Sea Eagle
Bill nearly as long as the head, very deep, compressed, straight, with a long curved tip … Stomach large, compressed, oblong, slightly curved, the muscular coat very thin; the two central tendons small and thin … the inner coat soft, without rugæ. Pylorus with a valve formed of three projections. Intestine very slender, nearly uniform in diameter until towards the extremity, when it is considerably dilated … Eyes large, overhung by a thin projecting eyebrow; eyelids edged with bristly feathers … Head broad, rather large; neck rather long and strong; body full and muscular, of great breadth anteriorly; wings long … The cere and bill are pale primrose-yellow; the iris bright yellow; the tarsi and toes gamboge; the claws bluish-black. The general colour of the head, neck, breast, back, and upper wing-coverts, is pale greyish brown, the hind part of the back passing into wood-brown; the belly and legs are chocolate-brown, as are the lower tail-coverts and rump-feathers, some of the upper tail-coverts being white. The primary quills and alula are blackish brown; the base of the primaries and the greater part of the secondaries tinged with ash-grey. The tail is white, but a small portion of its base is deep brown.
I think how lucky I am when a bird such as that roadside buzzard flares suddenly through my day. Those encounters that come out of nowhere, that sear you with their proximity, their unexpected beauty. That sea eagle, for instance, that lived out its life in captivity in the gloom of the old library at Edinburgh University who one evening, as MacGillivray was passing, jolted itself momentarily out of tameness, reached out a leg and clutched MacGillivray’s shoulder with its talons. MacGillivray said the eagle did no material damage but I wonder if it was MacGillivray’s own aura of passing wildness that made the erne relapse into its wilder self. That wildness that caught up with MacGillivray and shook him periodically, which was not really a wildness, as such, but a fever to be gone, to be elsewhere, out there among the birds.
My journey south was not a fluid thing. There were stops and starts, overwinterings, snatched moments to pick the journey up again. One place that snagged me, kept hoicking me back time and again, was the Morvern peninsula in the West Highlands. So often I returned to walk around its long coast looking for Iolaire chladaich (the shore eagle), I realised, unintentionally, I had walked almost the whole way round the peninsula. And then, of course, there were gaps in my circumnavigation which niggled at me, drew me back again to try and complete the circuit.
I went to look for sea eagles in Morvern more out of instinct than any real certainty I would find the birds there. I thought perhaps there might be an overspill of sea eagles from the neighbouring Isle of Mull, which holds the highest breeding density of the birds in Scotland. And really it would have been easier to have gone to Mull, easier to look for the birds there. But, stubbornly, I wanted to try and find the eagles with difficulty, to come across them, if possible, unexpectedly, to immerse myself in the birds’ landscape, and wait for them there. I don’t especially recommend this approach. Morvern battered me like no other place on this journey. Orkney’s luck deserted me, the sea eagles were elusive, the midges voracious. But I got fixated on the idea of trying to find sea eagles there, of walking around Morvern’s largely trackless perimeter. I became as stubborn as MacGillivray did on his long walk to London, wanting to complete the journey on foot, despite his hunger and exhaustion, despite the passing stagecoaches which could have scooped him up and whisked him on to London and the British Museum.
But for all the battering my muscles took in Morvern, the homesickness and midge bites, I was glad to be walking in such a remote place, sleeping out in deserted bays, sheltering in the birch and oak woods, waiting for a glimpse of the shore eagle, scanning every tree for the bird’s tall grey shape, willing every rock along the shore into flight.
I spent many hours in the steep-sided gullies that carried the burns down from the mountains into Loch Linnhe and the Sound of Mull. Corridors of beauty: primroses the colour of an erne’s cere; marsh hair moss and wood hair moss; the slender light of silver birch; grey-green lichen, delicate as filigree, covering every branch and twig like a mist. A cuckoo on a fence post – a hawk mirage – confusing me in my raptor stupor. A buzzard coming in across the sound from Lismore, waking gulls from their roost. When the cliffs rose too sheer, I skirted round them, using the gullies as avenues into the mountains, moving from the shore to the high tops, from sea eagle to golden eagle.
