St Justinian of Ramsey.

Some of my favourite stories about Ramsey island are about St Justinian. I’ve collected some of the information from history or local information books, from the boatmen and tour guides, from the current Ramsey wardens Lisa and Greg…and I’m sure I’ve probably embellished bits here and there myself! Added together the individual stories form quite a tale and it’s a tale I’d like to try and do justice to here.

St Justinian was known as a thoroughly pious man, a strict disciplinarian and a no nonsense kind of guy. As a result of this he was sent from Italy to St Davids in the early 6^th century by the pope to keep an eye on the people of this revered Welsh city. The monks of St David’s had wavered from their religious path and engaged in bribery, fornication, gambling and many other unholy activities. After a long and almost certainly arduous journey across Europe St Justinian could not bring the wayward monks back into line and could not cope with the debauchery.

                After a striking vision from God, St Justinian saw what he needed to do and built himself a coracle in order to strike out from the mainland and find himself a sanctuary. After casting himself into the strong Pembrokeshire currents he found himself on Skomer island.

 

Not quite feeling comfortable on Skomer St Justinian soon had another vision from God telling him to once again go to sea in his coracle and head for Ramsey. Once on Ramsey St Justinian soon settled and built himself a chapel so that he could spend his days in prayer and quiet contemplation.

 

St Justinian however was not to be left alone to become a hermit as a small band of devout monks from St David’s soon heard of his strong Christian faith and followed in his footsteps. St Justinian accepted his new band of devout followers and agreed to lead them in a strict religious practise.  At this time Ramsey was connected to the mainland by a slim land bridge and St Justinian and his followers were often disturbed by hooligans and time wasters. The people of St David’s were uncomfortable with his strange ways and eventually confronted him at the base of the land bridge. Unafraid, St Justinian looked to God who provided him with a giant and holy axe which he used to cut away the land bridge turning Ramsey into an island. The axe however was not perfect and as St Justinian hacked his way through the stone the blade became blunter and blunter until it could no longer be used. In cutting Ramsey off from the mainland St Justinian had formed the Bitches and Whelps reef. The remaining rocks get larger (more or less) the closer they are to Ramsey which shows just how blunt his axe became.

 

Being isolated the monks were now free to worship undisturbed under St Justinian. St Justinian was famously holy and even St David visited him on Ramsey island making him his confessor and the abbot of St David’s cathedral. Although incredibly holy, St Justinian was a strict disciplinarian and an unforgiving leader. When he felt a monk had broken his vows or committed a religious misdemeanour he would row them out to an island just off the Southern tip of Ramsey. The island is known in Welsh as Ynys Cantwr or Chanter’s isle. Carved into the island there is a large cave which harbours a large rock at its centre. St Justinian would row them out to this rock under Ynys Cantwr and chain them to it for the rise and fall of two tides. The troublesome monk would be required to loudly chant his penance in the hope that God would forgive him. If God felt that the man was soundly repentant he would hold back the tide and the monk would live to pray another day…if not he would succumb to the turbulent waters.

 

Eventually some of his followers grew tired of his harsh manner and beheaded him just outside his Ramsey chapel. God was upset that St Justinian had met such a sticky end and therefore caused a spring to well up just where his head hit the ground. This spring still supplies Ramsey with water and is known to have healing properties. Well into the medieval times the sick and injured would come to the island to drink or bathe in the water. According to the records it was quite common for people to sick up a number of frogs and then find themselves full recovered from whatever was troubling them. This is especially interesting as there are no frogs on the island anymore!

                It wasn’t just God that was upset about the murder of St Justinian as St Justinian was pretty peeved himself. He picked up his head and walked across Ramsey sound with it wanting nothing more to do with Ramsey island. He picked a place just on the mainland to lay at rest and a chapel was built over him. This chapel still stands in a place that is now known as St Justinian’s.

                The killers did not walk away without punishment as they were sent out to a lonely rock called the Gwahan to the North of Ramsey. Everyone was told that they were lepers and not to offer them rescue lest they want to catch leprosy too. Presumably they perished out on their tiny isolated island but nothing more is said about them.

