Hello! So, after two busy weeks on the island I thought it's best to finally introduce myself – Izzy here on Skomer as the new Seasonal Assistant Warden. I am so excited to be joining the team for the next four months, getting involved in all aspects of the island’s visitor, survey and maintenance work. I'm pretty familiar with the island already, having first come out in 2021 as the Seabird Monitoring Volunteer and then returning for a couple of weeks every year during this super busy time. I’m now going to be involved in much more of the work the team does on the island, so here’s an update on my first few weeks.
My arrival on the 1st of April was straight in, with the first stop being dumper driver training. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m a bad driver - having grown up on a farm I’m even used to driving a tractor, but a dumper is something I can’t confess to being familiar with! Let alone driving a dumper on narrow paths, with fragile burrows either side, and then facing the task of getting the boat trailer onto the beach to get the boat off the water. A few attempts were made and then Leighton did an excellent demonstration that didn’t need to be repeated (i.e. it would’ve taken all evening if I had continued trying!).
The next morning was another new thing, starting bright and
early for my first Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). The whole island is surveyed
multiple times across April and May to record all breeding behaviour of birds
on the island. Now having done a few surveys my ID is improving and they’re
proving to be a highlight so far. As most of my time on the island in previous
years has been focused with the seabird cliff counts and Manx shearwater census it's
been really enjoyable to get to know the many other birds on the island a bit
better.
Pretty quickly I was on my first morning boats and learning the welcome talk about all the different amazing wildlife that we have. Having done lots of engagement with big groups in the past I was quite excited to be able to talk to people about Skomer and share my enthusiasm for this amazing place.
It was also amazing to learn loads more about the history and archaeology of Skomer with Nick and Jacob from Bristol University who came on for a few days in mid-April for fieldwork. As a lot of the archaeological features are off the paths we needed to help them get to the features using the best route across the burrows. This was a great excuse to head out with them to new parts of the island and to pick their brains about what the island's archaeology tells us about people who lived here thousands of years ago. Their passion really shone through, and they were happy to answer our many (and possibly obvious) questions.
Nick was a real hero and even brought his flint knapping kit out to the island, so we had a couple of great evenings learning how to flint knap. It was really cool to connect with people that were probably doing the exact same thing on Skomer thousands of years ago.
There's also been plenty of more exciting weather too which has unfortunately stopped boats running and put our focus more on getting the island's accommodation ready for the researchers and long-term volunteers to arrive very soon. Armed with sandpaper paint and brushes and a crack team of amazing weekly volunteers we made the final touches on the research blocks at the farm and at North Haven. After couple of days of work, and plenty of tea breaks, both blocks were looking far better and ready to welcome Bella the guillemot fieldworker on the 10th of April and Freya and Duncan the University of Gloucester fieldworkers on the 19th.
With the arrival of researchers and the very near arrival of the long-term volunteers it feels like the season is really starting to pick up now. It's been amazing to see such big changes in just a few weeks of being here, swallows who in my first few days were fleeting glimpses as they travelled past, are now sat on the farm buildings singing and checking out the new hide at Moorey Mere as a potential place to nest. The oystercatchers are really getting noisier and we are waiting every day for the first auk egg to be seen on the cliffs.
