21st – 27th
April
After slowly but surely falling out of love with Tumblr and
in love with Twitter I thought my blogging days were over. But recently two
people, yes two whole people, have told me that they miss my posts and being
able to keep up with what’s going on outside of their offices. So I thought
that even if it’s only those two people (and they’re not even my mum and dad!)
keeping up with my posts then maybe it’s worth putting a little effort in!
I’m currently living and working on RSPB Ramsey Island of
the coast of Pembrokeshire for Greg and Lisa Morgan, who are great bosses,
colleagues and friends. They have a working sheepdog Dewi who I guess is a
colleague too! Every week or so we have volunteers coming and going on the
island, meaning that every week there are between one and four people helping
out and living with me in the bungalow to the North of the island. The bungalow
is a pretty non-descript building from the outside but is wooden clad on the
inside and decorated with wall paintings of various island birds. It certainly
feels like home.
Every
day between the beginning of April and the end of October that the Ramsey Sound
is calm enough for the Thousands Islands boat the Gower Ranger to cross, we
have visitors. One of the most commonly asked questions along with how do we
get our food and don’t we get bored is what is an average day like? I hope that
this blog will show that there really isn’t an average day on Ramsey and new
things are turning up all the time!
Saturday the 21st heralded my
first ever ring ouzel and saw me romp across the island at an ungainly speed to
catch up with Lesley, the volunteer who discovered it. She’d only just arrived that
day but has volunteered on Ramsey for many years and is a wildlife spotter
extraordinaire. It had been on my mental list of birds I most wanted to see and
after watching it perched nonchalantly atop some gorse for a while me and
Lesley got to see it being chased off by a Merlin!
(Photograph courtesy of Lesley)
On Sunday the 22nd me and a couple of the
volunteers, Lesley and Michael cleared some of the plastic rubbish off of the
beaches and I took this opportunity to snap a global selfie for a NASA
initiative on twitter. Some of the detritus we hauled up onto the island was
for two of Ramsey’s new marine litter sculptures, a gannet and a turtle.
Hopefully the two structures hanging outside the toilets will casually raise
awareness of marine litter and invoke a few questions.
Following that, Monday
the 23rd saw me finally finish my first solo taxidermy project,
a winter plumage razorbill. It took me a couple of weeks of stopping and
starting which isn’t really ideal and I’d already forgotten or at least found
it difficult to duplicate some of the things I learnt in my taxidermy course
with George Jamieson up in Edinburgh. I haven’t quite had time to decide
whether or not I’m happy with it yet but the less I look at it the less I seem
to notice all the little bits that aren’t quite right. A massive thanks needs
to be said at this point to everyone on Ramsey during this period for putting
up with bits of razorbill and taxidermy apparatus being strewn across the workshop!
Thank you…for putting up with me!
Tuesday the 24th was a particularly nice
day. I spent the morning searching the foggy slopes of Carn Ysgubor for one of
the recently cast red deer antlers. To be honest it didn’t take me too long but
I spent quite a while enjoying wandering in the thick mist. At some point when
I have a little more time I want to have a go at creating some antler buttons
for a Christmas gift…I don’t normally think this far ahead by the way!
The fog soon cleared and left the island bathed in glorious
sunshine. I spent the morning discovering ducklings on a pond, catching spiders
for identification, counting Atlantic grey seals at their haul out and sneaking
up on my first whitethroat of the year. It doesn’t really sound like work and
actually I spent most of my time lying on my belly trying to catch up with one
of our chough sites. That part of my morning wasn’t so successful but the trip
to the site and back more than made up for it!
(Atlantic grey seals
hauled out on ‘the Batchelor pad’)
I had my day off on Friday the 25th and
spent it on the mainland. My walk from St Justinian’s to St David’s was pretty
special with my first grasshopper warbler, a cracking emperor moth and shire
horses. It was very Disney and even included constant background song of wren,
goldfinch, chiffchaff, chaffinch, whitethroat and dunnock. I didn’t start
skipping or burst into song but I felt close!
Later
that day and back on the island I spent quite bit of time sitting on the cliffs
to the north of the island watching the Manx shearwaters stream past the
Bishops and Clerks and sipping Jura whisky out of my hipflask. (A very
appropriate leaving gift from my winter spent on Islay!) At around 9pm I got to
see a few bats, probably pipistrelles roosting in one of the caves, Ogof pen
clawdd. When I finally made it back to the bungalow I found the volunteers sat
by the fire with a glass of wine discussing when it was an appropriate time to
worry that I wasn’t home yet!
This weekend, Saturday the 26th and Sunday the
27th it’s been far too windy for boats to attempt either the
Ramsey sound or our tricky harbour so we haven’t had any visitors. It’s given us
time to get on with some of the indoor jobs that are often left forgotten and
given me a little extra time with my spiders…including this rather fine male Amaurobius
ferox. It’s a terrible picture but even so you can make out the very
distinctive pedipalps ( the bulbous boxing gloves structures near his head). It’s
a first for me and I’m really hoping the Spider Recording Scheme will accept
the record without a specimen.
