Great news, after 10 days of no boat trips it looks like the island is open again. The past week has been a chilly one full of northerly winds.
The absence of day visitors has given the island volunteers and staff a chance to catch up on lots of small jobs from painting, deep cleaning the compost loos (nice!), repainting signs and monitoring. In particular we have been joining the field assistant, Julia, in her work. This involves checking pairs of guillemots and razorbills for eggs. This all helps to build a picture of guillemot and razorbill productivity and contributing to a data set going back to the 1970s. Thanks for all your help.
This work has been greatly improved by a donation made to the island from a visitor to Lockley Lodge last week. We are very grateful to them for donating an Opticron Mighty Midget telescope and two nice pairs of binoculars. The scope has already been used for monitoring and the binoculars will be kept aside particularly for use by the volunteers. Please get in touch if this was you - it would be nice to say thanks personally.
Other highlights this week - bluebells are emerging and will be best over the next week and a half. Grasshopper warbler, whitethroats, sedge warblers are all singing. Guillemots and Razorbills on eggs and now always seen on the cliffs. Puffins will also be laying shortly.
Chris Taylor
Skomer Warden
07971 114302
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