by Jacob New –

Those of you who have visited Aigas this year might have noticed that there has been a rather strange addition to our species list on the whiteboard: almost every week now we have a sheep breed list. For those hardcore ecologists amongst you I must offer my apologies; this might be my fault! Last year whilst taking groups around the Highlands I found myself often looking to the fields and seeing a wide variety of different breeds of sheep… but I didn’t know what any of them were! I decided that it was only right to try and do my best to learn about which sheep I was seeing on my days out.

I think it’s safe to say that this plan has gotten slightly out of control. Sheep have somehow become a huge part of my life and now I sometimes find myself just as excited by a sighting of a rare sheep breed as the wildlife that I actually went looking for! This has ultimately led to sheep no longer being something that I keep an eye out for whilst I am off birding or walking but instead I am actively seeking them out. This started off with trying to find as many breeds of sheep as I could in one day on the Black Isle, where I ended up finding a total of 13. I have coined the term “sheep-twitching” to refer to these ovine expeditions, some of which have taken me to the wildest corners of Scotland.

This is the tale of three sheep, three islands, and one madman desperately searching for what are, in my humble opinion, the three best sheep breeds in Scotland.

North Ronaldsay

My first target species required a serious expedition. Last January I set my sights on the famous seaweed-eating sheep of North Ronaldsay, in Orkney. Orkney in general is quiet during the winter, but North Ronaldsay is a different story entirely: I was literally the island’s only visitor for the two nights that I stayed there. In order to get to the island I had to take a 17 minute flight, where I was joined by two men working for SSE travelling up to do some repair work.

“What are you heading up to North Ron for?” they ask me.

“Oh I’m just up for a couple of nights, staying at the bird observatory” I respond. I can tell they already think I must be a bit odd to be staying on this tiny island in January but I decide to go for it and declare by true intentions; “but what I really want to see and photograph are the seaweed-eating sheep!”

The men look at me and both smile; “aye the sheep are class and you won’t have any trouble, they’re bloody everywhere!”

This is a good sign; it seems like maybe the hardest part of this ‘sheep-twitch’ is just being mad enough to book a flight just to see some sheep. I climb up into my seat in the plane next to the pilot full of excitement, although it’s around 3 o’clock so the sun is just setting as we taxi for take-off so it looks like I’ll have to wait until the morning to go and find my sheep. When I land on the island I have a ten-minute walk across fields in the pitch darkness until I find where I’m staying for the night. With the wind howling around me I get straight to bed, tomorrow is going to be a serious adventure.

The weather on my first day on North Ronaldsay is unexpected; I knew it would be cold but I wasn’t quite expecting a blizzard. I set off all the same and make my way down to the beach. These sheep are coastal specialists and are actually kept down on the beach by a large dyke that surrounds the island in order to preserve what little grass they have, which is used only during lambing season when its really necessary. This is why these sheep have evolved to feed almost exclusively on seaweed and are the only breed which time their waking hours not by daylight but instead by tide times. After around an hour of stumbling along the rocky shore getting battered by the wind, I find them.

I count at least eighty of them, all different colours, huddling beside the dyke to shelter from the wind but now all staring at me. I usually like to think I am pretty good at stalking wildlife but I am upwind of this flock and crashing through the rocky beach with the main focus of staying upright rather than staying silent. This is really special though; these lovely animals have really made me work for this and it makes the moment all the more memorable.

What followed however, was even more special. Thanks to those strong winds, the blizzard that had covered the island subsided and I was instead able to enjoy beautiful blue skies and sunshine. It was still cold but this meant I could see the sheep in all their glory; still with thick woolly fleeces but in glorious light. Armed with my camera I snapped some pictures and sat with them for a while, watching as they ventured down to the shore to feed on their seaweed breakfast.

Over the next 24 hours I did a full lap of North Ronaldsay and couldn’t believe how many sheep were on such a small island, and how healthy they all looked despite their unorthodox diet. I did also enjoy some excellent birding: a merlin perched amongst the rocks; a lone whooper swan swimming in a lochan; and hundreds of sanderling frantically running to and fro trying to avoid the breaking waves, but for me the highlight was undoubtedly the sheep.

However this trip had not fulfilled my sheep-twitching desires; it had only whet my appetite for more.

Soay

This brings me on to my next expedition, this time much further west, in search of one of the most famous of Scotland’s rare breeds: the Soay. ‘Soay’ translates from the Norse word ‘Seyðoy’, meaning ‘sheep island’ and the breed takes its name from one of the islands on the St Kilda archipelago… again this wasn’t going to be an easy task. I wasn’t actually going to Soay in search of these sheep, I was instead going to Hirta, St Kilda’s largest island. The islands’ inhabitants were evacuated in 1930 at their own request but the sheep were abandoned on Soay. It was only some years later when the Marquess of Bute bought the archipelago that he decided to move the sheep onto Hirta in the attempt to establish a weaving business. When this failed and the National Trust bought the islands in 1957 they decided to keep the sheep… primarily as the world’s cutest lawnmowers.

