Sounds Natural

Roger C. Boughton

For the first time since our honeymoon on Coll in 1970 we decided to stay in Arinagour rather than the island's hinterlands. It would give our daughter, now fourteen, a chance to sample the high life of the island in full, and free the family of pandering to my whim of wanting to stay in the most isolated places.

The reason for my hoped-for isolation is not only unsociability but my fervent interest in recording on tape the sounds of nature. So you usually find me (if I'm unlucky) by a lonely lochan recording redthroated diver or perched on a cliff-edge being spat at by fulmars or in the middle of Coll's wilder moorland trying to capture the wailing, miaowing call of the hawking Arctic skua - surely one of the best sounds of Coll. The time for this is very early or very late in the day when humans (except Hebridean ones, I find) are safely tucked in their beds, and on such occasions when you are alone listening intently to nature everything seems magical- the haunting, mournful cry of the curlew over the estuary with the waves gently lapping and wind vibrating through the heather. On other occasions though, you may spend a whole cool April day lying low beside a lochan getting colder and damper and absolutely nothing in nature makes any sound worth mentioning, except your own stomach rumbling, and it's very frustrating, especially when, the moment you pack up, Sod's Law decrees that the damn birds fly back and display wonderfully noisily all around.

Anyway, back to last year, and our first night in strange village beds, when at two in the morning, we are awakened by a trio of Scots voices singing with the volume of twenty but the tonal quality of sore-throated herring gulls. Not only were they singing loudly, but doing it while lying on their backs in the middle of the road, drinking from cans of McEwan export, a feat only bettered by really good ventriloquists. Coming to the end of a rousing medley, they got to their feet and began to dance, a kind of ancient Hebridean two-step I believe, and to sing at the same time. I thought they showed a certain commonsense when they were prone, as it was rather obvious that standing up would be not only effortful but perhaps dangerous. But as long as they moved to the rhythm of the song they did not fall down and kept up their intricate dance under the warm, yellow, friendly glow of the outside store light. This 'staggering' performance went on for about an hour when an argument developed over someone's rendition of 'Rosemary' (or 'Those young ladies from Inverness') which broke the spell and the trio went lilting homeward.

Deciding that, as sleep was impossible, I might as well take what advantage I could of the situation, I had switched on my taperecorder at some point in the proceedings and now have on record for posterity one of the rarest 'natural' sounds of Coll. Or is it that rare?