Shear beauty, and sheer hell on a desert island at night

AT NIGHT, here on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, we hear the pardelas — Cory’s Shearwaters — mewling as they cruise high above the lights of the harbour; their calls echoing against the sheer rock face that rises 1,000m directly above the port beach.

I am reminded of the line “From inch and rock, the sea mews cry”, remembered from a tragic poem by Sir Walter Scott learned when I was in primary school. The first verse ended, “Soft is the note and sad the lay that mourns the lovely Rosabelle”: the plaintive cries of these birds do call to mind a keening.

Their voice is often compared to that of an infant in distress. Some years ago, a friend, on his first night on La Gomera, heard them from the balcony of the remote house he had rented. Believing there was a child lost on the mountain, he called out neighbours to begin a search. He had no Spanish, and it took him some time to understand that they were simply birds performing a nightly ritual. Sometimes, the pardelas crash into the lights. If hurt, they are taken to a sanctuary so that they may recover sufficiently to be released, if this is possible.