On a hazy day, we stroll down a tough path and the bumpy tractor monitor that results in the machair (which is sandy grassy land by the coast). It’s filled with early marsh orchids, silverweed and chook’s‑foot trefoil. There’s a ragged robin (a pink flower) that’s bedraggled and appears like our bantam hen, Willow, on a moist day.
Carpets of daisies, flag irises, meadow buttercups and marsh marigolds line the bogs. There are crowds of horsetails within the boggy ditches, cuckoo flowers and red-stem stork’s invoice adorning the sandy monitor, and cotton grass blowing within the breeze. We go rabbit carcasses that animals had been feasting on, possibly together with a white-tailed eagle! We go lapwings, oystercatchers, redshanks and snipes. Arctic terns fly overhead defending their nests. We get to the white sandy seashore. Nobody is there as ordinary, besides the ocean birds and waders. Then instantly, a flock of birds catches my consideration – not the common oystercatchers, ringed plovers or sanderlings. They appear to be lapwings … however they’ll’t be! I seize a cellphone and file their chattering, peeping noises. The app identifies them as turnstones.
They’re snow white, with stripes of black and a chestnut-brown again with black blots, whereas their juveniles are a lightweight gray with daisy-white and black beaks. They’re speeding round within the seaweed on the lookout for bugs and all types of delicacies. The grownup birds chase the youthful ones away like naughty youngsters taking on the bowl of sweets. Cease being naughty, turnstones!
Hannah, 12
Learn in the present day’s different YCD piece, by Snow, 10: ‘Looking low and low for some good strawberries’