Another week passes and the weather is starting to annoy me now. After the amazing heat and sunshine of last summer I was hoping for a repeat but my hopes appear to be being dashed at the moment. This was another mixed week for boats with several days in a row when they didn’t run. There was much rain and wind, and it really doesn’t feel like summer has arrived at all yet. My first four weeks were quite nice with some warm sunshine, when out of the wind, but the past three weeks have been really quite bad.

The survey and monitoring work continues with the completion breeding bird survey, my Manx shearwater response survey and watching the chough nests. This week saw the first chough fledge and I saw the first one of the lot; it was perched outside the cave at Briw calling to its parents while at least one more sibling was still inside. Since then chicks have fledged from five other nests with more to come, hopefully.

I also started one of my favourite tasks – scything bracken. My first task wasn’t essential to bracken control on the island, but good for us walking around – I cut a path from the Bungalow down to the sheep fields and than out around the base of the hill. I look forward to more!

I had a day off the island, the first in three weeks, to do some food shopping, including buying some crabs – my first spider crab since I was about five or six. It was lovely to see that the verge flowers down the Pembrokeshire county lanes are still in full bloom.

The highlight of the week was jumping on an evening boat trip out to the Bishops and Clerks, the string of islands off Ramsey’s west coast. The sea was quite rough but we had good views of passing Manxies and of puffins and other birds on the islands. Hopefully, more trips out to come!