Moon cycle:
- New Moon: 25th June 2025
- Full Moon: 10th July 2025
- New Moon: 24th July 2025
Once known as the ‘Hay Moon,’ Nicola Davies suggests a new name for this lunar cycle.
Dusk in mid-July, the sun just gone, dissolved into the blue-grey mist on the horizon. A calm sea here off Ramsey; a rarity as the next stop West from this little hunk of rock, is America. Waves have the whole of the Atlantic to grow before they throw themselves against this island. But right now the sea breathes low and deep, like a sleeping creature with a silky skin, at the foot of the cliffs.
On the water, close to the rocks there are guillemots. The chocolate and cream of their feathers still neat, the angle of their beaks still elegant, even after the hard work of the breeding season. It’s not unusual for them to float here, gathering themselves before another fishing trip, flying off to dive and find food a hundred feet down. But this evening is different, they aren’t looking out to sea, but up and back to the crazy precipitousness of their nesting places, high above.
They call, the sound not much different from the usual throaty rasp of guillemot calls but there’s an urgency in the sounds, a kind of pleading. And from right up there, so high you’d have to crick your neck to see just where it came from, there are answering squeaks; first one, then two then twenty, then fifty. Rasps and squeaks sound like a chorus to us, but to the guillemots each voice is distinct. These are individuals, fathers calling to their children, summoning this year’s offspring to a dramatic start to their life at sea.
Photo © Falcon Boats
In the failing light you can just make out the chicks, creeping from the sheltered crevices at the back of the ledges. They are dark above and pale below just like their parents. Not yet such an elegant shape perhaps, and small, half the adults height, a third of their weight. A little fluffy too. Some of them flex their wings and you can see that they are much too small yet for proper flight. Yet the tiny birds teeter at the very edge about to take off? About to fall.
Rasp and squeak, rasp and squeak.
The call and response builds to a crescendo.
And then, the first chick jumps, a body small as a teacup and just as fragile hurtles through the darkening air. Its minuscule wings flail madly, and the one part of it that’s grown up sized, its feet splay out. The cliff, its ledges, streaks of guano blur behind it as the chick falls, and falls, and falls. Its death seems absolutely certain, but wing flaps and big feet are just enough. They parachute the chick so that it plops into the water. A final flurry of rasp and squeak and the child and father are together on the water. The chick is paddle and dive ready with its big feet, and the pair head out to sea at once. Soon they’ve vanished in the darkness. By dawn they’ll be miles away from land. Out on the ocean they will ride like corks and dive from danger. Food will be close by so father can feed his child without commuting miles by air.
To the east the moon is rising, over the farmland where the haymaking of high summer gave it its name. Those fields of seeding grass and flowers, their corncrakes, yellow hammers, clouds of sparrows and hunting barn owls are long gone. Farmers cut grass green now and four times a year, for silage. No time for anything to seed, or nest, or fledge.
But in the moon-shadow of the Ramsey cliffs guillemots are leaving the nest as they always have: as flightless jumpers. The tiny para-gliders drop from three hundred feet into the sea and paddle away, out into the sea and moonlight. Pairs of little birds, bobbing on the vast silver sea. Perhaps this lunar cycle needs another name, the Jumper’s Moon?
Photo © Falcon Boats
Activities
There is always something to see in nature but you need to look and listen to what might be around you, at your feet, in the sky above you. Looking and listening can be hard when you live in a noisy city or if you are distracted by your phone; it’s easy to get into the habit of NOT looking, NOT listening. The good news is that habits can be changed! Here is one way to build new habits of taking time to notice…
One your way to school in the morning pick a spot to stop and look – it could be a tree, it could be a place where you get a clear view of the sky, it could be a view over a park, or a rooftop where pigeons tend to sit in the morning. Look and listen, stay still for just a minute and notice one thing, write it in your mind and carry it to school. When you get there scribble it down in words or a quick sketch before you forget it. Do this for a few weeks, and then look at what you have collected – little snapshots that change over time. You may find you have a ready -made poem and you will certainly find that your ability to pay attention, to notice, to look to listen has improved.
You can do the same thing with any part of your day that follows the same route or the same pattern – stop in the same place at roughly the same time and look at what’s there.
Share your stories!
How far from the coast are you? Where is the nearest place you might see guillemots? What’s happening where you live this month? Tag us in your pictures and comments here.
Resources and useful websites
One of the best ways to start to engage with Nature is to learn to identify what is around you… birds, plants, mammals. There are lots of free APPS that will help you to do this. I particularly like Merlin Bird ID which can identify birds from their calls. You will be amazed what you hear AND how quickly you learn to identify birds by their calls. You will soon start to feel as if you have a superpower!
Authored by Nicola Davies. Nicola is an acclaimed children’s author, zoologist and wildlife advocate, she was a presenter for The Really Wild Show and the BBC Natural History Unit. She also does wildlife guiding one day a week in the Summer for Falcon Boats. You can find out more about her work by visiting her website.