The lack of trees on Orkney has meant that generations of people have relied upon driftwood and whalebone for building materials. Orkney’s Neolithic settlements had driftwood and whalebone roofs covered in turf over 5,000 years ago. Here’s a whalebone from a 50ft Sperm Whale washed onto one of Westray’s beaches. This one’s not much use for building but it’s still beautiful and fascinating to look at. I now just need to work out which bit of the whale it is.

It’s wonderful to see that the Swallows who visit Orkney in the Summer to breed have done so well. There are at least three nests in the outbuildings here and the young are learning to catch flies on the wing and perching around the house. I don’t think that catching flies here can be too difficult. I cycled down the road with my mouth open and caught two.

Worm casts at the Sands of Woo.

A cycle ride to Mae Sands and a picnic of bread, cheese and water with a nice apple. Mae Sands is so close to the Knowe o’ Skea, the Iron Age burial site that a trip round the headland is a must. I sit and look out across the water with the island of Rousay in the distance. It’s beautiful.

After an age of stillness I see a shape in the water. I think it must be the small grey seal that has been circling and looking at me, but then I see what looks like a long fin or flipper. It isn’t a seal. As it climbs up onto the rocks I realise I’m eerily close to an Otter. It sits playing on the rocks. It’s scratching, grooming, rubbing itself in seaweed, licking itself and stretching on the rocks. I know it’s a rare sight.

I have my camera with me and move slowly around the rocks to get a good view of it. I haven’t a long telephoto lens, so 200mm focal length is all I have. At this distance, it’s enough to capture it time after time after time. It knows I’m there and looks warily at me. I lie admiring it for half an hour until it’s time for it to fish. It’s swimming on its back, dipping underwater, floating and scratching and riding the breaking waves as it makes its way down the coast and is gone.

There’s the sound of pitter patter on the window – the perfect sound of large raindrops hitting the glass. It’s a romantic sound to me, speaking volumes of the isolation, the exposure, the forces of nature. I look out into the night and can’t see any rain. I strain to see raindrops falling and glistening dampness on the ground but there is none. Then I notice the pitter patter is being made by hundreds of dungflies bashing themselves against the window trying to get in.

Westray is a place you have to learn to love.

Sitting in the window seat looking over the fields and out to sea I see a huge brown raptor flying towards Einar. It looks like a chunky owl until I see the characteristic white rump and long tail. With a wingspan of over a metre, massive fingers of feathers on its wings and a huge head, it’s heading towards our garden. It’s a full grown female, with eyes and ears only for small birds and mammals. I run outside shouting for the family to come and watch as it hunts along the side of our field and then it is gone, disappearing over the brow of the hill.

Awe inspiring.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/Hen_Harrier

From Bill Oddie’s How to Watch Wildlife – Orkney’s famous and very rare hen harriers.

Gannets have started breeding on the Noup Head cliffs and are taking over many of the narrow ledges and expanding the number of breeding pairs each year. I sit on the edge of the cliffs and look down.

A 16 metre-long adult Sperm Whale beaching its carcase on the Bay of Tuquoy in 2007 was a source of much excitement on Westray. An adult male of 60 to 80 years old like this is a wonderful sight. Unfortunately, it took two years of putrefaction of rancid fat giving a stench of smelling-salts proportions to enable the weather and the wildlife to strip the carcase clean. Its bones are now reassembled and displayed outside the Westray Heritage Center.

When you move to an abandoned house there are always inhabitants who need to be evicted. Some are simply guests. Some are unwanted relatives and others are fierce squatters. Woodlice in the lamp shades. Spiders in the bath. Mice in the understairs cupboard. Birds in the hall. Wonderful primitive bristletails on the windowsills. In this menagerie here at Einar there are a few too many slugs in the kitchen for my personal comfort. Naturally they come to visit at night, creeping up on us unawares. This morning I found this one just reaching the kitchen work surface.

When living like this it’s important to glam it up a bit. We’re dining on fine white china and drinking from beautiful lead crystal glasses. It’s like being at a music festival and wearing your best frock in the mud and the rain. It’s just got to be done. Slugs or no slugs.

Grey seals strike ridiculous poses in Pierowall Bay.