The owl shaped gap...

 

 

I realized just the other day just how little I knew about the little owl and its habits so thought I’d do what I usually do in these situations…a mass google session. It’s all amalgamated here into blog form from several different sights so do let me know if anything here is glaringly wrong.

The facts and figures state that the little owl, of which there are about 5700 UK pairs, are not native to Britain and were brought here in the 19^th century. They normally have one brood a year containing three or four eggs. A second brood can occur in years of great food abundance. They eat small mammals, birds and large invertebrates. I read somewhere that a little owl will sometimes leave a small mammal like a mole to rot near its nest site in order to feed off the carrion loving insects that arrive...pretty clever. Of the juveniles that fledge 30% will survive their first year and will find nest sites within around 20 km of the site they were born in. These youngsters disperse at around three months of age and if they survive their first year will normally live to around three years of age. However the oldest little owl recorded by the BTO was 10 years, 11 months and 26 days, a record set back in 2009. The little owl is most active at dusk but is also partly active in the daytime and at night.

 

(In fact as I write this I can hear one ‘meowing’ outside my Ramsey Island window. I’m convinced that a little owls cry sounds not to dissimilar to a cat!)

 

Their Latin name is Athene noctua and these owls were once believed to be the companion of Athene, Goddess of wisdom…hence why owls are often believed to be wise. Athene’s previous companion had been a crow but this mischievous corvid proved to be too much of a prankster for the wise and sensible Greek Goddess. As Athene’s companion the little owls were used as mascots to protect the Greek armies as they went to war. Having a little owl fly over soldiers before battle foretold victory.

An owls night vision was once believed to come from a mysterious inner light and eating their eggs raw was once thought to cure alcoholism. Eating the raw eggs as a child was thought to stop the onset of alcoholism throughout their lifetime. Partaking in a meal of salted little owl was also once seen as a cure for gout, madness or epilepsy. Don’t quite fancy it myself!

 

Anyway thanks to…www.planetofbirds.com, www.owlpages.com, www.pauldfrost.co.uk, www.bto.org and finally www.rspb.org.uk for the information and filling the little owl shaped gap in my knowledge!

Identity Parade - Stonechat.

Well...what a terrible lack of blogging recently. Sorry about that :-/

We've often wondered in between boats and over cups of tea if the markings on male stonechats were different enough to be able to tell them apart. After photographing four of the Ramsey pairs I'm not so sure now! See if you think you could recognise them in a line up! 

Mr Porth Lleuog.

Mr Abermyharan.

Mr Bungalow.

Mr Harbour.

Think the differences between them are a bit to subtle for me!!

Washing Willow Warbler

It has been much longer than I'd hoped since my last post but it's been a very busy, every so mildly stressful week. But with my last OU assignment in for the first year of my degree I can relax (a little bit!) until the next lot starts in October. Massive sigh of relief!!

So here is a bit of a cheat blog post with a sequence of a very relaxed willow warbler having a little preen...(if somebody tells me it's a chiffchaff at this stage I'll be highly embarrassed!)

 

 

 

 

 

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.