Wingsets and Snowdrifts: A Subantarctic Year – by Emily Mowat

SHORTLISTED, ISLAND NONFICTION PRIZE 2022

It’s late December, and the subantarctic summer stretches out the daylight hours. On the slopes of the escarpment where the light-mantled albatross nest, egg hatching is imminent.
I approach one, sitting plump and pleased upon her scraped-together nest of mud and tussock. She’s as sleek as a Siamese cat, with slate-brown head fading seamlessly into a mantle of pale grey. Her crescent-moon eyes tell of pack ice and polar fronts.
I notice her stretching to gather scraps of grass within reach of her nest, and tucking them carefully under her body in preparation for her soon-to-hatch chick. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but proffer a dried grass stem myself, and, to my surprise, her powerful, hooked black bill delicately grasps it from my hand …