Where did June go? When I was working I dreamed of a June when I was retired and could lazily meander around the island and see all those things I thought I was missing. Instead, a combination of seabirds, Hermaness, weather, Foula, World Cup and other factors means that the month has flown by, and there seem to be places I haven’t visited for weeks.
I returned from Foula to attend the second night of a wedding; the couple had been married on the longest day in the replica Viking longhouse at Haroldswick. The following weekend was rather blowy again. Spring has been dry and sunny, but several spells of gales and near-gales over the last few weeks have taken their toll, and the sycamores outside the house, with their withered brown leaves, are beginning to make it look as though it late October not late June.
Windy weather rather restricted activities, but it is definitely high summer now. Still the odd migrant about – an elusive Marsh Warbler at Norwick on 27th and an even more elusive Black-headed Bunting still around in the area, although I haven’t seen it yet. There are, inevitably, large chicks and juveniles around everywhere: fledged Black-headed Gulls in the Norwick mires, fledged Pied Wagtails at Norwick and Baltasound, young waders all over. The Tree Sparrows are still in Northdale and at Baltasound, but no juveniles yet. There are even Kittiwake chicks on Hermaness. Arctic Terns are having a disastrous season, however: there is a lone nest on Norwick beach and I know of no others (although there are presumably others there that I can’t see).
Another glorious day on Hermaness
Sundew on Hermaness
Curlew at Norwick
On Thursday 28th June we headed south on the boat, leaving two hours late because a crew member was ‘unaccounted for’ and the ferry had been five hours late arriving in Lerwick after conducting a search at sea. That meant I watched England versus Belgium in the bar on the ferry while we were tied up at the berth.
It was a rather dull and uneventful game, not like the last time England played Belgium in the World Cup. Italia ’90 was one the great World Cups. The tournament really seemed to expand past the consciousness of just die-hard sports fans, whether it was because of the Pavarotti theme tune, or Gazza’s tears (and Lineker’s look to the bench), or the novelty of the Cameroon team looking like contenders.
But it was England versus Belgium that will stay in my memory longest. Not because of David Platt’s last gasp and career-defining volley (who can remember anything else he did in his career). No, it was because there was a film crew working on Hermaness that years, while I was warden, so I had the job of accompanying them during filming. They were filming Trials of Life, one the epic Life on Earth series, which look at animal behaviour, and had chosen Hermaness for a piece to camera, with the drama of dive-bombing bonxies. The crew were staying in the Baltasound Hotel and arranged to meet me in the back bar, at the time the most northerly bar in Britain, to watch the match on TV.
But who was with them? Who did that piece to camera? None other than David Attenborough. Yes, I watched England versus Belgium in Italia ’90 in the back bar of the Baltasound Hotel with David Attenborough – who leapt to his feet with the rest of us when Platt’s shot hit the back of the net.
David Attenbrough on Hermaness in 1990
When I Grow Up I Will Go There 