Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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1 Personal Beginnings
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your
Majesty?” he asked.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the
end: then stop.”
Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The beginning for me was summer 1970. I sat in a tent with two other students on Pabbay, a
small uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. Andrew
Ramsey, Norman Macdonald and I were working for Operation Seafarer, the first complete
census of seabirds of Britain and Ireland. As part of this effort, I had trudged after Andrew
to other islands in the Sound of Harris, to Auskerry in the Orkneys and for several visits
to Canna, a wonderful Hebridean island to the west of Rùm and to the south of Skye. For
close to 1,000 years, Pabbay was home to a small settlement. Now all that remains are the
foundations of the village, some lazy beds (those patches in which vegetables were cultiv-
ated by sowing them on terraces created from rotting kelp and peat) and the roofless walls
of a small church. The former islanders rest under its protection, lying beneath little mossy
hummocks and peacefully metamorphosing into luxuriant pink splashes of sea thrift. There
were fulmars sitting atop these natural gardens, brooding on their nests with an air of great
and inner sanctity unless you approached them too closely. Then, you were welcomed with
a warm vomit of fishy oil.
We were marooned. There were no birds uncounted and it was hard to find one that was
not shyly sporting a shiny new ring on a leg. Our work was over, a north Atlantic gale was
