Dawn on the Sea Loch

Open Country

It's not yet dawn when wildlife cameraman John Aitchison strolls down to the shore where he chips off the ice on a kayak, before he can set out across the sea loch near his home in western Scotland, in search of the early signs of spring. He travels through the darkness following a trail of light caused by the reflections of the moon in the calm water. His journey takes him across the loch and along the far shoreline before he heads for an island and then returns home. As the sun rises he encounters seals and otters, watches shelduck chasing one another, listens to curlew and skylarks, and catches sight of his favourite geese: white-fronted geese which will soon leave and head to Greenland. As he paddles across the loch, John reflects on the landscape of interlocking fingers of water and rock, and on how it was formed. "How much has this landscape and its wildlife changed over time?" he wonders. As time and the seasons pass and winter changes to spring, the geese will depart and other birds will arrive - like the swallows which migrate from Africa and nest in the shed by John’s home. The sea loch is a link between the north and the south, between Greenland and South Africa, between the geese and the swallows. John spotted the first two swallows arriving a few days earlier and suddenly the world seems a much smaller place and our responsibility to look after it so evident. “Imagine if the swallows didn’t return”, he ponders. But this year they have. The seasons are changing, and after such a long winter we can look forward to summer once again.

Presenter John Aitchison. Producer Sarah Blunt.