One night, lying in my tent on the loneliest shore in Scotland, I heard footsteps on the shingle, something disturbing the stones, a heavy crunch. Then the sound of pebbles rolling over each other as they fell away down the steep shingle bank. I unzipped the flysheet and stepped out onto the grassy sward. Twelve feet from me stood a red deer hind, long grey neck, ears pricked up, snorting, huffing at me, huge in the drained light. Later, I woke to the sound of the whole shingle bank collapsing around me and stepped out to see a large herd of deer passing my tent in the half-dark, hooves clattering the stones. I watched their black shapes wade into the deep bracken above the wrack line until only their heads and tall necks were visible and the herd floated away up the mountain’s lower slope.
One of the things I learnt from my visits to Morvern was how impatient I could be, always wanting to peer around the next headland to look for sea eagles there, fixated on the idea of circumnavigating the peninsula. I was like my teenage self scampering over the moor on Lewis, impatient to show my mother the lochan with its red-throated diver. But I knew I was trying to cover too much ground on Morvern, knew I needed to slow things down and concentrate on looking for sea eagles in a smaller area of the peninsula. So I went back to Morvern one more time to try and steady myself with patience – Gordon’s eagle-watching patience – and wait for the sea eagles in a place where I felt they might come to me.
The plan was this: to curb my impatience, to stop myself eating up the distance, I would lock myself into a small uninhabited island in Loch Sunart off Morvern’s northern edge. I would wade across to the island at low tide then pull the tide up behind me. The island – Oronsay – would be my lookout post, my home for several days, a place to wait and wait and watch for sea eagles.
A slippery crossing over the rocks between Doirlinn and Torr a’ Choilich, like walking over the backs of sleeping seals; a tidal channel, a sea-moat, the seaweed ankle-deep. Then: bluebells, bracken shoots, a fringe of stunted oaks and I am scrambling up the island’s rocky eastern slope. Oronsay: what a giddy, youthful feeling, a whole island to myself to explore. But first things first, looking for fresh water and walking all around the island that afternoon and finding only brackish trickles and sluggish pools amongst the reeds, tiny streams with the shortest of lives, done for by the sea before they can get going.
And finding too, that afternoon, crumbled houses with nettle floors and window sockets looking out towards the hills of Ardnamurchan. And one house still with its chimney stack in place, its high gable end, still angled like a house, not yet collapsed, not yet rounded off by years of wind like its neighbours were. How on earth did anyone make a living here in this rocky, brackeny place, the island virtually gnawed to its core by the sea …
That night I pitch my tent above a small bay on Oronsay’s northern shore, between an otter’s whistle and a cuckoo’s call. All night it rains and I listen to the slack burn behind me coming alive beneath the yellow flag irises. The rain on the tent keeps me awake and I stay up reading about Oronsay’s ghosts:
There was yet another eviction on the estate of the late Lady Gordon of Drimnin, and as this was a particularly hard case, which took place only about fifteen years ago, we feel in duty bound to refer to it as showing how completely the Highland crofter is in the power of his landlord, and however unscrupulous the landlord may be in the present circumstances there is no redress. The circumstances are as follows: About forty years ago, when the sheep farming craze was at its height, some families were removed from the townships of Auliston and Carrick on Lady Gordon’s estate, as their places were to
be added to the adjoining sheep farm. The people were removed to the most barren spot on the whole estate, where there was no road or any possibility of making one. They had to carry all manure and sea-ware on their backs, as the place was so rocky that a horse would be of no use. Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, they contrived through time to improve the place very much by draining and reclaiming mossy patches, and by carrying soil to be placed on rocky places where there was no soil. During the twenty-five years they occupied this place their rents were raised twice. Latterly, with the full confidence of their tenure being secure, they built better houses at their own expense, and two or three years afterwards they were turned out of their holdings on the usual six weeks’ notice, without a farthing of compensation for land reclaimed.
