Big doors and bonxies

Where did the summer go?! It seems like I was admiring the greenfinches in April and blinked and it became October. I don’t seem to have spent a lot of the time exploring the routes before the seasons changed again, but did have a trip which almost made up for these months of lost birding. In September I made my way north to cycle what used to be route 1 of the National Cycle Network on Orkney. In the Kirkwall B&B on my first night, another guest asked the owner for advice on where best to see birds – he answered ‘just walk out the door’. He wasn’t wrong. Everywhere I cycled there was something to see…geese, lapwings and lots and lots and lots and lots of fulmars, some flying so close I could see right up that defining nostril. I even came across the sea eagle pictured – like a big door in the sky. But my highlight was the bonxie – the great skua, described by the RSPB as the ‘aggressive pirate of the seas’ for its habit of attacking other large seabirds and (gulp) eating the smaller ones. Writer Ian Humberstone muses that ‘Bonxies will always be outsiders. They will never find adoration from birders or the general public. They are too brutal, too deadly. Nor are they pretty birds – in fact, they eat the pretty birds and don’t much care if you have a problem with it.’ But there’s something shockingly irresistible about this reputation that made me delighted to see them in real life, marauding the coast and making a noise about it. A fine memory to bring back from the islands. And now we’re in October and that means it's nearly two years of doing my Explorer Award and I'm only halfway through it - time to channel the bonxie and get stuff done!