Last year I was lucky enough to have an extra week on Ramsey Island, on top of my usual fortnight. I’ve been volunteering each year for the RSPB on the Island since 2012 but before that extra week, I had never stayed in September. Having enjoyed that week, I decided that I would book my fortnight this year in September too as opposed to my usual springtime stay.

Ramsey Island in September is very different from earlier in the year. Gone are cliff-nesting seabirds and so have many of the other birds from the Island’s sheep fields and maritime heathland. All but the last few flowers have disappeared, with the final purple flushes of the heather dotted here and there. Even the bracken is falling over with the deep green turning to reds, oranges and rustiness.

I arrived on Saturday but there haven’t been any visitor boats since. Usually there are incoming boats at 10am and 12pm bringing up to 40 visitors each but the wind has been strong enough to prevent them from running, so there have only been four of us on the island for the past few days (Greg, the site manager, Alys, a student studying the seals and two of us volunteers). It looks like this will continue until at least Saturday with more wind forecast and the seas not having much chance to subside.

It’s been lashing it down with rain again today, so we spent time painting the Bungalow (where the volunteers stay) but we also went out to do the latest round of surveys of the grey seal pupping beaches – more on those in a later post.

I’ve been a little slow with my blogging of late but hope to have a few more posts before my stay is over…