x | A Personal Prelude
whether captor or captive were the more surprised. But the Shag was
none the worse for its irregular interception, and I was hooked.
A few years later an undergraduate expedition took me to the Shiant
Isles in the Minch, the channel between the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
So rich are these seas that catching Pollack for supper is a quicker en-
deavour than visiting the fishmonger at home to buy less- fresh Pollack
fillets. Owned privately by a family who generously see themselves as
custodians of the islands and place few restrictions on access, the Isles
offer a world class spectacle. Razorbills and Common Guillemots galore
nest amid tumbled basalt boulders the size of a decent room. Atlantic
Puffins circle like swarming bees above the boulders, sometimes clock-
wise, sometimes anticlockwise. There I learnt the truth about puffins.
They may draw tourists by their clownish appearance and ability to
grasp tens of sand eels in a single beakful. But they are horrible to han-
dle. The beak is strong and sharp, as are the claws. It is all but impossible
to hold them in a way that leaves one’s hand safe from biting beak or
scratching claws.
Having censussed the puffins of the Shiants, probably Britain’s sec-
ond largest colony, and completed a doctoral thesis on the biology of
another burrow- nesting seabird, the Manx Shearwater, I was offered the
opportunity to go south. Who could resist six months on Marion Island
in the Southern Ocean? On rainy days, a huddle of chocolate- coloured
King Penguin chicks looked as unreservedly miserable as a Highland bull
presenting its rear to the driving squalls of a Scottish winter. When the
showers had passed, shafts of sun slanted onto a gathering of tens of thou-
sands of noisy adult penguins, picking out their black faces, orange ear
patches and saffron-yellow upper chests. How I enjoyed the miraculous
merging of strident cacophony and vivid colours against snowy peaks.
A few years later I scaled up 1,000 metres to reach the fern forest
topping Isla Alejandro Selkirk in the Juan Fernández archipelago west
of Chile. My mission: to census the Juan Fernández Petrels, whose entire
world population, nourished by flying fish and squid, nests on this one
island. For the better part of two weeks I clambered among the 4- metre
ferns, counting burrows by day. By night I thrilled as a million pairs,
give or take, visited the colony and, flying boldly into the swirling mists,
crashed through the fern canopy to land near their burrows. It was to-