sea pies and a dokie’s egg
alec finlay & chris watson
sea pies and a dokie’s egg: an avian calendar for amble, by alec finlay & chris watson
1. Sea pies and a Dokie’s egg
2. January-March
3. April-June
4. July-September
5. October-December
sea pies and a dokie’s egg, an avian calendar for amble, accompanies a shelter, the dokie’s egg, designed by Alec Finlay, made by Alistair Letch. The audio artwork is accompanied by a calendrical poem by Alec, with contributions from Paul Morrison (RSPB) and Chris Watson, identifying the bird species.
A dokie is a local byname for a guillemot or auk, collected in newton by the sea by Katrina Porteous; a sea-pie is an oyster catcher.
The shelter installed at Amble is a hybrid design inspired by the dokie’s pear-shaped egg and lapstrake hull of a coble fishing boat. Alec was invited to create the artwork for ‘Amble Bord Waalk’, a bird trail commissioned by Amble Development Trust which opened to the public in Winter 2022.
JANUARY’s sad-eyed stiff-winged
fulmar spy where they’ll roll
mallimawk eggs on the steel
cliffs of coquet come springtime
FEBRUARY’s teal & wigeon give fluty peeps
as auntie eider hears the oohs
and aahs of the boys where she bobs
by a coble’s SWEET PROMISE
MARCH’s a sharp rap at the door
“20 miles” says the fisherman
which is his code for a raft
of incoming puffins offshore
*
APRIL’s curlews send sad messages
to wheep and bubble over druridge’s salt marshes
while skylarks clamber over the fields
and dunes on songful ladders
MAY’s cry is ahoy! the navigators
are come home to coquet
arctic kria roseate keeuk sandwich
kerrick terns shriek kee-yah
JUNE sends in the clowning puffins
say hiya bill, say hello cyrano!
hey, tommy noddy! why, that’s
a lovely bright neb you’re wearing
*
JULY’s dipper drops a curtsey shhh
on each, shhh, on each, shhh rock
as the star shot black-backed gulls
flit off to sunny spain and morocco
AUGUST’s stonechats go click-clack
as the worried wrens tac-tac
please don’t disturb the stealthy
vigil of the longful heron
SEPTEMBER’s stilted curlews
take the flyways from moor to shore
where slant flights of peep-peeping
redshank, dunlin, and knot flicker to-and-fro
*
OCTOBER’s a zigzag of sheen lapwings
that roost in the hauxley mudflats
eyeing bevies of pink-feet and whooper swans
blown in non-stop from iceland
NOVEMBER’s herring gulls mew
everywhere and anywhere
while the fulmars soar their
effortless flybys off cullernose point
DECEMBER’s kleep kleep is
a sea pie, ke-beep is
a shy oystercatcher that calls
kwirr kleep kleep
an avian calendar for amble
alec finlay & chris watson, with paul morrison
Sea pies and a dokie’s egg, continues the long-term collaboration between Alec Finlay and Chris Watson, including:
2005: Siren (
alecfinlayblog.blogspot.com/p/siren.html
2014: Global Oracle (
alecfinlayblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/global-oracle_11.html)
2018: Cairngorms Fauna Jukebox (
gathering.bandcamp.com/album/cairngorms-fauna-jukebox)
credits
Released November 2022
Sound design: Chris Watson.
Concept and text: Alec Finlay
Photography by Chris and Maggie Watson, 2021
Commissioned by Amble Bird Walk
Published by Touch Music/ Fairwood Music (UK) Ltd.
license
all rights reserved
Biographies
Alec Finlay (Scotland, 1966-) is an artist & poet whose work crosses over a range of media and forms.
www.alecfinlay.com
Chris Watson is an award-winning field recordist. He has worked on some of the BBC's best-loved documentaries.
chriswatson.net
images in DX
banner image: 6. Amble harbour-2 copy OR, 4. River Coquet-8 copy
photo image: 1. Coastal path-12 copy
released December 1, 2022