The glorious 12th......

A fantastic few days over the weekend with glorious sunshine and light winds. This brought in a lot more birds and Saturday the 12th was a bumper day with Golden Plover, Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Snipe, Black-headed Gull, Collared Dove, Tree Pippit, Yellow Wagtail, Lesser Whitethroat, Firecrest and a Pied Flycatcher. Also around in the last few days were a couple of Herons, one which roosted on Driftwood Bay (!????), a high of 387 Canada Geese on North Pond along with one Greylag Goose and the highlight of the week was another Wryneck. Again seen around the Chicken Sheds behind the Farm buildings.

Brilliant picture by D. Boyle


The sunshine has also seen lots of butterflies and some Migrant Hawker and Common Darter dragonflies.

We had a visit from Greg the Ramsey Warden who came to stay for a few days which was great but we also had to say a very sad goodbye to Jerry the Skomer/Skokholm Assistant Warden. After a brilliant five months of hard work Jerry reached the end of his seasonal contract and has had to go back to real life on the mainland :-(

The Seal pups are doing well, there have been over 45 born now and many of them have already moulted and are living an independent life.

Bookings open for accommodation and volunteer placements for next year on October 5th. So if you would like to come and stay overnight on the island or volunteer with us for a week then please have a look at the new booking information on our website http://www.welshwildlife.org/. In particular we have made important changes to the Volunteer scheme that will enable us to improve the experience our volunteers have http://www.welshwildlife.org/SkomerVolunteers_en.link


Tomorrow is the start of the Walk on the Wild Side and Lucy and Llinos have been busy training for their mammoth charity trek to raise money for Skomer and the Teifi Marshes reserve. The sponsorship is going well but they still need more support to reach their target. If you haven't yet sponsored them please go to http://www.walkonthewildside.org.uk/


They are also running a caption competition...

What's this puffin up to...?

Enter our caption competition (and please make a small donation while you're at it) and you could be the winner of a £50 Amazon voucher, perfect to get a head start on the Christmas shopping or to treat yourself to the latest gadgets. All you have to do is think of a fab caption for this pic taken by Dave Milborrow (Assistant Warden) on Skomer this year and post it on our site: www.justgiving.com/puffin


Jo is also in training (but she's a bit late!) and will be joining Lucy and Llinos on Sunday and walking the coast of St Brides Bay, from St Davids back to Skomer. You can follow their progress on their blog www.walkonthewildside.org.uk or listen out for updates on Radio Pembrokeshire. They will also be accompanied by Salty the Seal and Pertwee Puffin, who you can follow on Twitter.