The Bird Cliffs

Polly flew west to the edge of the country, where the land ends in tall cliffs that drop straight into a grey, restless sea. The cliffs were not empty. They were a city. Millions of seabirds nested on every ledge and crack, wheeling and calling in a noise like a crowd that never goes home. Polly slipped into the traffic, one more pair of wings among countless others, her round black-rim glasses speckled with sea spray.

Her favourites were the puffins. Small and round, with bright orange feet and striped beaks like little painted boats, they dig their nests in burrows in the grassy clifftop, like rabbits with wings. In the air they beat their small wings in a frantic blur, but underwater they turn graceful, flying down through the cold sea after fish. Polly watched one surface with a whole row of silver fish held neatly in its beak, somehow catching more without dropping the rest.

On the same cliffs lived a bird with an even greater secret, the arctic tern. It makes the longest journey of any animal on Earth. Each year it flies from the top of the world to the bottom and back, from one short summer to the other, chasing the daylight around the planet. A single tern can travel far enough in its life to reach the moon and return several times. It almost never sees a real winter. It simply keeps flying toward the light.

As the long evening came on, the cliff did not fall silent so much as soften. Birds drifted in from the sea and settled onto their ledges, folding their wings against the cold. Polly found a sheltered niche of her own, looked out at the waves working the rocks far below, and felt entirely at home among so many wings.