finis terrae

I didn't set out to photograph this fulmar chick but I accidentally disturbed the parent bird which started up more or less under my feet and left this vulnerable and slightly anxious being exposed. I did move rapidly on ... But there is something eerie about the landscape here on this northern edge, 'petrified mudflats' seems to do it as an expression:
and at Leaper's Geo I found two corpses on a ledge above the sea, and only one chick with its mother, instead of three:

Birth, copulation, death, finding food and shelter, and the sensations that attach to these, but pure immediacy. nor hope nor dread, and yet on that hill, on this coastline, that is what experience amounts to, the air, the wind, the waves, the diving into the sea, and one human being walks slowly around the edge of this fierce vitality, this utter urgency of desire.