RICHARD WILLIAMSON: Channel’s chill wind is home to Arctic migrants

We were rumbling out of Dover on the ferry last week to see the Somme battlefields.

Having once crossed the Bay of Biscay on the troopship Lancashire in a near hurricane one bitter January, I obeyed wife – and stayed on the open deck.

Shakespeare’s cliff with its King Lear dramas faded into scud. The sea swelled, white-lipped. The wind freshened and the drizzle increased.

A lone herring gull perched on the rail, watched me and waited. I was waiting too, with my binoculars.

Half way to Calais they appeared. First one, then ten, until a score were circling. This is what I want, thought I. While brother Robert is down below with his pint of beer and pie, I’m up here with the real gannets.

White wings like oars, the magnificent birds sheared the cold wind. Soon they had found a shoal, and plunged down to feed, wings closed tight, black-tipped, becoming missiles as they attacked the mackerel packs.

I was hoping for flocks of scoters, but those days are gone for the ocean ducks.

A tern or two floated on their graceful tireless wings. The English Channel probably looked much like Antarctica to them this April day.

Then all at once I saw my real target: a dark brown bird, narrow-winged, big as a black-backed gull, but with a white wing patch. I hollered gleefully to myself. A group of obsessive smokers eyed me suspiciously, and moved away.

It was but a fleeting glimpse, for the great skua en route to the Shetlands or Murmansk sailed on east. A final score was an arctic skua.