My desire to see Soays was not simply a case of seeing the breed but seeing them in their ‘natural’ environment. I say natural with a pinch of salt as of course this is a domestic animal but on St Kilda the population is as close to a wild sheep as you can find in Scotland. The flock on Hirta is essentially feral; without any human intervention they have developed a rutting season much like wild red deer and have been used in many studies to analyse population dynamics within a closed ecological system. Although their history was one of domestication this truly felt like a wild population. I had seen a few flocks of Soays around but there is something about seeing them out on St Kilda that feels a bit different from seeing them in a field on the way to Ullapool.

Over the course of this year I have actually made two attempts to reach St Kilda; the first was unfortunately unsuccessful as you need the right conditions and the right vessel to make the journey 41 miles off the coast to reach the islands. Even with clear skies when we set off, this was a rough crossing; not one you would want to do in poorer weather. Much like on my trip to North Ronaldsay I didn’t completely ignore the other wildlife, from fulmars and shearwaters skimming over the waves through to gannets diving all around the boat, the journey was an amazing experience in itself. Certainly the highlight of the bumpy journey out there was a pod of Risso’s dolphins that came over to the boat, playing in the surf. I might have been on a sheep-seeking mission but that would certainly be a tough act to follow.

When I arrived in the island I was amazed by how easy that mission was, as the Soays are absolutely everywhere on the island. Compared to my braving the tough conditions of North Ronaldsay this was a walk in the park and as I went for a stroll along the clifftops it was lovely to see so many of these sheep completely unafraid of me. One other big difference with these sheep was the time of year; I was visiting St Kilda during the summer and so the Soays didn’t have their thick winter fleeces and many of them looked very bedraggled as they were mid-moult.

The smartest were the lambs that still had their fresh first growth of downy wool. They were also the most inquisitive sheep on the island; they weren’t tiny and had left the safety of their mothers to travel around in groups (somewhat reminiscent of groups of teenagers hanging around street corners) and seemed to be almost challenging each other as to who could come closest to me.

As I sat eating my lunch watching puffins flying in and out of their burrows, kittiwakes wheeling over the cliffs and listening to a St Kilda wren singing behind me, I wondered how many other people travelled to St Kilda primarily for the sheep; I guess probably not too many. This was not the end of this expedition however, as my next breed was literally just around the corner.

Boreray

Whilst the Soays are St Kilda’s most famous breed of sheep they are certainly not alone. On the island just to the north of Hirta, there is another breed that takes its name from the island it calls home: the Boreray. This is another beautiful sheep that is very closely related to the other two that I had searched for. In fact all three breeds, alongside others such as Hebridean, Manx Loaghtan and Scottish blackface, belong to a single species; the North Atlantic short-tailed sheep, which is the common ancestor for most of the small breeds found in northern Europe.

My first encounter with the Boreray actually came on that Orkney trip at the start of the year, when I came across a flock of what are described as the ‘Orkney Boreray’, now a distinct breed that had been brought over from St Kilda in 2013. This is a fascinating example of the genetic diversification of one flock from the rest of the breed as they had been separated from the others. Now the Orkney Boreray is perhaps the closest living relative to the original flock from the island of Boreray; a delight for a sheep-twitcher but not quite the real thing. I had to make the trip to Boreray. Now I knew that my trip to St Kilda wouldn’t allow me to actually allow land on Boreray (unfortunately they didn’t run a specifically sheep-focused itinerary) so as we circled the island and everyone was excited by the thousands of gannets out on the sea stacks I was instead looking towards the grassy hillside, trying to pick out any specks that could possibly be sheep.

And there they were! As my eyes adjusted and I tried to balance myself on the boat, rocking in the swell, I realised that there was a whole flock up there, clinging to a seemingly impossible slope to get to the freshest shoots.

“Look up there. Those are the gannets!” I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see our guide helping me to see the birds that were literally surrounding our boat. I imagined what he was thinking about this man with a pair of Swarovski binoculars and a big, camouflaged camera lens who couldn’t even find the gannets that were obviously one of the main reasons to come on this trip. All the gear and no idea: if only he knew what I did for a living. I obliged and thanked him, pointing my camera up towards these graceful seabirds, becoming entranced by their movements and the sheer scale of the colony; as much as I wanted to prioritise the sheep, I am still a birder at heart and being able to watch the world’s largest gannet colony from a boat bobbling around beneath them is not an opportunity that I could ever resist.

But I am still a man on a mission, and moments later as we round another corner I manage an even better view of the sheep as they cling on to an even more vertiginous crag. This time even the guide is pointing them out and I am glad to see that there is a wave of appreciation from the others on the boat. Finally, they’re realising what this trip should really be all about! As we pull away from the St Kilda archipelago and make the long journey back towards land I am feeling very proud of my sheepy exploits. It is amazing to me that even having seen a Leach’s storm petrel (a new bird for my lifetime list), I am debating which was the highlight of the day: the petrel or the sheep! There is something about going to great lengths to look for something that most people aren’t particularly bothered about that feels almost rebellious, like I’m breaking the rules. Am I starting to empathise with the bryologists and lichenologists amongst my colleagues?

So what will be my next ovine expedition? A return to North Ronaldsay next summer for their annual sheep festival perhaps? Maybe even a journey to see a breed I am not yet familiar with? As I am typing this up I am constantly drawn to the poster opposite me on my bedroom wall: an image showing the sixty-three colour variations of the Shetland sheep. Now that would be a serious task to complete… and it gives me an idea for a future blog!

words and photography by Jacob New