 

(The Gwahan with the Pembrokeshire mainland behind)

 

 

I’m entirely unsure which parts of this story are true and historically accurate and which parts are shrouded in myth and exaggeration…I’ll leave it up to the reader to sort out the truth from the story!

A little something I made earlier...

Somewhere towards the end of last year my friend Abi from Ernest Journal (www.ernestjournal.co.uk) asked me to write a little something about Ramsey island. So I did...and here it is...(well the link anyway!)

Birds and the Bitches: my life on Ramsey island.

http://www.ernestjournal.co.uk/blog/2014/4/30/my-island-life-ramsey

A Thousand Islands adventure.

The other day I was lucky enough to be invited out on the Gower Ranger on their puffin and shearwater cruise courtesy of the Thousand Islands Expedition Company. I was joined by both of the Ramsey Island volunteers, Harriet and Pete and Manx shearwater expert and top risotto chef, Holly Kirk.

(Harriet and wildlife guide Will.)

It was a stunning evening from the off and with the sun low and the Bitches and Whelps in full flow we hung around for a while to watch one of the other boat operators drop surfers into the maelstrom! I haven’t seen anybody try to surf the Bitches before but it certainly didn’t look easy. After sliding off the boat and into the water they barely had a minute of struggling to try and gain balance before being spat out the other side. Must have been exhausting.

After leaving Tim and his boat ‘The Shearwater’ behind we visited half of the island’s sea cliffs, caves and storm beaches. At the moment Ramsey is covered in spring squill and bluebells which is particularly visible from the boat. There were also some fantastic patches of ramsons and a few small groups of primrose hanging on. We saw buzzards, chough, shag, cormorant, razorbills and guillemot.

 

(If you have particularly sharp eyes you might notice that the razorbill is incubating. The auks (razorbills and guillemots) have only just laid their eggs on Ramsey so we’re all very excited.)

We also stopped by the cave under Ynys Cantwr to see the nesting kittiwakes who screeched their names at us as we passed.

After seeing a few of the Ramsey sights the boat headed further out to sea and toward the Bishops and Clerks islands. Seeing Ramsey from a different angle is really strange and occasionally whilst moving between the tiny offshore islands I completely lost my bearings. The Bishops and Clerks in the evening light are pretty perfect and although I don’t have the best camera in the world they do make a special photographic subject…especially with the South bishop lighthouse in the background.

 

 

(Ramsey seen from the North)

At the North Bishop we clocked three puffins who nonchalantly swum around in front of the boat and their adoring fans. There are only around thirty pairs of Atlantic puffin on the island so I always feel lucky to have seen them.

There were also a few whimbrel on the rocks and I think I may have had a fleeting glimpse of a peregrine.

With the puffins seen and admired the boat steamed into position between Ramsey and the offshore islands just in time for us to be passed by several streams of Manx shearwaters. As their name suggests they really shear the over the water, banking and turning with effortless grace. I didn’t get a very good shot at all as I was just too busy enjoying them… but to prove they were there…

 

The shearwaters marked the end of the boat trip and I’m pretty sure the Gower Ranger was packed with some very happy people at that point. Everyone (including myself) was incredibly stoked that they were able to join the trip and I have a feeling that it may have made the volunteers stay!

So thank you Thousand Islands…

 

 

For more information on boat trips and Ramsey landings with Thousand Islands Expedition Company please go to…

http://www.thousandislands.co.uk/boat_trip.php

 

'Morning deer'

Since I returned to Ramsey the three red deer stags have been spending most of their busy deer lives around the slopes of Carn Ysgubor. Back in mid-April their testosterone levels dropped to a yearly low and they lost their antlers. This drop in hormone levels occurs as a result of a change in daylight hours and in theory the oldest stag should shed his antlers first and the youngest last. I found a few hidden in the emerging bracken, stuck in heather or lying in the middle of open fields.

I’m hoping to have a little go at some antler craft and make a few buttons or jewellery pieces for friends and for Christmas. Just after they’d lost their antlers they could be seen jumping and frolicking as they adapted to the change in weight. Although they had a small wound where the base of the antler had been this soon healed over and they had little respite before their new antlers started to grow again a couple of weeks later. Antler is one of the fastest growing organic materials and red deer antler, which is bone and not horn, can grow at a rate of about 2.5cm or 1inch per day. They already have substantial velvety pedicles and as they’re spending so much time around the hill and bungalow I managed to get a few pictures.

