Week Ending 26th May 2013

In comparison to some of the recent weeks this week has felt a little non-eventful. With only one of the two scheduled visitor boats making it to the island, the week has been mainly taken up with simple maintenance tasks such as gardening and painting.

Our ducks busy enjoying their morning feed

Vicky and I began constructing a new fence for the wildlife garden to keep visitors from walking on the slow worm sheets, with Vicky having to finish the project off herself after I injured my shoulder. 

I spent a fair amount of time in the garden trying to encourage our crops to grow, but unfortunately all of the signs of a cold spring and late planting are evident as they are well behind where they should be by now. The weeds on the other hand seem to have little problem growing as I have dispatched 3 wheelbarrows full of the things this week.

With the rarity of a warm non-windy day occurring yesterday, some of the group went for a walk around the low tide mark of the island. It gives a great new perspective of the island when the tide allows you to walk this far out and look back. 

A very low tide allows you to walk quite a distance away from the island

With the wind being too strong to carry out the week's scheduled butterfly survey, we spent one afternoon searching for gulls with identification rings. Each year 100 young gulls are ringed so that sightings of them can be monitored throughout their lives. Whenever we see a ringed gull on the island we are able to send in it's ring number and receive a "history" of the bird, including it's age and other places that have reported seeing the bird. Some of the birds that we have seen on the island this year have been as far afield as Spain and Portugal.

This gull has a white ring with black writing that reads "N00X". We will now report this sighting and await it's history report.

The news story that we leave you with this week is truly remarkable, and it just goes to show you that age really is no boundary! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8065370.stm

Have a good week everybody!

Week Ending 19th May

This week I have mainly been counting. Wildlife surveys make up a reasonable percentage of our work on the island, and this week it was time for the islands largest survey; the annual gull count.

Every year since 1957 there has been a count of the nests belonging to the Lesser Black Backed Gulls on the island. That year there were 218 nests found on the island and the numbers have been increasing slowly since.

Lesser Black Backed Gull with 2 eggs in the nest. They usually lay up to 3 per year

In order to count the gulls the island was split up into 5 areas, with each team assigned an area to check. The teams would then methodically make their way through their area marking and counting each nest that they come across. Any nests belonging to Herring Gulls were counted separately. After each team had finished counting a member of another team would then go into an area to find the error rate of the original counters. They would do this by looking at the first 100 nests they come across while taking a random path through the area. The number of unmarked nests in that 100 would then give you an error rate for that area and allow you to calculate a corrected total.

After nearly 4 hours among the gulls being swooped and pooed upon we finally concluded on a total of 3606 nests, considerably more than 1957! This number however is not a complete total as due to the rough sea conditions we were not able to count the gulls nesting on the cliffs from a boat as is the normal practice. Since the gulls are documented as being monogamous we can safely conclude that each nest required 2 gulls present on the island, so that gives you an idea of the number of gulls we have flying over our heads on a daily basis (7212)! 

Other wildlife that we have counted this week have included slow worms and moths. We complete a slow worm survey on a monthly basis by lifting 20 slow worm sheets placed strategically around the island and counting the number of males, females and juveniles under each. Contrary to popular belief slow worms are not directly related to snakes, but are actually categorised as legless lizards. This month we found 9 males, 7 females and 2 juveniles.

Female slow worm from under the sheet in the background

For our moth survey we place a moth trap and a light outside overnight and collect it in the morning. Using small boxes with identification windows, we are able to identify the varieties of moth that have been collected and these are then recorded in a similar way to our other surveys. 

Other than counting this week, Vicky and I have been busy building things out of driftwood that washes up on the beaches. Vicky is currently working on a bench which is coming along very well, and I am working on a bird table to offer a safe feeding area for some of the smaller birds on the island.

Vicky working on the frame of her bench

My bird table

We have also had a scout group resident on the island over the weekend, and we have tried to show them what our job on the island is all about and get them involved in some of the work that we do. Most of them seemed to have a good time with the exception of a few that were rather disenchanted with living among a gull colony for obvious reasons!

"If you'd like to read this article again press 1, if you'd like to have a cup of tea press 2, or if you'd like to read this weeks news story about a mans obsession with call centre phone options click here:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22567656

See you all next week :) 

Week Ending 12th May 2013

This week we have been mainly stranded! It serves me right for getting exited about getting back to the mainland in time to watch the football (which incidentally Dover lost after a valiant fight). 2 attempts to get off of the island have been thwarted by the weather which has been blowing a gale since Tuesday night, and so we decided to abandon the idea of shore leave for now and just carry on working as normal.

Our main project during the week has been caring for the sheep to ensure that they remain healthy over the coming weeks as the weather starts to warm up (in theory!). To do this we have needed to trim their hooves, trim the fleece around their backsides and spray them with an anti fly-strike solution.

It turns out that moving a sheep is a lot harder than you would think it is, and "tipping" them off their feet to trim their hooves should be reclassified as "wrestling" them off their feet. Over the course of a day though we managed to work our way through all 23 sheep with the efficiency of the Red Bull Formula 1 pit crew.

