Tipping my face upwards, buoyant thanks to my wetsuit, icy water filled my ears. Floating on my back, cradled by a silkily cold sea and rocked by small wavelets, barely moving a muscle, I watched.
Directly above, a kaleidoscope of Arctic terns wheeled and swirled, slicing the sky in a dizzying aerial ballet. Slight, precise and determined, the terns dashed themselves into the sea’s surface, fluttering upwards again and again to soar on angled wings, thin as paper knives. Below the waves, unseen, I imagined small fish darting desperately downwards, swimming for their lives as the birds’ scarlet bills stabbed hungrily at silvery flesh.
Mesmerised at the graceful whirling and turning up above, it was tempting simply to lie there, the slapping of water inside my ears the only sound.…