I have been experimenting with labels for the birds . as the majority of inhabitants on Handa in the concensus of 1841 were Macleod , i have been looking at tartans of the Macleods. this one dates in 1800's so is appropriate .. i hope to print the names of the birds in gaelic on each label.

some of the Macleods on Handa in 1841.. there were 23 in total

alexander macleod 50
ann 55
lucy 10

william macleod 80
mary 77

donald macleod 30
mary 25
george 4

i am just finishing the skua ( bonxie) and thinking of calling him Evander (the factor in Scourie).
bonxie come from the norse bunksi, a dumpy bird.

made local news again !


http://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/946/November
_exhibitions_in_Mackay_Country.html

bonxie
i am trying now to knit a skua and using black/ brown cheviot wool to make the beast!
fasgadair mor, great one that picks off or destroys vermin.
bonxie comes from the norse bunksi, a dumpy bird. Despite its predatory habits it is believed in Orkney to protect young lambs from eagle and there it is sometimes called the herdsman.

a very odd albino oystercatcher with a twisted bill

I have been trying to link idea of the albino oyster catcher found on Handa with the history of Handa.I thought she would make a great queen of Handa the title bestowed on the oldest widow on the island. the queen had the last say in all disputes and this links well with the oystercatchers call which is said to resemble the gaelic 'bi glic ,bi glic' ( be wise be wise)..





i have added some darning in silk to the neck of the bird and she has been knitted from wool spun from cheviot sheep.

serius the artic tern

artic tern nearly finished.. i cant decide whether to give him wings as i like the simple shape of him and think the colouring and black head cap distinguishes him as a tern.i have been thinking again about emigration and the migrations of artic terns . Serius is the name of one of the boats which took people to Cape Breton.

thinking again about the importance of the birds as a source of food i have found some more information on the catching of birds in St kilda using hemp and horsehair ropes .

The men often worked in small groups, descending the highest cliffs in stages using long ropes of hemp or horsehair. The women and children often helped deal with the catch at the cliff-top. The lower sections of cliff were scaled from a boat. Snares made of horsehair were employed to catch auks, one woman catching 127 Atlantic puffins in three hours and another 280 in a day! Nooses attached to long poles extended the reach of the fowlers, while Atlantic puffin eggs could be scooped out of burrows easier with a spoon on the end of a stick. Dogs were also useful in catching adult Atlantic puffins and shearwaters, a good one catching 60 or 70 in one night. Harvests were divided up amongst the community, the birds being plucked and dried for the winter; feathers and oil contributed to the rent. Latterly, some St Kildans sold eggs and stuffed birds as souvenirs to tourists

man with snared puffins in the faroes

puffin gin

when i was in Edinbirgh museum i found what is called a 'puffin gin' a rope used for snaring puffins..

Finlay Gillies catching puffins

'Snaring puffins

'When we reached a point some five or six hundred feet up, our boat,
which we could see tossing on the waves below, looked like a little
chip. Nothing was visible of her except her gunwale and seats, upon
which were three small figures - our friend Mr Young, and a man and a
boy who had been left in charge.

I got Finlay Gillies to lay a Puffin snare on a rock which jutted out
seawards, and was considered the favourite spot on all the St Kilda
group of islands for the sport. Before he laid the engine of destruction
down, the crag had been covered with birds; but the sight of the bit of
rope, weighted at either end with a stone and crowded with horse-hair
nooses in the middle, made them fight shy of it for a while as they flew
past in perfect clouds.

By-and-by one individual, bolder than the rest, alighted on the rock,
and with an air of foolish curiosity commenced to step along sideways
towards where the snare was set. He pulled several of the nooses about
with his beak, and after examining them for awhile grew bolder. Poor
bird! his inquisitiveness cost him something; for in the course of his
investigations one of his feet slipped through a noose, and when he came
to lift his leg he discovered that he was a prisoner. He contested his
captivity with great spirit and vigour, to the fright of all the other
members of his species that kept on flying close past in a continuous
and exhaustless stream, until he became either weary of the struggle or
convinced of its uselessness, and rolled over upon his side.

Whilst the captive remained quite still several birds alighted beside
him, but directly he stirred they all promptly decamped. They were soon
back again, however, and fell to poking about and examining the snare,
at which pastime they were solemnly engaged until their relative in
bondage had regained his breath and began to beat his wings violently.
At this they started up to fly away, but one of them suddenly discovered
that he was unable to do so. He had become inextricably entangled, and
without the slightest ado set about his fellow-prisoner, evidently
thinking that he was the author of all the mischief.

