Fledging Manxies

Over the last couple of weeks, Manx shearwater chicks have been emerging from their burrows to fledge.  Their parents have mostly left the island, heading across the ocean to South America – the chicks are left to make the journey alone.  At around ten or eleven each night the young birds begin to appear, scrabbling their way towards any high ground, be it a rocky outcrop or an old wall from which they can launch themselves.  One of the most special island experiences is to sit amongst these birds, and last night I made my way out along the track, looking for a suitable spot.

The waning moon is still large enough to bathe the back of the island in its ethereal light, revealing the dark forms of bracken and rock out over the plateau.  I sat on a low, tumble down wall close to the track.  Several birds were close, and, keeping still, I was just another outcrop for them to scale. 

Soon, they were scrambling up onto my legs, holding out their wings for balance, their heads low as they pulled themselves up.  The first paused for a while, sometimes tapping or gently nibbling at my coat sleeves as it assessed its situation, then launching itself up towards my shoulder.  I leant back slightly to allow it to gain purchase, turning my head as it beat its long, slender wings, hitting me (fairly gently) in the face as it went by.  Up on my shoulder it turned with its head resting close to mine, tapped the arm of my glasses with its beak.  It was joined by a second bird, making the same journey upwards, and there was a loud squabble on my shoulders as the two tried to accommodate each other.  Eventually one jumped up onto my head – slightly painful as their claws are pretty sharp.  Both birds were still for a while, occasionally beating their wings, so that I could feel their weight decreasing and increasing as they flexed.  Eventually the first one made the leap, holding its height briefly before falling headlong amongst the bracken with a crash.  It would have to begin its journey again.

Another bird had made its way onto my legs, and sat in my lap, the soft, smooth feathers of its head and breast against my hand, and I could feel its quick heart beat as it rested.  Close up it slightly wheezed, stopping to catch its breath.  A flock of Canada geese flew overhead, calling to each other beneath the stars, and their heavy wing beats were audible in the night air.  On the ground too I could hear the fluttering of wings, and the crashes as more Manxies failed to take off.  But eventually they would get it right.  These birds, sitting so calmly on my shoulders, resting their heads against mine, will fly across the Atlantic – in three or four weeks they will have followed the air currents further than I have travelled in my life, down to the coast of Argentina.  Their lives so far, in a burrow on Skomer Island, will be like a pinprick next to the range of their experience.

Perhaps we have something to learn from them, as they struggle upwards, only to fall back to where they started – they try again and again, quietly, persistently, until their leap takes them out and up and they find their true potential, flying out over the sea in the moonlight.