Blogging at 21:25 on Wednesday 3rd April from intended overnighting spot N 58.94147°, W 03.04999° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:58.94147%2C-03.04999
It was a great camp last night and as soon as we were up I was able to get into full birding mode. The bay, sea and arable-scapes instantly visible from the camp returned a wealth of birdlife.
The spot also turned up a bit of an anomaly. Emma went for an early morning trudge and came back with tales of spotting an unusual creature. Such was the appearance of the animal that she was, at first, convinced she'd seen a Scottish Wildcat. However, not only would that species have been far from its natural habitat, but the animal she saw also demonstrated some really atypical feline behaviour: by disappearing down a burrow.
Emma knows cats and immediately recognised this as utterly bizarre. Upon returning to the truck she tried to make sense of it by searching the internet and lo-and-behold others have seen similar creatures demonstrating similar behaviour. What she wasn't able to establish - given limited connectivity - was quite what might be going on here. Definitely one to follow up...
After quitting camp we basically just bumbled, taking in more cultural and natural history sites as we went. There are plenty of such sites to see and most are also helpfully clearly signposted. This attention to signage is seemingly pretty indicative of Orkney civic pride more generally. From what we've seen so far, there isn't much of a litter problem, there are plenty of regularly emptied public bins, and also plenty of clean and well provisioned public toilets. The more we see, the more we appreciate. We think we like it here!
Bird sightings today added even more to the already impressive list, the most noteworthy of which were great-northern diver, ringed plover and possibly (a fleeting glimpse of a) short-eared owl.
Away from birds, mountain hares seem to be doing incredibly well, probably helped in no small part by what is clearly a concerted effort to rid the islands of an influx of invasive stoats. No one really seems to understand how stoats arrived here (only a few years ago) but it's evident that the eradication program is serious. It seems something like 8000 traps in total have been set and we've personally seen literally hundreds in just about all of the locations we tend to gravitate towards. The program is apparently a humane one. Hmmm.
Best cultural history attraction of the day has been the Cuween Hill Chambered Tomb. The known history relating to the deposition of human and domestic dog bones thousands of years ago would have been interesting enough in its own right, but over-and-above that, it's also possible to crawl into the renovated tomb and explore the various chambers. Notwithstanding the tight, claustrophobic and dirty inevitability, the experience was thoroughly immersive.
In other news, the day has again been pleasingly dry if overcast, but the howling, bitterly cold northeasterly wind has persisted. It genuinely cuts to the bone and makes doing anything outwith the comfortable confines of the truck a real ordeal. Even running today was a debilitatingly cold affair. According to the weather reports the feels-like temperature is around -1 degree Celsius, but even that seems way too conservative. We've been out over many a winter and have been immersed in snow and ice at a genuine -10 C before, but the cut of this wind is truly something else.
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