Fanny Reitmeyer is an unscrupulous gossip columnist for the daily Mega, and an unreconstructed chatterbox. By accident, she uncovers a corruption scandal – an energy concern has bribed the environment minister to get a permit to build an offshore wind farm in the North Sea. The reporter needs to disappear while the materials she stole are being analysed, so her editor and lover Bernd Fliegner sends her to a hallig, one of the low-lying tidal islands off Germany’s coast, with the assignment to write an article about eccentric ornithologist Hagen Kluth. The churlish, bird-watching hermit gives the ice-cold shoulder to the tarted up city slicker. But it’s not that easy getting rid of a Fanny Reitmeyer and when she uncovers Hagen’s true identity, the squabbling pair forms an unlikely alliance that is spoiling for a fight.