C Permit, Degree completion and Skomer continued

I can hardly believe how much life has changed for me in the last month.

The last month

I'm now a C permit holder, and have already started getting extra endorsements (Herring Gull noose carpet)! It's been a little scary having to organise all the seabird ringing for my job. This involves ringing and colour ringing adults and chicks of 6 different species (Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Kittiwake, Puffin, Razorbill and Manx Shearwater). Ringing without a trainer in the vicinity is a whole different ball game! 

1st bird ringed as a C permit holder
in charge...and colour ringed too!

I do find forming colour rings quite therapeutic though, and a great way to spend a rainy day.

Preparing Puffin, Kittiwake and Razorbill colour rings

Razorbill colour rings - tricky to form

I just about managed to avoid a big storm and get off the island in time to hand in my last 2 uni assignments, and take my last exam. It was all a bit hectic but I enjoyed being back in Bangor. I got to see all my friends, catch up with Steve (my ringing trainer) and Rachel and a couple of my lecturers, go birding with Zac and Conor, go climbing, do a nest box check, finish the assignments, revise and clear out my uni room. It's a massive relief having all the uni work behind me now. It was getting quite difficult juggling both that and Skomer work. It was also lovely to get back to the island and celebrate my degree completion with all the staff, Pimm's, a 4 course meal and our tame jackdaw (Jack) in the sun! 

Pimm's outside the house, overlooking North Haven.

Our tame Jackdaw - Jack

Skomer work itself is going well. Almost all my study species have started laying now (except Kittiwake), or are well into incubation. I'm incredibly busy and get very little sleep (except on rainy days), but I'm loving every minute of it. I can't believe how lucky I've been to land this as my first contract! I see incredible things on a day-to-day basis and feel very privileged to experience them. I've had 2 lifers (Little Owl [my bogie bird unlocked] and Black-headed Bunting), ringed/handled 3 new species (Lesser Black-backed Gull, Short-eared Owl and Crow), seen Herring Gull chicks hatch, touched the wing tip of a Fulmar as it flew past, seen Razorbills, Kittiwakes, Guillemots and Lesser Black-backed Gulls mating no more than 10m away from me and seen some great scenery and invertebrates. All in all I'm loving life here.

Little Owl - 1st Island lifer

Adult Short-eared Owl
checking me out as we ringed the chicks

2 cute Crow chicks - they thought I was mum

Herring Gull chick hatching -
wish I'd recorded the exceedingly sweet cheeping

Pair of Fulmar sunning themselves 6ft away

A Guillemot totally missing the point of incubating...
...for 20+ minutes!

Gorgeous Twenty-plume moth

Beautiful sunset over the farm

The Job

Well that sums up the best bits of the last month, but what do I actually do?

I've got 6 study species - Kittiwake, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Puffin, Razorbill and Manx Shearwater - and each has a designated study plot. These are spread across the island. The adult birds in each have been ringed and/or colour ringed for the last 30+ years and adult survival and productivity of each has been monitored long term. It is this monitoring work that I'm continuing. This is a JNCC contract that contributes to the data collected on seabirds around the country.

The 6 species study plots, and their position on Skomer Island

So far the majority of the job has been spent resighting the colour ringed adults from previous years. The Lesser Black-backs and Herring Gulls have darvic rings, but the Puffins, Kittiwakes and Razorbills have unique combinations of 4 colour rings. 

AK - Darvic ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull

Colour ringed Kittiwake - LSGT
(Light green over Striped red on the left;
Green over BTO on the right)

This is easy enough to do when the birds stand still and are orientated in the right way, but it's quite rare this happens. With the darvic ringed birds I can often see the ring but not the 2 letter code, and with the colour ringed birds I can often see one leg, but not the other! This can be very frustrating after a while, especially in poor light and bad weather. It's frustrating times like that when I make sure I look up from the scope, remind myself of where I am, what species are surrounding me, and how much better being outdoors in bad weather is than being stuck inside all the time!

Standard darvic situation - 1 ring readable, 2 facing the wrong way!

Now that everything has started laying eggs/incubating/hatching, the next few months will be taken up with productivity monitoring, chick ringing, adult colour ringing and further colour ring resighting. It'll keep me busy throughout the daylight hours, so I'm anticipating being pretty exhausted by mid-August, but I'm excited about the challenges ahead! 

Skomer day 7

I've now been on the island a week and feel like I'm starting to get the hang of things. I've managed to colour ring resight 16 (26 resighted last year) herring gulls, 29 (60) kittiwakes including 2 French scheme birds, 60 (85) lesser black-backed gulls and 43 (210) puffins. Apart from the puffins, which I've only spent one night looking at, I'm pretty happy with these totals so far!

