The North wind doth blow

St Abbs Head from Earnsheugh

The snowdrops and aconites are out in the corners of the garden, the blackbirds are poking about under the hedges, inspecting twigs for length and strength, the collared doves are cosying up to each other and the jackdaws are checking every unused chimney pot for nest sites. If Spring has not yet sprung, she has started her run-up.
The Burns season of ritualistic haggis-bashing and tam-o’-shantering is drawing to its close when most of the populace will forget all about poems in eighteenth century Scots, indeed about poetry in general, until next year.

Burn’s night may be past but “Janwar’s cauld blast” that hanselled in his birth and his recent birthday, is still very much present as the raw, northerly winds keep threatening with little flurries, to bring back the snow.
The winds have whipped up the white horses on the sea and kept the sea birds in low profile though the garden birds have been present in large numbers due in no small part to LotH’s generous array of feeding stations. The RSPB garden bird count over one hour may have been artificially boosted by the seeds and fat-balls on offer.

The wind may have had an unexpected benefit. A local farmer, whose farm extends to the cliff edge, reported seeing a big buzzard-like bird with a wing span “as wide as a barn door”. He was sure it was a sea eagle, the erne or earn, as it used to be called. Several eagles have been released in Fife as part of ESSE, the East Scotland Sea Eagle Project, and the Fife coast is clearly visible from the cliff tops. With a tail wind from the north, one of the birds could easily make it to our shore.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/projects/eastscotlandeagles/index.asp

It would be marvellous if they re-colonised this area. I say re-colonised as Muirhead’s Birds of Berwickshire, published in 1889 notes them as “being seen less frequently than before”. Since every account cited mentions where, when and by whom they were shot, it is little surprising that they became less frequently seen.. Our Victorian forefathers really have a lot to answer for!

Muirhead does say that there are several place-names associated with the sea eagles, Earns Rig, Earnscleugh and, for us, Earnsheugh, just along the cliff top from where the bird was seen.
How great would it be if the earns returned to Earnsheugh.



Earnsheugh above the cliffs

One day, we might even see the re-introduction of the “reid-nebbed craw”, the chough, once so common on the cliffs that local children kept them as pets.

A great place for choughs

Aye, as they say, it's an ill wind...and all that.