Dangerous Tides at Brightwater Bay by Holly Hepburn

Author:Holly Hepburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

There was a beach at the base of Brightwater Bay.

It couldn’t be seen from above, only from the sea, although Merry suspected she might just about glimpse the narrow strip of pale gold if she ever stood right on the edge of the cliffs, and it was flanked on either side by an outcrop of vicious-looking rocks. In the autumn, Magnús said it was where grey seals came to give birth to their pups; he assured her the slender shelf of land was never submerged by the tide, making it the perfect place for mother seals to bond with their babies before introducing them to life under the waves.

‘No one bothers them here,’ he said, leaning on the steering wheel of the boat as the engine fell silent and gazing at the now empty beach. ‘There are much easier places to spot them around Orkney, so the tours don’t come this way.’

Merry leaned back in her seat and craned her head upwards. The cliffs seemed even more immense from the water, making Magnús’s boat feel like a toy as it bobbed on the white-crested waves, and she was amazed to see they weren’t as sheer and barren as she’d imagined. The mottled brown and grey rock was sprinkled with yellow and lilac and pink flowers, their roots burrowing deep into the strata and taking hold wherever they could. Vibrant green leaves and grasses burst out around them, producing a kind of floral wallpaper effect that Merry loved. Birds soared on the thermals created by the warm mid- afternoon sunshine and perched on the flowery ledges; others chose rockier shelves and Merry wondered if they might have nests there. It was evidently breeding season for some, if not all, of Orkney’s bird population.

Magnús rummaged under his seat and pulled out a pair of binoculars. ‘Use these if you want a closer look. You might even spot some puffins if you are very lucky.’

She took the binoculars and trained them on the cliffs. Over the last few months, Merry had learned to recognize a number of the birds she could hear as she awoke each day; the guillemots, with their distinctive black and white plumage, the kittiwakes, who looked so very like the gulls she knew from London, and the razorbills, with their funny blunt beaks that were anything but razor-like. She sat for a few moments, enjoying the close-up view of her feathery neighbours as they soared and jostled over the blue-grey water; if there was a better way to enjoy the late May sunshine then she couldn’t think of it right then.

Eventually, she lowered the binoculars to glance across at Magnús. ‘How do they raise their chicks on the cliffs? There doesn’t seem to be room for a perch, let alone to incubate an egg.’

‘Evolution,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Guillemots in particular have adapted to cliff-face breeding – they protect their eggs from predators by nesting as close together as possible and their eggs are specially designed not to roll off the edge.

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