I've also had a few brilliant experiences already. Today I managed to touch the wing tip of a fulmar as it flew past me at the top of a cliff. I managed to get a couple of photos of these majestic birds, but this doesn't really show how close they were getting.

I've also met, and made friends with, some awesome people and so I'm confident it's going to be a good summer!

My day to day routine generally involves leaving the house just before dawn in time to be at either the razorbill or kittiwake colonies for dawn. I then stay at one of these until 10/11am trying to resight as many colour ringed birds as possible. I then head back to the house for some tea and food and then head over to the herring gull colony from about 1pm-4pm. After that it's either head to the lesser black-backed colony for the evening, or to the puffins to resight rings. I'll do this until dusk (until I can't read rings accurately in the low light) and the there's just time for food before heading to daily log at 9pm. For the last week this has mainly been to get some social interaction as I'm mainly on my own all day and was in my accommodation alone until today. 

Then, if I'm still awake (!) I go out again once it's dark (10:30-11pm) and catch as many Manx shearwater retraps as I can. Thankfully the study plot for these is right next to my accommodation so it's not too difficult to call it quits when I get too tired. So far I've caught ~45 retraps, but I'm not sure how this compares with last years total as only confirmed breeders are recorded on the data sheets I have. Some of the birds I'm retrapping haven't been recorded as breeding within my study plot. 

I then get some sleep and start the process all over again the next day. However, the last 2 days have been very quiet because all the auks and kittiwakes disappeared from the island. I'm not sure what the mechanism behind this mass exodus is, but apparently the same thing has happened at South Stack (thanks Ian Wright) and on Bardsey (thanks Ben Porter). Whatever the reason, it means that I've had no birds to look at in the mornings and so these have been used to trying and finish my remaining uni assignments. I now only have 1 left to do!! 

All in all I'm settling in very well and getting on with things. I'm looking forward to seeing how my final numbers for the season compare to last years (1) because of the winter storms (2) because the guy doing this job previously was here for 10 years!!

Hope you are all well and enjoying the spring. I know I am!

Skomer times

Apologies for not blogging recently but it's been a busy month with a trip to Tenerife (university field trip), dissertation writing, assignment finishing, family visiting and preparations for Skomer.

I'm now on the island and settling in well. I'll try and write a much more thorough update soon but thought I'd post a few Skomer pictures to whet your appetites.

Sunrise view from my kitchen window

My new office...

...with me hard at work

My lesser black-backed gull watching hide...

...from where this picture was taken

Everyone's favourite seabird, though seeing the
colour rings on their tiny legs is pretty tricky.

North Wales Bird Ringing - Duck luck at last

Again, apologies for the lack of posting lately. Life mainly consists of uni work at the moment, and no-one wants to read about that. 

I have managed to squeeze in some birding and ringing here and there though. This weekend has been the most fun. 

On Friday night we went out wader netting, and although the catch rate was slow, we did get a nice range of species. Curlews, Bar-tailed Godwits, Redshanks, Dunlin, Snipe, Oystercatchers, Mallards and a Shelduck all managed to find their way into the nets. My night extraction skills are improving well now, just need the opportunity to practise some more. 

I've never had luck with ringing ducks. Over the last 2 years I haven't ringed a single species, despite SCAN making quite a few decent catches. They've always been caught on the sessions I've had to miss. Fortunately, I got to ring both of the mallards (nice adult male and female) and the shelduck on this occasion! My bad duck luck was well and truly broken. 

Saturday was spent doing a bit more uni work and then preparing for my Tenerife field course. I did manage to fit in some nice birding in the afternoon though. Zac, Conor and I headed out to Llanfairfechan reserve and notched up 27 species, with good numbers of Wigeon, and singing skylark and chiffchaff being the highlights. We then headed up onto Conwy mountain to try and see Chough. We didn't see any, but there were plenty I smart looking stonechats and we did bump into 5 other North West birders, including Rob Sandham and Rob Hughes which was nice. Finally we headed to Pensarn to try and see the surf scoter. Although there were the impressively large scoter rafts (Conor not seen these before), no surfies were found and I had to cut the search short as I needed to get back for climbing. All in all a very fun afternoon, and it felt enormously good to be out in the sunshine rather than stuck in the windowless computer room! 

I'm a little bit amazed at how early spring is this year. Hawthorn leaves are coming out, there's lots of blossom and daffodils around and I'm regularly seeing bees, butterflies and good insect numbers now. Plus all the birds are starting breeding. I've seen house sparrow and blackbird nest building, coot sitting on eggs and all the males have their summer song now. Great tits, chaffinches and song thrush are really making it sound like spring! I really hope we don't get a cold snap like last year, that might cause all kinds of problems for these early breeders. 

