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...
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…
…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.
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