This week we’ve had some fantastic weather with Tuesday being particularly wonderful. I woke up early to go out to take some more dawn photos and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and barely any noticeable wind. This lasted much of the day and we had a lovely sunset to finish it off. I woke yesterday morning to rain and we need some more of the wet stuff, the Island’s grass is looking very dry compared to the fields across the Sound on the mainland.

I did all my usual tasks this week including helping with the boats and doing most of the introductory talks. I also finished off the oystercatcher survey and we started another round of chough watches. Now is the time for the chough chicks to hatch and we spent an hour at each of the nine chough nest locations monitoring and recording the activity. With both adults coming and going, and wiping their bills after leaving the nests, it was clear that many of the nests had chicks within them. However, there always seem to be one or two locations where more than one visit is required to check exactly what is happening.

Later in the week, I spent two afternoon’s supporting an exhibition in St David’s of paintings of Ramsey Island by David Cowdry to mark 25 years since the RSPB bought the island. The exhibition did very well, with at least half of the paintings sold and a significant sum raised for projects on the island.

I spent my day off visiting locations further up the coast from St David’s and had walks to St David’s Head and Aber Mawr. I can see St David’s Head from my bedroom and it was great to get another angle from which to look at the island. Aber Mawr was a bit of a revelation; it has a lovely pebbley beach with a fabulous old woodland behind. The woods were full of bird song and wildflowers, and I don’t think I have ever seen so many big ferns growing in a British woodland setting. I also saw my first sand martins of the year and the beach has a colony on its sandy cliff. After the visit to Aber Mawr, I went up to Strumble Head to do a spot of sea watching. There were loads of gannets flying around the area with many making their dramatic dives into the sea. Breaching the surface constantly were groups of both porpoise and bottle-nosed dolphin. The three stops during the day were interspersed with drives down high-banked country lanes with wild flowers in numbers I haven’t seen any where else. All-in-all, I had a great day exploring the North Pembrokeshire coast.

As the week came to an end, the volunteers changed again with both Steve and Chris leaving and four new ones coming on; Peter and Linda, and Dave and Sonia. It suddenly struck me that I really am here for quite some time and that for long term volunteers the Bungalow feels different to how it does for a short term volunteer (which I usually am). Being here for three months, routines are more developed, ways of doing things more set in and, generally, the place feels even more like ‘home’; my home, rather than everyone’s. So when new people come in, this all gets a little disrupted, and one could feel a little put out, no matter how lovely and well-intentioned the other volunteers all are. So, next time I come as a short-term volunteer, I will try a little harder to be more considerate to the long-term residents, especially if is their first stay here.