Antlers clearly serve more of a purpose than rutting and act as great scratchers for all those inaccessible places.

The antler growth in these pictures is alive, it has a blood flow and is covered in skin and hair commonly known as velvet. They will have a pulse and feel warm to the touch. Near the end of July the stag’s antlers will be fully grown.

The antler calcifies and therefore strengthens and as it does the blood supply to the antlers velvet is cut off. As the velvet shrinks and splits it becomes annoying to the stag who will then go about rubbing his antlers on the dry-stone walls and along the ground to rub it all off. The antlers should be free of velvet in August and just be bright white exposed bone. The white colouring soon fades to brown as the deer goes about its daily business.

Two of the stags are 12 pointers or ‘royal stags’ with 6 tines or points on each antler…the other hasn’t quite made it yet!

Almost every morning I see them just outside the Ramsey island bungalow and the growth is visible.

Bloomin marvellous!

We had our first boats and therefore first visitors for a week today.  I did take a video of the harbour and the water rushing through the axe in the time between but didn’t realise that if I videoed in portrait view I wouldn’t be able to turn it round on the computer! Lesson learnt. Here it is regardless.

I’m sure that it was much rougher when I watched it from the office window and that it calmed by the time I walked down to the harbour wall. It definitely didn’t look quite as impressive as I’d hoped!

 

Anyway, it was my day off as usual on Friday and I spent as long as I could without feeling idle reading ‘The World of Spiders’ by Bristow in bed. Once up I managed to coax myself into studying for a bit before phoning my parents, writing some e-mails, reading some reports on seabirds and spiders (two of my favourite things!),making some bread…

 

…and studying some more before deciding that I really needed some fresh air.  I headed up Carn Ysgubor behind the bungalow and searched under a lot of rocks stones and in some of the vegetation for spiders. I didn’t find anything unusual, just an awful lot of Segestria senoculata females and several very beautiful Textrix denticulata spiders. I also bumped into the three red deer stags who have already grown a fair bit of their antlers back.

I wandered south trying to find somewhere out of the wind and ended up sitting at Abermyharan for a while. Abermyharan can be a really good little spot for rarities and although not particularly rare I did see my first ever sedge warbler. It was a really shy bird but after a while of sitting and monitoring for signs of movement in the undergrowth I eventually got a really good look at it. It’s great being a relatively new birder as I get to see new things all the time and birds that seem quite commonplace for others are still really exciting for me.

 

Saturday was again another no boat day and with the volunteers given a day off I managed to catch up on some reading, office work and painted the gloss skirting boards of the ‘VIP toilet’! Every day here is different! I also of course ID’d some more of my spider specimens plus did some indoor yoga, cleaned my room and tried to be productive with regards to OU.

I’ve been trying to improve my botanical ID skills recently (there’s a lot to improve on) and have been sketching and making notes about the various flowers that are popping up all over Ramsey. I’m trying not to ignore anything and am including even the familiar flowers like primrose and bluebell. I’m struggling to keep up with the rate things are growing and am particularly interested to find out what this is soon.

It’s growing by a large bank of garlic which is flowering at the moment and smells amazing. I’ve only seen it growing in the one place so far.

With the rabbit population at a low after a long myxamatosis outbreak the island’s wildflowers are really getting a chance to thrive. Ramsey already looks completely different to how I saw it last year and I love the change.

Although very windy Sunday was bright and sunny, so sunny that at one sheltered point I stripped down to a t-shirt and lathered on the sunscreen. As soon as I rounded the corner I knew it was a mistake. Lulled into a false sense of security!

(View of Carn Llidi on the mainland from the base of Foel Fawr.)

