Freckled Bird
A Story Within a Story
A tale of home, heritage, and the creatures who teach us where we belong.By Shona Sutherland
In 1978, the UK government ordered a mass cull of grey seals in Orkney. Local people refused to accept it. They organised, they protested, and eventually — with help from Greenpeace and the famous Rainbow Warrior —
They won.My father was among them.I didn't know this until decades after his death.
What I did know was his charming stories. Every night, my little brother and I would curl up on either side of him, and he would spin yarns of a tiny Orcadian bird — a "peedie" foundling — searching for a home.Freckled Bird is both of these stories woven together.It is a tribute to my father, Peter Sutherland, and to my brother, Douglas Sutherland, who we also lost too soon, whose photographs bring me comfort and inspiration.
Doug's work can be seen here and on socials.
It is a preservation of the Orcadian Scots dialect — with every "fae," every "noo," every "peedie, bonxie", and "mauchty."It is a remembering of a quiet, unlikely victory, when a small community refused to let powerful people destroy what they loved.— Shona Sutherland
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shona Sutherland was born in 1978 — the year the seals were to be culled, and the year her father quietly began opposing the men who would take them.She grew up in windswept Orkney, listening to local lore.
Her father's sudden death in 1990, when she was twelve, shaped her adolescence in ways she spent decades overcoming.As an adult, Shona became an environmental campaigner. It was during this work that she discovered, to her astonishment, her father's long-hidden role in the 1978 seal cull opposition.
She now lives in England with her family. Freckled Bird is her first book. The wee bird has been with her all her life; she is honoured to finally introduce him to readers.