In the morning the island is drenched and heavy. The bay smells of bog myrtle and rusting kelp. Crawling out of the tent I startle an oystercatcher who peels away across the water, calling loudly. It is cold this morning and I work quickly to make tea and porridge. It has stopped raining but there is still so much moisture in the air my woollen mittens are soon damp and I have to keep wiping the lenses of my binoculars.
I spend the rest of the day perched on Oronsay’s headlands, scanning the length of Loch Sunart. North across to Risga, Glenborrodale, Eilean Mòr. East to Carna with its hill still being worked on by the rain. West to Ardmore Point on Mull, to the rocks of Sligneach Mòr and Sligneach Beag. Further west, the outlined hills of Coll. Waiting, scanning every inch of shore.
The account I read last night of the people evicted from Auliston and Carrick, that particularly hard case, was recorded by the Napier Commission (the royal commission set up by the government to assess the conditions of crofters and cottars living in the Highlands and Islands) when its commissioners arrived in Morvern in August 1883. Because the place the Morvern crofters referred to in their evidence as the most barren spot on the whole estate was unnamed, it took me a while, and some more digging, to realise they were referring to Oronsay, a place where there was no road or any possibility of making one, a place so rocky that a horse would be of no use. The people from the townships of Auliston and Carrick were removed to Oronsay and then, in turn, removed from the island they had worked so hard to make habitable, picked up and herded on again.
– What became of the people of Oronsay?
– One of those who was in Oronsay was the last delegate, another is in Glasgow, he removed to Glasgow, and two or three are on the adjoining estate of Mr Dalgleish, Ardnamurchan.
– The club farm was abolished, and the people had to go?
– Yes.
– Who has it now?
– A large farmer.
– What is his name?
– Donald McMaster.
…
– As I understand your statement, the people were removed for the benefit of the sheep farm, and you may say for the benefit of the estate?
– And for the benefit of themselves.
– But the people were not made the judges of their own benefit?
– They were not asked in the first place.
– What I want to arrive at is this, the people were virtually and substantially removed for the benefit of the estate, in order that this sheep farm, or some other part of the estate, might be more profitably administered and held; in removing the people did the proprietor, in consideration of their number and poverty, and the difficulty of obtaining other places, make them any allowance or gratuity?
– Not to my knowledge.
And here is the rain again, coming down off Beinn Bhuidhe from the south, crossing Loch na Droma Buidhe, then rushing at me as I crouch, hunker down on Oronsay’s headlands. All I can do is turn my back and wait for the rain to clatter over me.
– Is there any use in beating about the bush; is it not the fact that those people were removed solely and entirely because they were in the way of sheep?
Some of the things I see that day: cormorant, greylag, skua, tern, black-backed gull, ringed plover, great spotted woodpecker, sandpiper, raven, pipit, hooded crow, heron after heron after heron beating low across the loch. And do not see: the buzzard I hear calling in the woods above Doirlinn, the pine marten whose scat I find lying on a mossy boulder, the erne, the sea eagle, the eagle of the shore.
What sort of bird is it that taps MacGillivray on the shoulder in the dusk of the old library in Edinburgh? A robber baron, a pirate, a sluggish vulture of lakes and fjords … Much of the time the sea eagle is perched – cormorant-like – on a rock or tree beside the shore. Except, not like a cormorant at all, because if you see the eagle’s great bulk on an islet in the loch it looks as if a person is standing there, not a bird at all. Their sheer size: nothing prepares you for that.
Diet: anything, really … Fish snatched from the shallows, a low glide above the water, pause, a brief hover … then talons taste the water, seize and grip the fish and the sea eagle is beating its great wings, heaving itself into height. For such a large bird the agility with which the sea eagle plucks fish from just below the surface is astonishing. Wing tips might brush the water as it struggles to rise, but the sea eagle does not immerse itself in the water as the osprey does, there is none of the splashing crash of the osprey as it plunges after fish.