I spent the morning searching the scree banks of Foel Fawr for one of Britain’s rarer spiders Clubiona genevensis. It’s only found in a few locations in Britain, the scillies, skokholm, the Lleyn peninsula and of course Ramsey island. It’s only about 3- 5 mm in length but has quite distinctive chevron markings on its abdomen and an epigyne (female part) that looks like a monkey…sort of. It luckily didn’t take me long to find some as I knew where to look from last year. I found 3 adult females guarding eggs and 2 adult females without eggs. I also found one of my favourite spiders Neon robustus. They look really dull and brown until you look at them under a lens. Under the lens the light catches them in a way that their abdomens shimmer like light catching spilt oil. 

(View of Carn Llidi on the mainland from the base of Foel Fawr.)

I spent the morning searching the scree banks of Foel Fawr for one of Britain’s rarer spiders Clubiona genevensis. It’s only found in a few locations in Britain, the scillies, skokholm, the Lleyn peninsula and of course Ramsey island. It’s only about 3- 5 mm in length but has quite distinctive chevron markings on its abdomen and an epigyne (female part) that looks like a monkey…sort of. It luckily didn’t take me long to find some as I knew where to look from last year. I found 3 adult females guarding eggs and 2 adult females without eggs. I also found one of my favourite spiders Neon robustus. They look really dull and brown until you look at them under a lens. Under the lens the light catches them in a way that their abdomens shimmer like light catching spilt oil. 

(Photograph of two chough courtesy of my dad! His website can be found here…http://www.motleyphotography.co.uk/info.html and here...www.flickr.com/phtos/motleyphotography)

It was also the last day for the May rotation of mammal ink traps and whist down at the harbour I couldn’t resist the urge to take a few pictures of the Bitches and Whelps reef whilst it was a little bit choppy. As with the harbour video I was a little disappointed at how calm it all looked!

After work I settled in with my microscope and managed to identify my first mini money spider at just 1.8mm. I’ll have to get it checked and verified but I feel relatively confident that its Tiso vagans. Almost feel on my way to being a proper arachnologist!

 

Today is Monday and also the first day for visitor boats in a week. It’s always nice to welcome people onto the island again and the ten people that made it over to the island certainly picked a nice day. After everyone had scattered across the trails in various directions I nipped off for a quick look in a spot Lisa said was great for spiders. By the time I got there most of them had gone back into the undergrowth so I had a little general search amongst the garlic, bluebells and bracken. Other than Araneus diadematus there didn’t seem to be a lot about. Rather than make my way back up the cliffs I decided to hop down onto the rocky beach and boulder hop across. I haven’t been that way before and yet again gave me a whole different view of Ramsey. After the brief spidering expedition I went to look at my favourite two chough sites. As far as I could see they were both feeding young and as well as chough I got to see my fist birds-foot trefoil of the season.

(Spot the birdsfoot trefoil!)

There were some issues with water supply to the bungalow yesterday so I didn’t get a great deal else done. Because of all the toing and froing by the wardens to sort it all out it did mean we got to gather together in the evening for a dram of whisky by the fire.

 

 

A bad week for boats!

The week started well with a spider heavy Monday! After finishing a bit of fencing that’s been lingering on my ‘to do’ list for weeks I found an excuse to have a nosey under the emergency well cover and found a lovely little Tegenaria domestica (The kind you find in your bath in autumn!) Back at the farmhouse there were several parcels waiting for me and inside one of them was a very special collection of gifts. As well as a few books on taxidermy and some dangerous looking medical implements there was a copy of the Michael Robert’s ‘The spiders of Great Britain and Ireland’. I felt a bit choked up!

 

The plates are beautiful and the information on the smaller arachnids, the ‘money spiders’, will prove invaluable. I’m really looking forward to finishing my current OU course and being able to spend a bit more of my spare time searching for the known Ramsey Island species… and hopefully discovering a few new additions. To continue with the spidering theme I spent the few hours after work IDing and cataloguing my April specimens so they don’t get too backlogged. I’m sending a lot of the specimens off to an arachnological friend of mine to be verified but as far as I know in April I found the following species (in no particular order)…Amaurobius ferox and similis, Gongylidiellum vivum, Trochosa terricola, Pholcus phalangioides, Xysticus cristatus, Pachygnatha degeeri, Alopecosa pulverulenta, Gonatium Rubens, Textrix denticulate, Segestria senoculata, Theridion spp?, Heliophanus cupreus, Drassodes pubescens, Harpactea hombergii, Euophrys frontalis, Robertus lividus and Micaria pulicaria. If you’re not interested in spiders than I’m sure that list means nothing. But in the evening I ordered a USB microscope so that I can take pictures of the things I find and put a face to the name, so to speak!