After they had fought and argued, argued and fought, alternately, over
the matter for several minutes, they effected a temporary reconciliation
and lay on their sides quite still. Presently the other Puffins came
back, and alighting, looked on in gaping wonderment, everyone, however,
taking flight in the most precipitate manner directly either of the
entangled birds stirred.

In a little while two more Tammy Nories became fast, and fought with
their companions in misfortune precisely as these had done with each other.

Finlay Gillies stepped along the crag, and sitting down upon one of the
stones securing the snare- with as much, and probably far more,
composure than he would have shown in a studio - had his portrait taken,
along with that of the birds he had secured, in a position from which
the slightest slip would have meant a headlong plunge of five hundred
feet into the ocean below. Some idea may be gathered of the nature of
the place when it is stated that the photographer had to be held
securely by a rope whilst making the study.

Two of the Puffins were secured by both legs, one by a leg and its neck,
and another by one leg only.Each piece of rope carries about forty snares upon it, and seven or
eight Puffins are sometimes caught at a single haul. In Martin's time
the natives caught forty or fifty birds a day with a snare, but one
woman has been known recently to kill as many as two hundred and eighty,
and another one hundred and twenty-seven in three hours.

In former days these snares must have been made very much stronger than
they are now and fastened down with extraordinary security, if we are to
believe a story recorded by our old friend Martin, on the authority of
the folks who lived at the time he visited St Kilda. A fowler whilst
setting one of these snares accidentally got one of his toes entangled
in a noose, and being thereby tripped to a fall went over the edge of a
precipice, and spent the following night hanging upside down with
nothing but one hundred and twenty feet of thin air betwixt himself and
the sea below. The snare, it is pleasant to relate, proved equal to the
strain; and such was the endurance of the fowler that he was recovered
alive, and lived for many a day to tell the tale of his remarkable
adventure'.

glasgow digital library

http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/keacam/keacam0305.htm

i have begun making an artic tern and have been looking at its migration. each bird i have made has closed wings but i may make this one with wings spread and possibly a patch of tartan on them

guillemot now stuffed
he is a slightly odd shape but hes got lots of character ..
and is a bit slender due to lack of sandeels!.

another aspect of the work has been a collaboration with rm* animators
http://www.rm-star.com/ . ( recent winners of scotttish style tastemakers award http://www.scottishstyleawards.co.uk/categories.php)

we have been discussing aspects of my research and of the childrens work and are coming up with ideas for a short animation exploring emigration from handa to cape breton. We are also exploring colour (relating to maps and landscape )and texture ( knitting / tartan ) This will be the third collaboration

http://rm-star.com/showreel

i am nearly finished knitting a guillemot now .. i hope i have got the shape of the long neck.

i have been thinking of the word guillemot and discovered that guillemot derives from guillaume the old french spelling of William.

Pennant wrote of them in 1768 'foolish guillemots are found in amazing numbers on the high cliffs of our coasts.. they are simple for notwithstanding they are shot at , and see their companions killed by them, they will not quit the rock'

i have made him quite skinny as i had been reading about hungry guillemots

Starving guillemots hint at seabird crisis

,Reports of hundreds of dead or starving young seabirds around Scotland - including some many miles from the coast - and Northern Ireland are leading to speculation among experts that these incidents may be linked to a much larger problem.

Staff from several organisations, including the RSPB, are assessing the extent of the situation. Most of the casualties are guillemots - a type of seabird.

Post mortems on the birds shown that many of the birds are underweight and have empty stomachs, suggesting they are suffering from a chronic shortage of food. Sandeels are a principal prey for guillemots and many other seabirds.

Dr Euan Dunn, head of marine policy for the RSPB, said: 'Able to dive 300 feet for fish prey, guillemots are massively buffered against scarcity, so evidence of starvation signals a desperate lack of food.

'Food shortage has reared its ugly head in a number of guillemot colonies in recent years, but the breadth and scale of these reports of starving birds is more troubling'

'Food shortage has reared its ugly head in a number of guillemot colonies in recent years, but the breadth and scale of these reports of starving birds is more troubling.'

Counts of seabird colonies around Scotland and in Northern Ireland have revealed that they have had another disastrous year with food shortages leading to a low recruitment of young birds.

Commenting on the potential impacts of climate change affecting UK seabirds, the RSPB's Conservation Director, Dr Mark Avery, said: 'The seas surrounding the British Isles are among the most productive in the world and, despite decades of overfishing, they still support internationally important seabird colonies. ,

http://www.rspb.org.uk/action/guillemots.asp

when looking through some of the archive material i found some bird notes and images in a folder called Edna Dawson.


















It was full of notes relating to birds of the area and lists of birds spotted
























.