Cormorant or Shag?

To begin with a remarkable poem:

Amazingly this is attributed to Christopher Isherwood who was not Scottish and not known for humour and whimsy but he did write an excellent nonsense poem about the cormorant (or shag):

The common cormorant or shag
Lays eggs inside a paper bag.                                            
The reason you will see, no doubt,
It is to keep the lightning out.
But what these unobservant birds
Have never noticed is that herds
Of wandering bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

I think the photo at the beginning is of a cormorant - it looks like a totem pole feature and stands about seeming to air its wings.  The shag, as we all know, has a tuft on its head. The picture below comes from the RSPB so it must be correct. I'm glad we've cleared that one up.

Since I moved here birds have become a bit of a fascination.  There are so many new to me as I've never lived on the coast before. Around here, as well as the famed puffins, we have gulls, gannets and guillemots, terns and turnstones, kittiwakes and cormorants, oyster catchers and eider ducks - in short, dozens of seabirds to entertain us with their eccentricities. The guillemot is one of the most charming and the local ones look like tiny penguins when standing upright. We saw one on the beach but sadly a local fisherman told us it had come inshore to die.  It was a privilege to see one so close up and still (birds will never keep still when one wants to identify them) and he or she was there for a few days and we respected its privacy.

But you are probably bored by birds by now.... They are so hard to identify sometimes - what with the winter plumage, the summer plumage, the eclipse plumage; the juvenile, the male, the female - I don't think I'll ever be a true bird-nerd.  Instead I'll share with you a poem that was inspired by the sheer excitement of watching gannets diving into Gamrie Bay one bright morning:

Gannets

Sally Givertz

  

We sipped our EMT and nibbled

at home-made biscuits

They careened down in diagonal darts

Headstrong, headlong into the

white-capped cobalt sea

Unruffled by the wind that

soughed round the house

and curled the crisp white waves

Straight in headfirst to swim

in their *third element

Snacking on sand eels

Ultra-fresh breakfast

No messing about

We sat in our high bed

Looking out over the bay

Hugging ourselves

  

(third element – they move from earth, to air, to water)

©sallygivertz2013

This link will take you to a YouTube clip of diving gannets:

http://www.arkive.org/gannet/morus-bassanus/video-08a.html

Many Scottish poets have written about birds and you can find some of them on the Scottish Poetry Library website:
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets

So far I have discovered and enjoyed Kathleen Jamie's Ospreys - about their migration journey  and The Roost - which is about rooks and the way they live. I could go on about rooks but I won't - except to say that they get a bad press. They are cheerful and sociable birds. They look very decorative when ruffled by the wind and they have nice trousers.

To end with, a sample of a poem by Robin Robertson called Trumpeter Swan (not a local species as far as I know but he is Scottish):

You can learn how to fly, see all the edges
soften and blur, but you can't hold on
to the height you find
you can never be taught how to fall

I imagine this is a metaphor about the unfortunate aftermath of fame and success.  What do you think?

But I can't end on such a sour note so a postscript is needed: 

The simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, 
Learning his tuneful trade from ev'ry bough; 
The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush, 
Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush; 
The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill, 
Or deep-ton'd plovers grey, wild-whistling o'er the hill;

Robert Burns 

1786

My thanks to the "simple Bard".

Moon, June, Speech Balloon

Oh dear! It seems to be cows again.

But there is meaning in all this.  I want to draw your attention to the wonderful work of the Poetry Archive (see link on right of page).  The archive is largely due to the work done by Andrew Motion during his time as Poet Laureate and as well as text contains many voice recordings of poets reading their work.  So we have the opportunity to hear some of the best contemporary Scottish poets reading their poetry with the Caledonian cadences of this part of the world.  

The cow jumping over the moon is to illustrate one of my favourite poems by Scottish poet Imtiaz Dharker. Apart from other things it celebrates the famed fluency of footballers, our love of a good cliché and the originality of the Red Tops. It is hilarious and you can hear it on:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=14256

You can also hear some of the work of Jackie Kay, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson, Robin Robertson and many others.

Two of my favourites are: Lochan by Kathleen Jamie and In My Country by Jackie Kay.

Many poems are about identity and I became curious about the identity of a woman I was reading about in an old local history collection put together in 1968 by a Gamrie preservation group: "a'tween troup heid & gamrie mohr".  One of the records tells of a local woman whose husband, Hamelyn of Troup, died fighting for Edward I in the fourteenth century. 
I felt compelled to write about her:

For Eleyne widow of Hamelyn of Troupe

 "Grant her keep herself and her children a merk a week"

Eleyne, Ellen, Aileen, Eileen, Elena?

Who were you?

Did it compensate for the loss of your man?

Or was he brutal, a drunkard, a mercenary

Who took the King’s shilling and died for his trouble?

Maybe you and the bairns

Were more cheery without him

Free to make noise and laugh

To eat odd things at odd times

Glad of the merk a week

Glad to have his room not his company

Or was the hoosie hollow

Were you bereft and slow-footed

Did the bairns forget to play

And the meals go uncooked

The days seem endless?

Eleyne and your merk a week

Who were you?

   

©Sally Givertz 2013

To end on a cheery note here are some puffins photographed locally.  Who can not be cheered by a puffin?  

Next week I think that the local birds will be making an appearance.