The majority of the last week for us has been taken up by the back breaking task of shearing the sheep.
Monday brought the only boat visit of the week for a 3 hour trip from Cardiff. Fortunately the weather played ball on this occasion and I finished my guided tour a lot dryer than my previous one! Monday is also the day that we do the majority of our weekly checks and cleans, so it was a pretty full on day in the end.
Tuesday through to Thursday was sheep shearing time. Professional sheep shearers are able to rattle of a sheep a minute, or 90 seconds at worst. For us novices though the process takes a little longer and is in the region of about 90 minutes per sheep (we'll use the excuse that we don't have as good equipment as the professionals, with most of the group using hand shears).
Working in pairs you would first have to tip the sheep into a sitting position (they can't lay on their backs otherwise they wouldn't be able to breathe properly) in order to work on the belly area and around the leg joints. One person would be shearing while the other holds the sheep in place to stop it running off and causing mayhem. The sheep can then be put back on it's feet and again be kept in place while the shearer works over the back and neck area. When the process is completed they look only about half the size they did at the beginning!
With most of the group suffering aches and pains after the sheep shearing ordeal, Friday was kept to fairly simple and non-physical tasks. Gardening, wild plant identification, bird watching and strimming were the main order of the day.
You may remember a few weeks ago that I featured the bird in the picture below while talking about gull ringing.
After a bit of hard work and research I have been able to find the history of that particular bird. It wasn't a simple a process as normal, as the history keepers didn't have any record of this particular bird.
My research led me to an email address for a guy in Spain, and after a speculative email containing the picture of the bird we were able to confirm that the bird was ringed by his project in Malaga. This gull is still comparatively young at only 2 years old, and it has migrated between the UK and Spain in both years of it's life to date. It was seen in mainland Cardiff last summer and is now frequently being spotted on the island here.
This weeks rather amusing news story comes from Sweden and looks at the crazy things some people will do to get around dress codes where they work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22828150
See you all next week!
Monday brought the only boat visit of the week for a 3 hour trip from Cardiff. Fortunately the weather played ball on this occasion and I finished my guided tour a lot dryer than my previous one! Monday is also the day that we do the majority of our weekly checks and cleans, so it was a pretty full on day in the end.
Tuesday through to Thursday was sheep shearing time. Professional sheep shearers are able to rattle of a sheep a minute, or 90 seconds at worst. For us novices though the process takes a little longer and is in the region of about 90 minutes per sheep (we'll use the excuse that we don't have as good equipment as the professionals, with most of the group using hand shears).
Before the haircut...
Working in pairs you would first have to tip the sheep into a sitting position (they can't lay on their backs otherwise they wouldn't be able to breathe properly) in order to work on the belly area and around the leg joints. One person would be shearing while the other holds the sheep in place to stop it running off and causing mayhem. The sheep can then be put back on it's feet and again be kept in place while the shearer works over the back and neck area. When the process is completed they look only about half the size they did at the beginning!
After the haircut...
With most of the group suffering aches and pains after the sheep shearing ordeal, Friday was kept to fairly simple and non-physical tasks. Gardening, wild plant identification, bird watching and strimming were the main order of the day.
The gull chicks are developing and getting bigger by the day! Herring gulls in this case
You may remember a few weeks ago that I featured the bird in the picture below while talking about gull ringing.
Finally we know the history of this bird
After a bit of hard work and research I have been able to find the history of that particular bird. It wasn't a simple a process as normal, as the history keepers didn't have any record of this particular bird.
My research led me to an email address for a guy in Spain, and after a speculative email containing the picture of the bird we were able to confirm that the bird was ringed by his project in Malaga. This gull is still comparatively young at only 2 years old, and it has migrated between the UK and Spain in both years of it's life to date. It was seen in mainland Cardiff last summer and is now frequently being spotted on the island here.
This weeks rather amusing news story comes from Sweden and looks at the crazy things some people will do to get around dress codes where they work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22828150
See you all next week!
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