Early one summer’s morning, around 20 years ago, a friend was driving me “back down” to the railway station at Inverness. We had just set out, travelling a slow side-road through scrubby deer woods, not far from Kiltarlity; it was warm for that time of day, the air slightly hazy between the stands of gorse and fallen stones from an old wall.
Not surprisingly, the road was empty, so it felt that we were the only people awake for miles and, though I had a train to catch, we’d left plenty of time to make it a leisurely trip, going slow on country roads with the windows open to enjoy one last hour of fresh northern air. Nevertheless, I was a little bemused when my friend brought the car to a sudden halt, so that we were sitting right in the middle of a single-track road, with the still woods all around us and not a sound to be heard. Then, before I could say anything, he brought a finger to his lips and looked meaningfully out to the right, a short distance from the car. My eyes followed his; he was a great bird spotter, and I was expecting some winged rarity perched on a fallen rock, but for a long moment I didn’t see why he had stopped – and then I did.
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