The highlight of the placement has been spending time watching the sea cliffs, not only from our little boat during sea counts but also during razorbill productivity surveys. At the beginning of my placement, I blogged about fixing up Bull Hole hide for our fieldworker - as it turns out I’m the one who has used it all season as I watched the razorbills on ‘my’ section of the cliff. This consisted of visiting them daily and marking them as present or absent, and whether they were sitting on an egg or a chick. It takes roughly 32-39 days for an egg to hatch and both parents take it in turns to incubate. Once hatched, the chicks remain on the ledge for 14-25 days before taking a leap of faith off the cliff and accompanying dad out to sea. The excitement of watching an egg being laid then hatching and growing into a full-sized chick taking its first tentative steps off the cliff face is hard to beat.
 |
| Razorbills and guillemots at Bull Hole |
Upon returning from Bull Hole, I would scour the island for Pembrokeshire’s last breeding curlew as part of my personal project, mapping their territory and locating nests. The area of the island with most curlew activity is surrounding North Pond, where I have spent many a sunny day sitting outside the public hide watching foraging behaviour and their beautiful bubbling territorial displays before seeing them disappear off into the undergrowth. I am currently writing up my findings and hope to present them to the Friends of Skokholm and Skomer.
Another highlight has been assisting Oxford University Navigation Group (OxNav) with their research, whether attaching GPS tags or helping to weigh chicks. It makes all the crawling around on the floor surveying burrows feel worthwhile knowing that these little fluffballs are hiding out under the fragile earth.
 |
| Manx shearwater chick being weighed |
Some traditional practices are very much alive on Skomer, as you’ll see from the newly scythed areas. Over the last few weeks on the island we have been managing the spread of the invasive rosebay willowherb Chamaenerion angustifolium. The work was fun but I do not envy the pastoral workers of yesteryear!
 |
| Scything rosebay willowherb |
 |
| Checking for gull chicks |
Of all the things I will miss, the sounds of the island will probably be the main thing. At the beginning, nights were unnerving as the calls of Manxies, oystercatchers and rampaging bunnies surrounded me, echoing the calls of the diurnal sea cliffs, but now they are a comfort.
Birding Highlights:
- My first hen harrier!
- The island is home to 4 pairs of short-eared owls, it has been a pleasure watching them hunt Skomer voles to feed their young, even if their ‘barking’ alerted me to their displeasure as I carried out duties around the island.
- For years I have hoped for a grey shrike, and this season I have been blessed with both a lesser grey shrike and a woodchat shrike! Not to mention all the wheatear fledglings.
- Being from Cornwall, the chough holds a special place in my heart and it has been a pleasure watching so many pairs fledge this season. I hope that ‘brân Arthur’ (Arthur’s crow) will once again fill the Cornish skies as it does the Pembrokeshire coast.
Diversity, Equality, Inclusion
Skomer Island is an important National Nature Reserve, but it is more than that; it is a place that has inspired so many. The experience for me has been more than fulfilling a lifetime ambition to stay on the island whilst making new friends and gaining career enhancing skills, it has helped me reconnect with the land. My family has always been involved in land management in one way or another, our Romani culture fosters a strong connection with the land but with the decline in traditional industries I fear this connection is becoming lost. The experience gained on Skomer is helping me forge a new path for myself, and I hope that other people from Underserved Demographics find their way onto the island and into the conservation sector.
What next?
I have a NERC funded Centre for Satellite Data in Environmental Science placement with the University of Edinburgh working on ‘Machine Learning for Conservation Management’ that I will be working on for the next couple of months, but I hope to continue working on remote islands and earning my BTO ringing licence, all whilst making more BBC Natural History Documentaries. My eventual aim is to work on Bird Island, South Georgia (Antarctica).
I really do hope to return to Skomer in the future, and maybe even visit our sister island Skokholm.
 |
| Birthday cake in the garden |
 |
| Team BBQ |
No comments:
Post a Comment