Stranger on our shores…

A stranger to Orkney shores was washed up on Warebeth Beach, Stromness, on Sunday — and the dead badger is thought to be the first of the species ever to be seen in the county.

Eric Meek, RSPB Orkney area manager, said: “I got a call asking me to check something out lying on the beach at Warebeth and it turned out to be a dead badger.

“It’s the first time a badger has ever been seen in any form in Orkney and I can only think that it has drowned in a river in Caithness and been washed across the Firth.

“There has never, to anybody’s knowledge, been a badger in Orkney.”