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.

Dunlin are wary birds. As I walk along the Bay of Tafts they jerk in nervous motion and skit further along the beach to keep a watchful distance. As I paddle in the water they are less wary and I manage to approach within a few metres from the seaward side of them as they forage on the tide line. I’ve never been this close before and can see every detail of their wonderful plumage. I can also just see my camera left in my rucksack on the beach. Later I try again with my camera, but they are much more wary and take flight in furious motion. I’m left with memories of a close encounter and not photographs.

Idyllic weather in Orkney? T-shirt and shorts on the beach? It must be August and it must be a fluke, surely? Westray is only 15km long yet has an 80km coastline with 17 sandy beaches. Today we spend the entire afternoon at the Bay of Tafts.

Hermit crabs have taken flat periwinkle shells for protection and scuttle along the sand. Shoals of sand eels parade the shallows. Flatfish leave puffs of fine white shell sand and attempt to burrow underfoot. One lands on Evie’s foot and stays there an age, tickling gently. We catch it and marvel at its camouflage.