BBC

Bill Oddie interviewing Mike Alexander

Usually when the Skomer crew speaks of B, B, and C they have things like butterflies, bumblebees and maybe Chough in mind but today the actual BBC came out to do a piece for “Britain’s Big Wildlife Revival”.

Bill Oddie was on board to film our lovely puffins which were very conspicuous by their absence. Well that’s life and what wildlife filming is all about. At least Bill took it with good nature and who knows maybe the puffins will show tomorrow.

We had some more interesting guests today: The former warden Mike Alexander is visiting the island and he is an incredible source of information. He can tell you stories of foregone times that will transport you back in time. Life on Skomer between 1975 and 1985 was quite different: They had no computer and no phone but called the coastguards once a day to confirm that they were still alive. They kept chickens and goats and even survived the winter out here. They never knew whether visitors would be coming but had to scan the waters for the boat. Speaking of boats: They only had a dinghy with a tiny engine and on their arrival Mike carried his newlywed wife ceremoniously up the beach (they had to be married to get the job).

Back to present times: Due to really strong winds we didn’t have many visitors this week but behold, we were not resting. We and especially our lovely volunteers got stuck into lots of maintenance work and we fenced the North Haven garden, sorted out the workshop, tidied up the garden and catalogued the library. A huge thank you goes again to our volunteers.

Finishing touches on the garden fence

The garden crew

Today we then finally had the most amazing weather and on top of 77 day guests we had 6 overnight guests coming to the island. One of them was so exhausted after the rather bumpy ride in the Dale Princess that he had to take a nap in our high tech tractor replacement

And last but not least for the cuddly reader, who liked my bunny pictures in the other blog post: On Tuesday I went along with Mick Loughran and helped him with his Skomer vole research. He had put up traps the day before and we were very happy to find that many voles had taken advantage of the B&B offer. Mick identified retrapped voles or marked new animals and sexed them and then I was allowed to let them go

 Aren't they cute

Bee