Cashing in
George Gay was in for a surprise when a trip to the bank resulted in the discovery of a third for Scotland.
THIS is probably one of the weirdest finder’s accounts I could ever hope to write! With the season coming to a close on North Ronaldsay, Orkney, our usual hectic, 24/7 birding lifestyle had slowed down and we’d turned to more everyday tasks, such as shopping for supplies. This and the fact that Assistant Warden Dante Shepherd was heading home to London after the autumn season is what brought us to Kirkwall, on the Orcadian Mainland, on 18 November, in the first place.
We’d just been to a café for lunch and were heading back towards the flat on Victoria Street when Heather, my longsuffering other half, decided she needed to pop into the bank. I think that in a noncoronavirus world Dante and I would have probably followed her and I wouldn’t be typing this out!
While Heather disappeared into the bank we stood outside, a little apart from one another, looking around rather aimlessly. It was at this point I noticed what I thought looked like hirundine fly between the two sets of houses lining either side of the narrow street. I thought little of it until
it did it again. I thought to myself how it looked quite dark and seemed pretty big, too.
I shouted over to Dante to alert him to the bird: “Mate, there’s a martin or swift or something flying between the chimneys over here.” He got onto it pretty quickly, but we had no optics and no cameras – just full stomachs! We got a bit closer to it and began to take it in. It was a rather uniform dusky brown colour; clearly a swift or martin of some kind. We must have realised quite soon we were onto something good and Dante got excited very quickly (if you know him you’ll get what I’m saying here); the tell-tale sign that something’s good is when he starts grabbing you and indeed I was being grabbed by this point.
I don’t think either of us remember much about the next few minutes, but from what Heather says there was a lot of swearing, pointing and general confusion, and then I ran off. At this point I care to mention that we still didn’t know what the bird was. I’ve seen hundreds of Eurasian Crag Martins on trips abroad but it didn’t click, probably because we were in Orkney in November and it was bloody cold!
We’d chucked a few birds into the mix at this point and Chimney Swift seemed a good candidate,
although what we were watching was too big. Moments like this are rarely filled with clarity and rational thinking, though.
We decided between us that I’d run back to the flat and grab binoculars and a camera, while Dante would stay on the bird. By this point we’d sort of concluded on size and colour it was probably a swift of some description, but our initial views were quite bad and chaotic. I ran to the flat, still shaking with adrenaline, and returned.
By this point the bird was passing low over the rooftops and Dante grabbed me and said: “It’s a f***ing crag martin!”. This was followed by a tirade of swearing and hugging one another, before we put the news out to Paul Higson, Alan Leitch and the rest of Orkney’s birding community. I think by this point we’d caused quite a scene; where the martin was is effectively the high street, so there were plenty of people going about their daily business and two young lads pointing at rooftops talking loudly and trying to photograph something isn’t exactly what you expect to see.
I’m not sure I’ll have a more eventful shopping trip and honestly, I’m not sure Heather wants me. I never did get that microwave … ■