Aside from spiders I did also spend a few hours in the day with Greg listening to the recordings made of Manx shearwaters and creating tracks of males calling, females calling and male and female birds dueting together. The best of these will be used for the RSPB conservation science project which is essentially investigating call back rates.  

 

Greg put one of the recordings on soundcloud, the link to which can be found below...

https://soundcloud.com/ramsey-island/manx-shearwaters-on-ramsey-island

 

Tuesday started a string of ‘NO BOAT’ days. The weather forecast suggested as much and as a result Greg, Lisa and myself hot-footed it off the island to do a bit of emergency shopping! This was all facilitated by Derek the mainland farmer (among many other things) who ferried us in his robust aluminium boat.

 

But an opportunity to enjoy mainland treats was not wasted and we nipped into the sound café for a cooked breakfast.

 

 

Back on the island I sorted my mammal traps and found evidence of harmless bank vole activity on two of them. Greg has been trying out his new Reconyx trail camera and managed to get some great shots of a vole making successive peanut butter trips.

 

(picture courtesy of Greg Morgan)

The weather had started to turn just as we neared the island but it still wasn’t awful so I took the opportunity to sit on the cliffs and try to get a handle on what one of our breeding pairs of Peregrines is up to. I didn’t have a lot of luck as far as peregrines were concerned…I did see them but couldn’t figure out where their nest site is this year. Not entirely sure they’ve decided yet! I did however see a male blackcap and a chiffchaff for my efforts!

Every year one of the Ramsey volunteers, Steve cooks a ‘warden’s dinner’ and invites Greg and Lisa up to the bungalow for a several course meal and lots of wine. It’s always a gluttonous evening and it’s often handy when the boats aren’t running the day after to give everyone a few extra hours of morning recovery time.

 

(Photo courtesy of Greg Morgan. The ‘warden’s dinner’…and raising a glass to Morgan of the Gower Ranger for getting his skipper’s ticket.)

 

No boats again on Wednesday giving us some of that much valued and somewhat needed recovery time! The volunteers had a day off and I had a slow morning. I tried to check for the peregrines again but although it was relatively sheltered from my bungalow look out it was insanely windy where I needed to do my watch. I abandoned those plans pretty quickly and headed to the east of the island to try and pick up a few incidental records of birds singing or exhibiting breeding behaviour for the records. There was nothing much apart from two singing wrens and a whitethroat singing somewhere I hadn’t picked one up before. Lisa and I spent the afternoon talking through guided walk ideas and checking our facts. The first guided walk of the season was planned for Thursday but with the state of the weather it was a no go. Further information on when our guided walks are can be found at…

http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/r/ramseyisland/index.aspx

 

…they are completely weather and numbers dependant.

 

Thursday provided us with another day of no boats and therefore no visitors which meant that we could get on with some untidy, none visitor friendly jobs. The shop was gutted and given a fresh lick of paint which will have its second coat tomorrow. Me and Pete moved some more metal waste from outdoors and into our new storage area and later Steve and Pete spent some time in one of Ramsey’s small ponds, fixing a dam and clearing the drainage pipe. One of which had become clogged with a plastic bag. They enjoyed themselves far too much!

 

Once the volunteers had headed back to the bungalow I settled into the office to write a few e-mails and do a few spidery things. I identified my first harvestman, Nemastoma bimaculatum I think and did a little personal research on webs. Just as I was thinking about leaving Greg fetched me to look at a female subalpine warbler that Lisa had spotted in their garden. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen and I don’t think I’d have known what it was if I’d seen it first. I’ll remember it again though.

A drop of golden sun...

