Jonathan: A few days ago, returning to the house from work in the garden, I turned at the corner of the house, and immediately my attention was caught by something lying on the grass, right by the concrete path. For a moment I thought Tilly had been ‘busy’, but then realized it was something much more lovely … but dead. Still warm … but dead. A Redstart – with a broken neck. I looked up: directly above – the north-facing windows of the study. Directly on the other side of the house, the south-facing windows. Alas, a bird seeing straight through the house … a fatal mis-judgement … and out of luck.

Earlier that day, having completed my usual morning livestock duties, I stayed a while at the croft to start preparing shelter and feeding arrangements for the sheep over winter.  Last year we’d made use of the now disused Low Hen House (before our time it was a store for boat tackle). The windows are broken and boarded-up, and the rusting corrugated roof lets in wind and rain … and if it was lucky to get through last winter intact, it’ll be even luckier to do so this winter. We’re planning to demolish this shed, next spring, and we’ll replace it with a new shed –  one designed for livestock. But, until then, this is all we have.  We must mend and make do; and, with luck, it will do!   So, with that in mind, I opened up the shed to see what needed doing to prepare it. Well, for one thing, that broken window needs boarding-up again, and the soiled bedding taken away to the compost heap …  But what’s this in the corner?  A nest made by a hen – getting in through the broken window, of course.  The nest has been abandoned. Eggs are scattered about, some unbroken and cold, others cracked in two by a chick that has failed to break free. There are two or three broken eggs – empty …  and a little heap of newly-hatched chicks, cold and flat. I found a bucket into which I could gather up the sad remains. I collected up the chicks one by one and … but what was that? Did I sense a movement – no, not a movement, a mere twitch a barely percepitble internal inflection – in one of those chicks, cradled in the fingers of my hand, between nest and bucket? Surely not!  I put the chick against my face, the better to sense even the slightest of warmth, of breath, of a beating heart. Nothing. The head lolled about in my fingers, it’s entire body cold and limp. And yet …

I continued about my business one-handed, the chick safely enclosed in the warmth of my left hand. I carried sacks of feed one-handed, re-arranged the trailer one-handed, changed out of my boiler-suit and from wellies back into shoes – one-handed (not easy!).  I showed a neighbour the wee chick, and she shared my hope it might somehow revive. And I drove to the Eriskay shop … with the chick in the warm of my trouser pocket (so I could drive two-handed, of course!). And as I paid for something or other at the shop till – there was a cheep from my pocket!  Three or four days later, here he is – Lucky by name, Lucky by nature!