Still Husavik
Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Tue 1 Jul 2008 00:00
 I had meant to go out on this schooner
but was a bit late and I could not summon the
energy to rush.
Why not? Well, difficult to see, but
there are probably 60 people on board
and they motored out of the harbour and then
motored
straight into the wind until I lost sight of
them.
In the morning a couple, who had got very
wet, only saw one fin.
They seemed happy, but we saw more
round Scotland.
I walked out along the breakwater and got this shot
of the town.
 I then set off up the hill and got to the shoulder
below the radio masts, about 1,000ft up.
Can you see the blue lupins covering most of the
hillside? Very wet they were as well.
The rest of the grass, flowers and bushes were no
problem but the lupins soaked me to above the knees.  There were three different bird species
conspicuously present,
with the golden plovers (in northern
plumage) doing serious patrolling.
There were two more out of
shot busy cheeping in their musical way.
Higher every time I moved, lower again
if I kept still.
Why it needed four of them to round me up I
do not know.
 There were also black tailed godwits flying
round and round chattering,
could not even keep their beaks
shut to be photographed.
I may have been disturbing them in the
breeding season
but they kept this going from right up
on the shoulder back down into the town.
The other birds that did not come close to be
photographed (with an ordinary little camera, not a big Nikon) were snipe.
Now usually snipe fly past and I mutter "probably
snipe" as they are too quickly gone to
be identified as anything else.
In this case they were clearly enjoying themselves,
doing short dives that produced a vibration,
I looked for a machine on the hillside the first
couple of times, but then it clearly came from birds high
above.
The book calls it drumming and says it usually
happens at dusk.
Drumming is a poor description, ululating seems
closer, and there is no dusk up here.
They are right to call it a display flight because
it certainly is.
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