The road up to Sumburgh Head passes by a couple of old quarries. The quarries are well known to birdwatchers who wish to find migrant birds. I like them because they are full of fulmars, and I used to visit them when when on holiday at Aunty Christines (a massive three miles from where I was brought up). Maybe some of the birds nesting there are the same individuals I saw as an eight year old.
The young fulmars, or maalies as we call them, have been fledging when there's no wind. So, they end up wandering on the road unable to take to the air.
Not being the safest of places to be, there's been some mornings and evenings when I've had to capture the unfortunate fledglings to put them on the sea. Of course, maalies have developed an interesting defence strategy in that they projectile vomit their stomach contents at the 'attacker.' Anyone who has been hit by maalie vomit will know it is quite pungent and a nightmare to wash out of clothing. My technique is to let the vomit hit my bare skin rather than clothes, and actually I don't find it that unpleasant.
Whilst I type this, I am reminded of last spring when the BBC Out of Doors radio programme broadcast live from Sumburgh Head one beautiful morning at 6am. During the intereview, I confessed that as a bairn I had coaxed a maalie into being sick on my dress. Being a tomboy, I'd been afronted that Mom had put me in such a garment. It was only then, thirty years on, that she discovered it had not been an accident as she'd been led to believe. Woops!
This morning, it wasn't a fulmar which stopped me in my tracks. A merlin (smyril or peerie hawk in Shetland) was plucking a wheatear (stanechekker) in the middle of the road. Raptors aren't all that common in Shetland, but merlins breed throughout the isles and we do get migrant birds of prey, like pallid and marsh harriers which are around at the moment.
Most of the maalies have now fledged. We'll soon be checking on the storm petrels study sites on Mousa, to measure and weigh the chicks with Shetland Ringing Group. It is perhaps my favourite day of the year.