Windy ?

I am sorry that I missed out on a blog a couple of weeks ago; I was on holiday spending the summer solstice in the Orkneys. If you think we have wind problems here you have never lived with bushes only daring to peep occasionally above stone walls, Elder and Rowan stunted and even Sycamore trees reduced to 20 feet with their leaves brushed and burnt in the wind, while trying to nestle in protected hollows.

The housing standards are specified so that a house in the Northern Isles is designed to stand gusts of wind up to 150 mph, while we in Brighton were ravaged twenty years ago by a “hurricane” of half that intensity. Amazingly even in Papa Westray there are some beautiful sheltered gardens, classically surrounded by stone walls* and hedges. They thrive in a climate tempered by the sea, that rarely sees snow on the ground, as the Gulf Stream shares the last of its warmth with these so northern islands.

In December last year, extraordinarily snow was on the ground for almost three weeks as the temperatures dropped to -18 C, low enough to freeze any brass monkey on a passing ship. The air is wild and clean and, despite this brutal battering of snow and wind, the sparrows still survived the winter in the shelter they found, the Oyster catchers still catch cockles, (the crabs, Lobsters and Oysters are all sold to Spain with only few left for the locals), while the eider ducks protect their chicks with their wings and feathers from the predations of the weather and the Great Skua; the jaguar of the sky.

Is this the product of climate change, who knows? May be we should ask the birds and the bees. Better still ask the Artic Terns*, who used to deluge the cliffs and defend their chicks like an aeronautical army of ants, dipping and diving from all directions to drive off predators. This amazing bird can fly 50,000 miles a year like poetry in motion. However they are a dying species reaching critically low levels that makes them open to attacks from larger birds. They used to live sumptuously on the sand eels in shallow water. The water is now too warm and the eels are living deeper, where only birds like the Puffins* can dive up to 200 feet.

A very unusual major storm hit the Orkneys on 23 May 2011, wild winds over 100 mph destroyed many of the nests. However it did not destroy some of the amazing poly tunnels* with their rolling shapes providing a safe haven by sheltering all within from the salt and the storms. My Lottie is surrounded by indigenous thick bushes to break the wind and create a micro-climate against the abnormalities in the weather today.

Neither Poly or Lottie are troubled by wind, are you?

Alan Phillips July 2011

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