The Seafarers
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The RIB skims past the southern tip of Bressay. The Isle of Noss rears up in front of us, like a manta ray in sandstone, swimming up. Its mouth is the Noup of Noss, the 181- metre cliff that crowns the eastern end of the island. The boatman holds out a herring, as silver as the sky. A great skua swoops low, twice. On the third swoop it holds its wings up high, out of the way, stoops with its neck and plucks it neatly from his hand. It takes a second herring and flies back to Bressay, pursued by a second skua, clever enough to watch, cautious enough not to try.
Noss is sandstone, the colour of concrete, decorated with strands of white guano like old cobwebs. Its cliffs are not eroded sheer or into chunks of rock like others. It is eroded into a bubbling pattern, almost honeycomb in places. It has the architecture of a wasp’s nest, the grey sandstone chewed up like a pulp and moulded into elaborate cells and layers that erosion has peeled back and laid open to the air. Like a wasp’s nest, there is a sting, a catch, the potential for pain.
Gannets nest on the honeycomb of the cliff in their thousands. They sit in pairs, pointing to the sky, swaying their heads. They stir. The scent of the boat’s herring fills the air. They take off, tessellating in a sky that is suddenly as much bird as light. The great skuas lurk. The boatman takes a tube, dips it into the sea and slides the herring down it and into the current, drifting away from the boat. The gannets call, go quiet, and plunge.
Gannets have a 6- foot wingspan. Skuas don’t. Gannets have a dagger for each mandible and screw themselves up into darts as they thump into the sea, bill first. En masse they become a hailstorm of birds, churning the water, splashing the boat.
There are two great skuas in the storm. On paper the fight is a ridiculous mismatch. As the gannets surface, clutching fish, the two skuas pounce, bludgeoning through the frenzied flock to get to the gannets surfacing with fish. They mug them with power. n