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Andrew Stowe - Watson Project 2006-2007
Beyond the rocks and jutting stacks that guard the entrance to this small, U-shaped, cliff-lined cove, the open ocean stretches on until its blues and greys subtly merge with the clouds that bask on the horizon, an infinity of water and air, and if I lean, slowly and carefully, a foot to my right or left, I am greeted by another infinity of air, somehow greater and even more breathtaking than the first, that reaches from the grassy rocks and lichen that form my small perch to a wave-washed sandy strip and a few boulders hundreds of feet below. The cliffs of insanity, I thought dizzyingly, when I finally conjured up the nerve to stare directly down their sides, and the mad, resounding cackles of the kittiwakes, whose nests litter the cliff side and cling to small ledges that are barely wide and long enough for two adults to stand side by side, did nothing to shift that vein of thought. The water at the base of the cliff on the edge of whose jutting finger I have crept is calm, and though the morning is late, the sun is only just beginning to splash and cascade down the green, near-vertical slopes to the cove below, protected as it were on this the western side of the island from the brightness of early morning sunlight by those steep cliff sides. Perhaps to take advantage of this late morning gift of light and warmth, a group of Common and Grey Seals fish and play in the blue-green water below, lounging on the exposed rocks and swimming in and out of the patches of red-brown kelp strands that wave gently below the water's surface. Today is the last day of July, and while summer promises to persist on Fair Isle in the southern seas of Scotland's Shetland Islands for another month at least, the birds that make their homes here have begun to grow restless. For the Arctic Terns, fishing in and just beyond the cove for sandeels to carry back to their near-fledged young at the base of the hill to my east, and for the birds that nest on the face of these cliffs, the fulmars, kittiwakes, puffins, guillemots, and shags, the season's imminent shift is being felt already. Each gust of wind that threatens to cast me off of my precarious throne into the swirling cyclone of birds below me brings for those birds an ever-growing restlessness, a call to leave the cliffs and fly out over the ocean; that persistent tug of migration. A Great Skua, a bonxie if you're from the Shetlands, swoops low along the edge of an adjacent cliff, its huge stiffly-held brown wings casting a menacingly large dark shadow on the water below, and then turns sharply and shoots out over the cliff's edge, plummeting down towards the water below and sending puffins and young kittiwakes scattering for the cover of the rough pockmarked surface of the cliffs. The urge to linger on this grassy sun-drenched protrusion is strong, but the terns, which are already being joined by birds from colonies on islands further north, could vanish from this island with the next assertive southerly breeze. So a longer date with this seductive secret cove, certainly a more permanent member of this island than the terns, I'll leave for another day.
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