Kathleen Jaimie

Kathleen Jaimie. Award winning Scottish poet and travel writer. Check her out.
She was on the remote island of Rona and wrote;

The time of thrift had passed; every day we met a flock of crossbills, of all things, which twittered round the island, feeding on thrift seeds. Crossbills are birds of northern pine forest, but nary a pine tree here, and long sea miles to travel before they saw one again. There were about a hundred - the males were bright red and the females brown, so when they all flew by they were like embers blown from a bonfire.