204 | Chapter 10
they scrabble ashore. Flippers beating, they struggle to grip the rocks
with their clawed feet before being washed off by the next surging wave.
But Rockhoppers are nothing if not persevering. They are saved from
injury by a robust body that bounces like a rubber ball. Eventually the
bird I am watching, a female, escapes the waves’ suction and hops up the
coastal cliff to relieve her mate. The relieved male will head to sea and,
as we now know from satellite- tracking, travel several hundred kilome-
tres from the colony before he returns to Bleaker.
It is a May evening on the grassy green island of North Rona. Lying
some 70 km north- west of Cape Wrath, itself the north- western projec-
tion of Scotland, North Rona is the remotest British island ever to have
sustained permanent settlement. The light is now ebbing from the sky
above the turf- clad walls of the oratory where St Ronan possibly prac-
tised religious asceticism in the 8th century. As partial night develops –
the island is too far north for total midsummer darkness – there is a
vibrant elastic call. Leach’s Storm Petrel! After a winter at sea, the birds
are returning to their nests, small cracks in the ancient walls. Where
have they spent the winter? Geolocators have identified two principal
wintering areas used by the Leach’s Petrels of Nova Scotia, where the
species is much more numerous than in Great Britain. Those areas are
tropical waters between Brazil and west Africa, and seas further south
off Namibia. Perhaps the Rona petrels join their Canadian cousins in
the winter; perhaps they visit another, altogether different sea area. No-
body knows. Cushioned by soft turf, I can lie on my back eyes open, and
toss these questions into the deep violet night sky. The contented ques-
tioning reverie is briefly interrupted by a fleeting glimpse of a narrow-
winged petrel overhead.
There is no conflict between the thrilling discoveries of the past 20
years and continuing to marvel at the ability of seabirds to cope with a
salty medium so different to land. That ability will be compromised if
seabirds’ nesting places are rendered less secure, often by introduced alien
species, and if life at sea becomes more dangerous. That will happen if
the seas are over- fished, if fishing practices create perils for seabirds and
if pollution is not controlled. It is not in the interests of seabirds or
humanity for these changes to happen. They need not.