Shetland fishermen used to anoint their bait with sea-eagle fat believing this would bring them luck, such was the great bird’s fishing prowess. And just as bait smeared in sea-eagle fat could make all the difference to the day’s catch – and a dream of home was all it took to haul in nets and head for home – so the fishermen of the Northern Isles had to tread carefully around language, using their own sea language when they were at the haaf (the fishing). Everyday things – pigs, rabbits, fish, the minister – had to be skirted round, ducked under, referred to aslant. So the fishermen could not, for instance, call the birds they saw from their boats by their real names, as to do so would be to tempt ill luck. Cormorant, puffin, sea eagle … all names that were taboo and could only be spoken of in code like a distorted echo of each bird’s call. A defiant language of the sea, of kennings and circumlocutions, rooted in Old Norse, holding out against the tide of language from the south. And when they spotted a sea eagle soaring above their boats bobbing in the thick swell off the cliffs of Hoy and the cliffs of Fetlar and Noss, the fishermen would refer to the bird in their strange sea language, calling the sea eagle Adnin or Clicksie or (my favourite) the Anyonyou.
Besides fish, the sea eagle will take shore birds, moulting geese, injured wildfowl, young kittiwakes. A hunting sea eagle will spark the shore birds into the safety of flight, unlike a passing peregrine, whose presence grounds everything. Also: hares, rabbits, occasionally a hauled-up sleeping seal. Sea eagles will pursue gulls – even ospreys – to make them spill their catch. MacGillivray wrote they were especially fond of dogs. And of course carrion: sea eagles have a great propensity for carrion and the birds (described in the chronicles as the ‘grey-coated eagle’) were often observed cleaning up the aftermath of Anglo-Saxon battlefields, rehoming the souls of the dead.
Though not so vulturine, not so sluggish as we tend to dismiss it for being. Male sea eagles, when providing for their young, have been seen to almost kill at will, swooping repeatedly at diving birds, harrying ducks, cormorants, auks, tracking an eider drake’s bright tracer under water as the eider keeps on panic-diving, plucking it from off the water when the duck is too exhausted to dive again.
MacGillivray came at the sea eagle, of course, through observing its anatomy and behaviour, showing how the sea eagle is a convergence of other birds – gull, skua, vulture, osprey – tracing the way these birds gradually form a passage into each other. And in his own way MacGillivray was anticipating Darwin, observing in his studies of birds of prey how the different species had grown alike, evolved to equip their rapacious lives, whilst their anatomies retained the blueprint of their separate origins.
So, part skua, part vulture, part osprey. Above all, perhaps, a cousin of the osprey
, in the way the sea eagle can pluck a fish from the shallows, the way that horny spicules line the soles of its feet to help it grip the fish, the way their Gaelic names intermingle – Iolaire uisge (eagle of the water) for the osprey/Iolaire chladaich (eagle of the shore) for the sea eagle. And above all like an osprey in the way their stories – their melancholy histories – converge. The sea eagle driven out from the great English river estuaries, from its refuges on Lundy, Shiant and Hirta, from the Lakeland crags and the cliffs of Jura. So by 1914, when Gordon is writing his chapters on the osprey and sea eagle for his book Hill Birds of Scotland, he is drafting both birds’ obituaries. The last reported nesting of a sea eagle occurs on Skye in 1916. And then there is one, a lone female sea eagle – an albino bird – haunting the cliffs of North Roe in Shetland.
When it comes, the end is a hurried thing. The shepherd on Harris tells MacGillivray that he believes the sea eagle to be far more common than the Black (the Golden) eagle. So it’s as if the sea eagle falls through a plughole in the sky, to go from being so numerous (in some districts more numerous than the golden eagle) to that lone Shetland female bird in the space of seventy years. It seems that the sea eagle took the greatest share of blame as a lamb killer (more so than the golden eagle) from the new breed of shepherds, jealous of their flocks, that took over the townships of Oronsay, Sornagan, Carraig and Auliston and all the green lands of Morvern and beyond.
The sea eagle, too, proved an easier scapegoat – more easily reached along the shores – than the golden eagle with its skulking ways deep in the mountains. Carrion laced with strychnine was a favoured method for getting rid of the birds. Burning peats were lowered down the cliff to set fire to nests. Failing these, the shepherd would put out some bait then fold himself into a hide of stones to lie in wait with his gun.
Raptors Page 9
