Week Ending 21st July 2013

It's been another scorching hot week out here on Flat Holm, and the island is starting to look more yellow than it's normal green. All of us have been feeling the heat, including the animals and the plants.

Despite the hot weather work goes on though, and it has been a pretty full on week. Unquestionably the largest challenge of the week was removing the commercial sheep from the island. They have at last found a new home to go to, but I think it's fair to say that they didn't want to leave this one!

It took many hours of building pens and herding (even sometimes carrying) the sheep between them, but eventually we were able to get the sheep onto the Harbour II boat and send them off to their new home.

Finally all of the sheep are safely on the boat and ready to depart for their new home

The Meadow Brown butterflies have been out in force this week, with well over 100 of them being counted on the weekly survey. The numbers of the Small Tortoiseshells have dropped off significantly, while the Large Whites seem to be making something of a comeback.

One of the Meadow Browns sunning itself on a Wild Leek

A Red Admiral lands on one of the Wild Leeks

With the weather being so hot, many of the birds are regularly being seen around the few areas that we actually have water left. With all of our collection tanks for outdoor use running very low we are hoping for a good rain storm to get us back on track. Not often you hear us wishing for that!

A pair of Greenfinches come down for what little water is left in the wildlife pond (female left, male right)

We had 2 school groups come over and visit us during the week. For the first we hosted a pirate treasure hunt with clues hidden all across the island. Most of the kids really got into it although a few of them...lets just say they might not be cut out for the great outdoors!

The second group were slightly older, and they came with the brief that they had to record a film of some description on the island. Some went for the conventional documentary type approach while others went down a more Disney meets horror movie route! I will certainly be interested to see what they look like if the school send the finished products over to us!

The rest of the week was taken up by continuing on the building that we are working on down near the jetty. By now all of the old lichen has been removed and the majority of the old paint has been scraped off. All that remains now is for it to be primed and painted and it should look as good as new again.

This weeks news story focuses on incredible luck, and just goes to show that when you think something is truly lost it might not be so lost as you think!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-23388667

See you all next week :)

Week Ending 14th July 2013

It's been another extremely sunny and warm week out here on Flat Holm, which is great for the relaxing outside in the evenings but not so good for all of the heavy manual work!

The week began with a full clean down of our water system on Monday. All of the large water tanks had to have their contents run down in order for us to clean them, and getting rid of so much water felt so strange considering how hard we normally try to conserve it! Once the tanks had been run down and scrubbed we then flushed a bleach solution through all of the pipework across the island before the system was re-topped up and flushed through with clean water again to rinse it.

On Tuesday the week's butterfly survey saw the general population of the island boom, with us recording more than twice the number of butterflies compared to any of our previous surveys.

As well as looking at the butterflies this week we also took the time to create a new invertebrate study which enable us to get a better understanding of the less obvious creatures that we share our island with. So far we have found 4 different species of grasshopper, many different flies and beetles as well as a couple of spiders.

Vicky, Molly and Emma trying to identify some of the insects we found

With us having had so many scorching days without a drop of rain over the last 2 weeks some of the plants and vegetation around the island seem to be struggling. Ideally we could do with a bit of rain before long to keep the plants going as they act as a habitat for many of the insects that we find.

During the week we had a visit in very unfortunate circumstances from the police search and rescue helicopter. A young girl who was swimming in the sea off the coast of Barry had gone missing, and a 3 day search followed in the surrounding area including Flat Holm. The helicopter circled the island to do a visual search before landing to come and talk to us all. Having followed the story on the news our team had already conducted a search of the shoreline just in case but had found nothing. 2 days later we heard the terrible news that her body had been found a few miles from where she was swimming, and our thoughts go out to all of her family and friends.

The police helicopter coming in to land on the helipad

With the only boat of the week being Thursday's Westwood Ho trip the rest of the week was an ideal opportunity to carry on with a few of the ongoing jobs around the island. The dry stone wall has continued to get slightly larger although it is still very slow progress. We are also scraping and scrubbing down one of the old storage buildings near the island's jetty in the hope that we can get a new coat of paint on it some time within the next week.

