BOOK OF THE WEEK

A Scottish Wildlife Odyssey by Keith Broomfield, Tippermuir Books, £9.99

Readers may be familiar with the nature writing of Keith Broomfield, but this book takes us beyond our familiar shores, on a fivemonth quest to find Scotland’s treasures, following on from the author’s If Rivers Could Sing, shortlisted for the Saltire Society Awards in 2021.

In the south we listen to skylarks, observe barnacle geese, natterjack toads, red kites, live cockles, whooper swans and nuthatches. Next, it’s feral goats, vendace and the near extinction of the latter. Berwick seals and herring gulls, Glasgow water voles and Edinburgh foxes are wondrous examples of nature’s ability to adapt to town and city life. In Glen Finglas, we listen to chaffinch, while osprey and white fallow deer are neighbours to beavers, controversially re-introduced in the “Beaver Nirvana” of Atholl. In the north-west Highlands, we chance an otter and witness great north divers, while on Skye we are superstitious of the rowans at abandoned croft sites. At Braemar, red

deer and mountain hare delight, before we travel to the “Seabird City” of Fowlsheugh in Aberdeenshire where kittiwakes, guillemots and fulmars abound, but the absence of puffins leaves a shadow.

Bloomfield’s zoological knowledge comes to the fore in the connections he makes between each species’ dependency on its surrounds. He ponders origins of species such as the brown trout in the Cairngorms, but his anger mounts when he reflects on whale hunting: “The continuation is a dark stain on the soul of humanity” he writes, after observing minke whale on the Minch and pondering on plastic pollution and

its devastating effects on seabird numbers and orca whales. The “trolls of the sea” (Manx shearwaters) and Shetland bonxies have pride of place in Broomfield’s odyssey, alongside flowers like the daisy, “our most inspiring wildflower” and a “beautiful little plant with the toughest of hearts”. Jellyfish, sea-eagles, and Arctic terns helped steal Broomfield’s heart in

Harris, but swimming with sand eels in Sutherland made him sharply aware of the potential catastrophe that awaits seabird colonies – the kittiwakes in particular – in Shetland. Climate change is the main cause but over-fishing for sand eels is adding to the decline of kittiwakes and an already 90% drop in the population there. Overall, however, this is a joyous read, celebrating nature and reminding us of how lovely Scotland’s natural environment is, and that “we

should cherish nature, and never let it go”.