feel like one who was once spirited away by the fairies, returning by the same worn paths in forlorn hope. Their strange music is stilled, the glamour of the cliffs has been removed. I hear mocking laughter – ahhh, ahhhhh, ahhhh. A herring gull throws back its head. I am heavy-limbed, land-locked. For a while, beings from another world have dwelt with us. Now they are gone.
Until recently, that’s all we knew – the seabirds had gone, not to return until the following spring. Their movements were a mystery. How did they survive, out there in the deep blue? Where did they go?
Ringing provided our first real knowledge of the movements of individual birds. Unique numbered rings were fitted around birds’ legs, light enough to be carried on migration. Ringed Manx shearwaters from the Welsh island of Skokholm have been found in South America – some covering a journey of over six thousand miles in less than a fortnight. When taken away and released far from home, if it can see the sun or stars, the Manx shearwater orients itself and flies directly home.
Tiny tracking devices brought us further, breathtaking knowledge. Shetland’s red-necked phalaropes fly not to the Arabian Sea, but westward into the Pacific to the coast of Peru – a sixteen-thousand mile round trip. Puffins, with their tiny, comical, flapping wingbeats, can fly as far as Canada to overwinter. The delicate Arctic terns fly each year from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again. In a lifetime they may fly the equivalent of three return journeys to the moon.
More knowledge brings more questions. How do seabirds find their way? Young puffins and shearwaters are left on land to fend for themselves – yet set off on cue for their wintering grounds. Do they follow in the flight-paths of their parents? And if so – how? And science may bring the answers. But as I look out at sea, I imagine seabirds dancing with the wind, and think of the words of Terry Pratchett: “It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.”