The weekend has so far provided us with a good opportunity to spend some time swimming and sunbathing on the beach, and generally taking it easy before we get back to work on Monday.

Matt enjoying himself in charge of the BBQ

This week's amusing story is all about misheard song lyrics. Unfortunately "just let me staple the vicar" (from Peter Kay's latest stand up) didn't make it in, but here are some of the most commonly mistaken lyrics as voted for by the public...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23284179

Have a good week and we'll see you next time!

Week Ending 7th July 2013

It’s been all smiles out here on Flat Holm this week after the weather has finally noticed that it’s supposed to be summer! This has made for far more interesting insect activity including the butterfly and the ladybirds that we survey weekly.

The Small Tortoiseshell butterfly population has soared and these were a common sighting across the island during this week’s survey, while the population of Small White and Green Veined White butterflies appear to have fallen.

A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly taking a break on a thistle

The number of casual sightings of other insects (we don’t have an official survey for them) has also increased with sightings such as this Blister Beetle below:

The "Blister Bug" can secrete a toxic chemical causing a nasty skin reaction including (yes you guessed it...) blistering

The Shelducks now appear to be leaving the island following the breeding season, with only 3 birds reported as being seen during the week’s survey. Across the country there have been reports of the Shelduck ducklings fledging their nests and taking to the water, but this unfortunately hasn’t been seen here on Flat Holm. Whether there were any ducklings that we missed or whether the season had been unsuccessful we will not know.

The main event of the week however was undisputedly the annual gull ringing weekend. You will have heard me mentioning the gull rings that we monitor here on the island in the previous blogs, and they enable us to study the migratory habits and lifespan of the birds. Since the last blog incidentally, we have recorded the sighting of a gull 2 years older than our previous best meaning that the oldest recorded gull on the island is now 18 years old!

Of course in order for us to be able to study these rings they must be applied to the gulls in the first place, and this is where this weekend’s event comes in. Every year a team of gull ringers comes over to the island, and with the help of us trainees we apply uniquely identifiable rings to 100 of the gull chicks. Each year the rings are a different colour and contain a different alpha-numeric code usually ending in F. This year the rings are green with white writing. This ring is placed on their left leg and a corresponding  smaller silver metal ring is placed on their right leg.

The chicks have to be selected quite carefully, as it is in the interest of the project as a whole that they are likely to survive. This rules out the younger and smaller chicks as they are the most likely to be predated upon by the other gulls. However the oldest and most developed gulls are now able to fly, and as such are now nearly impossible to catch, making it a balance in judgement to select the right ones.

Vicky has selected a chick and is waiting to have the ID rings fitted

Although the effort took a lot longer than we had originally hoped we did manage to get all 100 rings onto a chick (and I don’t mean just one chick!), and they will now go on to be studied far and wide for years to come. Let’s just hope the Peregrines don’t feel the need to devour them all!

Me with the first chick that I helped to ring. Green and White 4TF. Maybe one day our paths will cross again?

*Side note - Speaking of the Peregrines, we are really excited to see that they have successfully bred on the cliff face this year and the young Falcon is now flying alongside it’s parents!*

While the bird ringers were on the island they also took the opportunity to conduct some mist netting to catch and ring some of the smaller species of bird that we have on the island. The nets are made of a fine dark material making them almost invisible when bright daylight isn’t present, and the birds become trapped in a shelf like layer of the net. This doesn’t harm the birds in any way and the nets are checked every 15-20 minutes to ensure that the birds do not remain trapped for long.

Setting up the mist nets

The smaller birds do not receive colour coded rings like the gulls, instead only receiving the small metal rings like the ones placed on the right legs of the gulls. After a few measurements and a weigh in the birds are then released and are on their way again.

A song thrush has been caught in the nets and is having an identification ring fitted

Minutes later the same song thrush is ready to be released. His ring is clearly visible just above the foot.

This week’s amusing news story comes from Sheffield, and shows how creating modern art can not only make you money but cost you a lot of money too...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-23203033

See you next time!