I see that a website describes the call of Canarian cory’s shearwaters as ‘waca waca’. It’s a mad, hysterical call, uttered when the parent birds arrive to feed their nestlings.

LAST weekend I had, nestling in my hand, one of prettiest birds I’ve ever seen, a storm petrel.

THIS morning, dawdling knee-deep in the water at the edge of the port beach at Valle Gran Rey on the Canary Island of La Gomera, I remembered standing in the same spot many years ago with a skinny boy, now a giant of 30 years, and looking at a big manta ray lying in the sand at our feet.