I know it looks dead but I promise it's not. This sheep's in for a pit stop!

In order to try and speed up the composting process on the island Vicky and I decided to build a rotating compost bin out of some wooden pallets and an old plastic drum. The wooden structure that I was working on to act as a base was destroyed in the storm before I could finish it, but second time lucky I was able to get the job done. Vicky was the mastermind behind the drum section, and together with a little help from Bob (the volunteer warden on the island) we now have a fully functioning compost bin!

The finished compost bin

This week we conducted our first Shelduck survey on the island, finding a total of 17 birds during the process. This is not as many as there have been seen on the island, but the extremely aggressive wind seems to have them laying low for now. The Shelducks should be nesting soon, and they use the previously created burrows of other animals (in our case the rabbits) to lay their eggs out of sight of predators (in our case the gulls).

One plus side, being stranded on the island meant that we were able to catch our first look at one of the Peregrine Falcons that are nesting on the East side of the island. Until this point we had only seen the remains of the Peregrine's victims rather than the bird itself.

In all honesty we haven't looked at a lot of news this week, but this article did catch my eye. What does your use of grammar say about you? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22403731

See you next week!

Week Ending 5th May 2013

Our arrival on Flat Holm Island has been our main news over the last 7 days. We have now officially started our jobs as Trainee Wardens, and this is what we’ve been up to this week:

With the lack of the wind and rain that spoiled our last boat journey to the island, the ride across in the rib was incredibly pleasant allowing us to take in some of our surroundings rather than hunkering down under hats and hoods.

The island has two main buildings that are used for accommodation; “The Farm House” which is comprised of 2 dormitory rooms along with some living space, and “Driftwood” a row of rooms located very close to the lighthouse. Our first mission was to get Driftwood into a habitable condition, as this would be our home for the majority of our 6 month stay on the island, while the Farm House will mainly be used for residential groups who come to stay on the island.

With a little bit of TLC and some hard work bringing the kitchen back up to scratch, Vicky and I moved into room number 4 of the Driftwood block. The room has wonderful views out to the lighthouse and across the channel toward Weston-Super-Mare.

The view out of our window in the morning. Not bad!

The majority of the first 2 days were spent trying to understand how the island functions, and as we are mainly self sufficient out here things work slightly differently than they would at home. For example to be able to use water we first have to pump it up to the mainland tanks from the underground ones. The supply in the underground tanks are limited to the rain that was gathered over the winter though so we do have to ration what we use quite carefully.

Our power on the island comes from a combination of a wind turbine and 2 large sets of photovoltaic (solar) panels. Generally as long as the days are sunny and windy we are fine for power, but we do have a couple of backup generators to see us through if necessary.

On a daily basis a member of the team begins the day by performing a certain number of checks before we begin the day’s work. These involve checking the water filtration system is functioning, checking the fire alarm unit for faults, checking the backup generators in case they are needed, checking the temperatures of the fridges and freezers, and finally using the weather station to complete a weather report which will be recorded with the MET Office. The ducks and chickens are also fed at this point.

Badger faced sheep

Our days work can be very varied by all accounts, although most of this week was taken up by finding our feet on the island. We need to know the features of the island well enough to give guided tours to the visitors, and for a small island there is a lot to learn!

We have completed 2 main tasks this week. The first was a “nest sweep” during which we explored the island looking for gull’s nests that are in places that they shouldn’t be and destroying them before they are able to lay eggs in them (the island is split into two halves and we only allow the gull colony to nest on the southern half of the island).

Our other task has been conducting a vegetation survey of the island. This is done by going to set points and taking a set of photos in several directions. Over a period of time these pictures can be compared to see how the vegetation has changed over the seasons / years.

We were very lucky and had the chance to climb the island’s lighthouse while the engineers from Trinity House had come out for a servicing visit. The view from the top of the lighthouse gives you a great perspective of the island, especially looking down on all of the Victorian gun pits and defences that remain behind today.

At the top of the lighthouse. You can see some of the fortifications below

Probably the saddest news this week was the departure of Wonky the ram from the island. As he was hand reared Wonky was incredibly tame and loved to have a cuddle (even more so if you had food!). He has been found a new home on a smallholding in Swansea and left on the Harbour Authorities boat that came to deliver our shopping. In time the rest of the managed sheep will follow as soon as a new home is found for them.

One of our fellow trainees Harriot gives Wonky a cuddle as he waits  on the jetty for the boat

So in other news this week I am elated that my team Dover Athletic have made it into the Blue Square South Play-off final after a nervy afternoon against Eastleigh that went all the way to a penalty shootout. The other good news is that the final will be during our shore leave from the island and that I will actually be able to get to the game!

I have never liked the idea of working in a call centre and it is a far cry from what we are currently doing, but the news article that I leave you with this week may be just about the only reason I would consider it...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-22370334

See you all next week!