This is where I have to refer back to my diary as Monday seems like such a long time ago! The hours pass so quickly here and so much happens in one week that I often struggle to remember what I did yesterday. Plus, in comparison to the brutal spring we endured last year it’s much warmer this time around, it’s giving me the illusion that it’s much later in the season. This week a fledged dunnock was spotted, two raven fledglings were seen and one of our seven breeding chough pairs were exhibiting ‘feeding chick’ behaviour. Wildflowers have already started to carpet the island and the areas battered by the winter storms and salt spray seem to be recovering. It feels like this time last year the plants were staying tucked under the soil as long as possible and the wildlife was reluctant to do anything until the promise of warmer weather. But this year, with April over, Ramsey is a very different place.

Monday 28^th saw the arrival of 17 year old Gareth on five days’ work experience. A lot our volunteers come to Ramsey year after year so it was great to see someone experience the island for the first time. One of Gareth’s first tasks after helping with the 12 o clock boat was to help me and site manager, Greg to dig in Manx shearwater nest boxes. The going was tough, digging on a slope, into stony ground, which was laced with thick bracken roots…but we managed to get 3 new nest boxes in before running off to deal with the 4 o clock boat!

 

(Gareth digging away with the Bitches and Whelps reef behind him.)

Gareth, Greg, the two other volunteers (Penny and Lesley) and myself all went out later that evening to record the calls of Manx shearwaters for a conservation science project going on this year. Although it was quite a quiet night in terms of birds, Greg managed to get some great recordings of male and female birds dueting.

 

Just in case you haven’t heard a Manx shearwater before here are a pair of dueting Manx shearwaters recorded in a Ramsey island burrow and put up on SoundCloud by Greg.

 

https://soundcloud.com/ramsey-island/manx-shearwaters-on-ramsey-island

 

 

There’s a great tale of Vikings landing on the calf of man so that they could rest up in preparation for wreaking havoc across the water in England. But as night fell the haunting calls of a flock of ‘dreadful night ravens’ could be heard by the Vikings. They promptly swooped and dived at the men and their ships, ripping sails down, ruining vital supplies and even killing one or two of the men. So the Vikings fled! We now know these ‘dreadful night ravens’ to be Manx shearwaters and they certainly couldn’t kill a man or tear a ships sails down! But without any knowledge of these incredible seabirds the eerie witchlike call was just too much to bear.

We dug in more Manx shearwater nest boxes on Tuesday the 29^th, but this time in the sun! Whilst there I couldn’t resist sneaking off to have a little nosey for spiders. Amongst some common arachnid species I found literally hundreds or tiny caterpillars under stones along the dry-stone wall.

 

 

They turned out to be muslin footman caterpillars and Lisa the island moth expert confirmed that they were indeed regular visitors to her moth trap. A little later I was sat above one of the northern caves doing a chough watch and again got distracted by the opportunity for a small spider hunt! There I found rare dew moth caterpillars in their silken retreats under stones.

I wasn’t so distracted that I missed seeing what I was really there for though and managed to catch the chough pair entering and leaving the cave in a way that suggested that they were incubating eggs. The two chough sites up on the north of the island are amongst my favourite and somehow I feel more responsible for them. Last year when one of the two sites failed it felt a little like I’d failed with them!

 

I started the following day (Wednesday 30^th) at another chough site on the west coast.

It was a stunning day with fulmars, lesser black backed gulls, herring gulls, razorbills, guillemots, oystercatchers and gannets beneath me. Lesser celandine, bluebells, spring squill and thrift surrounding me and ravens ‘cronking’ above me. The chough were still incubating when I was there but as I type this up they’ve now been seen showing ‘feeding chick behaviour’.

Gareth and me spent the afternoon digging in the last Manx shearwater nest boxes. For some reason unlucky number thirteen had been left until last!!

 

The nest boxes are based on a design used for the slightly smaller huttons shearwater. The boxes are placed near an existing colony and in time Greg and Lisa are hoping that a Manx shearwater will choose one of the boxes as their nesting site. The box has a handy observation hatch which will mean that they will be able to monitor shearwater productivity. On some islands the burrows and nesting chambers are so close to the surface that an observation hatch can be just be dug out. The burrows on this island run deep though and for Ramsey shearwaters this would prove far too invasive.

