A summer’s day on Ramsey

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It’s been a very bright and warm day on Ramsey Island; it started off bright with a cold breeze but for the breeze to drop and the sun to gain in strength during the afternoon.

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Today has been a typical day of volunteering with visitor boats met, visitors made tea and coffee, sweeping the shearing sheds, checking on chough nests to see if the young have fledged, and finally a bit of thistle control (cutting them down with machetes).

After the visitors left for the day and the radio enthusiasts had been loaded into the Gower Ranger following their three-night stay in the farm buildings, I went for a wander around the island.  I spent a while sat at the top of Carn Llindain (the island’s highest point) looking  out across Ramsey Sound towards the mainland.  With such clear skies, I could also see the Smalls Lighthouse and (very faintly) the Irish coast.

Below is the view from the top of Carn Llindain looking over the farm buildings and Ramsey Sound to St. David’s and the Preseli Hills in the distance.

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On my evening wander I also tried to get some shots of the wildlife; below is one of many young fledglings flitting around the island – this one being a Wheatear.

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Stags in Foxgloves

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After the hinds wouldn’t position themselves in an orderly way the other evening, the stags made up for it today by mooching around the foxgloves immediately outside the Bungalow this afternoon…

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There are 14 red deer on the island, left over from a deer farming enterprise in the 60s and 70s, with four stags and 10 hinds…and possibly some calves hidden away somewhere in the long bracken.

A bit of hard graft…

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It’s been a quiet and largely foggy day on Ramsey Island. I woke to a lack of a view from my bedroom windows this morning and it didn’t much improve when I opened the front door.  After the great weather yesterday afternoon, it was with a bit of disappointment that we wandered down to the farmhouse.

Lisa (the Warden), Lizzie (the Intern), Kate (the summer volunteer) and I (the dogs-body) spent much of the day clearing bracken away from the edge of the path out towards the south of the island, and also up the small hill (Foel Fawr). I do like a bit of scything and maybe this was just a bit practice for some proper bracken-bashing later in my stay.

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Not all bird surveys are the same!

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Yesterday I had the most fun I’ve ever had on a bird survey – they’re normally tranquil and quiet but not this time!

I joined Greg, Ramsey Island’s Site Manager, and Martin and Liz of Thousand Island Expeditions aboard the Ocean Ranger (a 500bhp jet boat!) to do a survey of the seabirds around the island.

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Every few years the seabirds are counted and most of the breeding cliffs can be seen and surveyed from the land. However, there are quite a few places hidden away from sight where the birds have to be counted from the water, so yesterday afternoon was spent out around the island looking up at the cliffs trying to spot razorbills, guillemots, fulmars and kittiwakes on their nests or breeding ledges.

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We set off from the harbour, on the eastern side of Ramsey, and went anti-clockwise around the island, finding a few fulmars to begin with. There are relatively few seabirds nesting on the east and north of the island, so we were soon heading round to the west, where the larger seabird cliffs are. We also headed out to the Bishops and Clerks, which are a chain of smaller islands to the west and north-west of Ramsey.

There were plenty of birds to count, although my counting was nowhere near as good as Greg’s but hopefully my photos might make up for it! There were plenty of all four types of bird we were surveying but also loads of gulls and just a few puffins (not including the 200 puffin decoys at Aber Mawr).

As the afternoon wore on the sun cloud cleared and it got quite warm under the cliffs – it’s normal to wrap up warm when out on the water – and I certainly didn’t need my winter jacket in the end.

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At the end of the four-hour survey, Martin took us for a spin through the Bitches, the line of rocks running out from the east of Ramsey, south of the harbour. The tides rushes between the rocks and there can be a one metre difference in water levels between the two sides. I certainly don’t normally get a free ride on a jet boat when I’m out doing my breeding bird surveys in the middle of Cheshire and they’ll certainly seem even more tame from now on!

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