The next week will be taken up with a university field trip to Tenerife. I'm very excited and looking forward to learning about all the many and varied habitats and ecosystems on the island. 

Happy birding to all and I'll update again at some point before the end of March :-P

Weekend roundup

This weekend was typically busy and involved a lot of travelling. After a busy day on Friday, I packed the car with 4 boxes full of uni stuff (I'm starting to move out), and then headed over to Chris' in Ormskirk. We spent the night there and most of Saturday too. I spent the morning sorting out all my ringing details for my C permit application, not an easy task!

We then drove to my farm in Shropshire in the evening, which is conveniently close to the place where Chris was having his interview for Bardsey the next day. A nice, quiet, evening in with my parents was much welcomed after a busy week.

Sunday morning was a drive over to Penkridge for Chris' interview. Thankfully it went very well, and he's now just waiting to hear back. Fingers crossed! We then drove back to mine for a quick cup of tea before I dropped Chris off at the station, for him to head up to Dumfries (guess neither of us can sit still for long). I then spent the rest of the day with mum and dad, and helped mum sort out her new iPad. This was classically entertaining, with many wrong buttons pressed, but I think she's got the hang of it. I left there at 19:30 and was back in Bangor for 21:30. A quick car unpack, shower, room sort and prepare for the morning was all I had time for, before my brain totally gave out and I got some sleep.

This morning was a 6am start for my first February ringing session! Despite some unwelcome drizzle, we had a good session with ~50-60 birds. Conor (new trainee) managed to make it along this morning, and I think he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. He's one of the keen birders from the uni, and I'm glad I've helped him get into ringing. I'm hoping he'll be the replacement chairman of the Uni Birding group once I'm gone, as well as taking over the BTO Student Ambassador role, and my nest recording site in Abergwyngregyn. The ringing session itself did wonders for boosting my confidence, and consolidated the fact that I feel ready for my C permit. 

So, after a long weekend, I've travelled ~400 miles, and suspect it'll be the same again next weekend with a trip down to Cheltenham to meet the team I'll be working with on Skomer.

Ringing update

Whilst looking through my ringing records tonight, I discovered that I'd somehow managed to omit Nuthatch from my overall species list. This means that the Little Grebe I hand caught whilst lamping on the 23rd January was actually my 75th species ringed! I just thought it was nice that my first lamped bird bought my ringing diversity to such a nice total number.

Also I'm pleased to say I'm currently filling in my C permit application. Hopefully I'll be an official, full C permit holder by the end of the month, at the latest!

Weekly round up

After a great night out on Friday (31st) to celebrate getting the Skomer job, Saturday was a day for catching up on odd jobs and then getting my weekly climbing session in with Adrienne Stratford. We've both improved a lot since we became climbing partners in late December. I can now comfortably lead 5c routes and have even managed 2 6a routes too. Not bad considering 1 1/2 months ago I struggled with 4c routes. (Apologies to non-climbers, that probably made no sense!).

Sunday was a beautifully sunny day so Zac, Conor, Hamza and myself went for a lovely birding walk around the Bangor area. This resulted in 74 BirdTrack records, of 42 species and 4 complete lists. Highlights of the day were 4 Goosander at close range, a great tree climb, much birding banter and 20 more UBC records. 

Monday was a day trip to John Moores Uni to help Kelvin Jones give a BTO talk to some of the 2nd year biological students, my first external trip as BTO Student Ambassador. I found the talk fascinating, and at least a few of the students seemed quite responsive to the idea of volunteering with the BTO. Hopefully by educating them now, some of them will come back to volunteer with us in the future. It was also good fun seeing what (at least part of) Kelvin's Development Coordinator role involves. There's such a diversity of roles within the BTO, and it was nice to see this side of the organisation, rather than my standard ringing / surveying involvement.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday have all been uni work days. I have managed to sneak in some birding along the way, and have added another 19 records to UBC BirdTrack. Zac and I are keeping the record / species rate high and are hoping to win these two categories this year! Also had another good climbing session and am really making physical and mental progress now...it's a shame I won't be able to climb with Adrienne once I get on Skomer :-(

The weekend (plus Friday) is going to be another busy one, with a blood donation, lectures, driving to Chris' on Friday and then over to mine on Saturday night to take my first load of luggage back home (starting the moving out process). Then I'll drop Chris at his Bardsey interview on Sunday before spending the day with my parents and then back to Bangor! Lets hope the wind and rain don't stop me!