The evening turned into curry night with everyone congregating in the bungalow. By half 10 the Manx shearwaters were in full musical flow so everyone headed back out for another visit to the colony. It was a busy evening and with a shearwaters vision not too dissimilar to our own they were landing all around us….and occasionally hitting one or two of us!

 

 

Thursday the 1^st of May was yet another lovely day (Trying not to get too used to it!) and we spent most of it helping Lisa meet some of Ramsey’s green dragon targets. Controlling the flow of rubbish and waste to and from the island is tricky…and always has been. Years ago with little thought to the environmental implications the people who lived and farmed on Ramsey would dump rubbish in Ramsey sound or throw it into ‘scrap bay’. Many islands around the UK will have had similar bays and dumping points. Now with a much keener awareness of marine litter and pollution this is not an option. Dealing with recycling and household rubbish is not such a problem but scrap metal from machinery and harbour infrastructure used by wardens past has been piled up amongst the farm buildings for years. A growing concern for what might be leaching into the soil as the scrap pile got wet meant that we had to move it inside and into a safer area. We all cleared a space in one of the barns and set to hoofing it all inside. Amongst the rubbish we found at least 9 frying pans, a full jar of branston pickle which still looked pretty edible and an oil dispenser that one of the volunteers cleaned up and kept. It could be years before scrap like this is removed from the island (if ever) and the question then is what to do with it once it reaches the mainland?

With such a tough, albeit rewarding job done the volunteers heading out into the sun to enjoy the rest of the day. I managed commit myself to the office for an hour or two in between visitors and boats.

Alas, by the time I was ready to leave the office the sun had disappeared and the island was shrouded in a thick sea fog.

 

Friday 2^nd as usual was my day off. Although for a day off I managed to get an awful lot of work done! I spent most of the day studying for my impending OU deadline, catching up with e-mails and learning some bits and pieces that I hope to use on the guided walks. I did go out for a run around the island though. I’m meant to be training for the Pembrokeshire half marathon at the end of September but it’s all going pretty slowly at the moment and 14 miles seems like a long long way! Before I could do anything else even remotely productive after an island run I had to have a granny nap…it was almost definitely one of the best parts of my day!

 

Saturday is normally volunteer changeover day and Saturday the 3^rd was no different. Penny and Lesley left Ramsey to be replaced by Steve, Nicola and Pete. These days are often days spent chatting and catching up as people leave and arrive with small jobs done in between. I set up the ink traps that we use to monitor our mammal population and check that the dreaded rats haven’t returned and did a bit of spidering. In the evening me and Greg headed out for another night of shearwaters so that this time I could do the recording and get familiar with the recording equipment. The recorder really amplifies what’s going on in the burrows and it’s incredible to get to hear some of the quieter shearwater squeaks and the shuffling of seabird feet underground.   

 

 

(A shearwater from late last season almost ready to fledge. The downy feathers on the neck are a give-away of its age but take that away and it looks like an adult.)

 

My first jobs of Sunday the 4^th were to go and monitor my favourite two cough nesting sites. It took me a lot longer than I expected but eventually both pairs showed themselves to be incubating.

On the way from one site to another I found lots of cuckoo spit hiding tiny froghopper nymphs and several Araneus diadematus spiders. (commongarden cross spiders). At the sight itself I found mostly six eyed Segestria senoculata spiders, lots of springtails, a hard tick, a centipede the size of my arm (almost!) and one of my favourite Trochosa terricola spiders. They’re one of my favourites for no reason other than they’re really rather pretty!

 

Following a morning of birds, insects and spiders I had to check our mammal ink traps. Only one trap had been used and the visiting vole had left lots of prints but believe it or not hadn’t finished the peanut butter. Luckily no rat or mouse prints!

 

The day and indeed week was ended with a smashing find outside the toilets! An almost complete swallow skeleton.

 

I can’t believe how well preserved it is and I especially love the remaining tail feather. I cradled it all the way back with me to the bungalow and now I have no idea how I’m going to keep it in tact and undamaged! I feel very lucky to have it and it’s currently lay on my desk keeping my taxidermy razorbill company!