Another island

One fine warm day we took a picnic and went up the coast to see if we could get to the island of Handa - a bird sanctuary and breeding ground. We took a small boat from Tarbet and landed on a beautiful beach. There's a path that goes across the middle of the island where the great skuas nest on the open hilltops. Half the island is rimmed with cliffs and sea stacks hundreds of feet high. Sea pinks, many different kinds of seedum, and beautiful wild flowers in all colors cling to the cliff sides and cover the tops of the stacks. Puffins dig their burrows and build their nests on the stack tops - and I had never seen a real puffin. But I had heard about them all my life and wanted desperately to see one. When I was little I would often ask my mother to recite my favorite poem:

"There once was a puffin just the shape of a muffin,
and he lived on an Island in the bright blue sea.
He ate little fishes, which were most delicious,
and he had them for supper and he had them for tea.

This poor little puffin, he couldn't play nothin',
cause he hadn't anybody to play with at all.
So he sat on his island and he cried for a while,
And he felt very lonely and he felt very small.

Then along came the fishes, and they said if you wishes
you can have us for playmates instead of for tea.
Now they all play together in all kinds of weather,
And the puffin eats pancakes like you and like me."

I always wondered how they made the pancakes but the story was very satisfactory to a young animal lover.

Anyway, the island has huge, high cliffs where thousands of birds were nesting, flying and fishing. The skuas lived off the eggs and young birds - the divers, kittywakes, razor bills, guillemots, and gulls eat the many small fish swimming below. The water was so clear we could lie on the cliff edge and watch the guillemots playing games in the water below. They fly under water, chasing eachother, and sneaking up behind eachother to tweak a tail as they surface.

Every ledge, nook and cranny was packed with birds, some on eggs, some courting, some pairs grooming eachother. We found two broken eggs up where the skuas nest - one a greenish blue with brown spots, the other white with brown spots. The whole island was so beautiful - and we picnicked, hiked and sunned ourselves on the white sand beaches until the last boat back to the mainland took us away.