The last few weeks.....
The last couple of weeks have flown by on Ramsey. Nia and I took time off in July for some holiday time and also took part in an RSPB lead heathland management course in Anglesey. Thank you to Greg and our wonderful volunteers for covering for us during that time.
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There have been quite a few relatively big jobs taking place on the island over the past few weeks including re-painting the Farmhouse. The Farmhouse gets repainted every 10 years and it was definitely in need of a fresh lick of paint. So Derek focused on the higher sections whilst we and the volunteers did the lower walls.
The septic tank at the Farmhouse also needed some work, with new walls and pipes being put in. This involved Derek using the island JCB to dig out the sections of soil to access to tank and pipes. The tank is now fixed but work is still being done on some of the pipework around the Farmhouse.
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We have had many wonderful volunteers over the past couple of weeks who have helped with an endless list of jobs. Including habitat management, path clearance, survey work, infrastructure maintenance, and of course visitor engagement. Thank you so much for all your hard work over the past couple of weeks, you have all been amazing!!
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The last of our Choughs fledged their young on the 10th of July exactly a month apart from the first pair on the 10th of June. This brought our total up to 25 chicks successfully fledged from 10 breeding pairs and 12 pairs on territory this year. So despite a slightly strange breeding season the pairs did exceptionally well on Ramsey this year. Large flocks of family groups are still hanging around the island with up to 55 recorded going into roost on the 26th of July.
Our seal numbers are starting to crank up now with 36 seal pups being born on the island over the past couple of days. We are hoping for another successful breeding season for them this year and it will be interesting to see how our numbers do compared to last year's record year of 894 seal pups.
We now have 22 Manx Shearwater chicks in our productivity boxes and all seem to be doing really well. On our latest chick weigh in day one of the chicks weighed a whopping 644g a good 100g more than any of the others. It clearly has very efficient parents!
In terms of other bird records only one of our Peregrine pairs managed to fledge young this year with a pair and two young seen flying over Carn Ysgbor.
Plenty of other birds of prey have been recorded over the past few weeks including Red Kite, Buzzard, Kestrel, Marsh Harrier, Merlin, Hobby, Short-eared Owl, and Little Owl.
More waders are also starting to appear with records of Dunlin, Curlew, Whimbrel, Redshank, Greenshank, Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, and Turnstone.
The Robins have started to arrive back which is definitely making it feel like we are transitioning to Autumn but we are still getting large numbers of migrants passing through. 70+ Willow Warblers passing through on the 10th and likewise, plenty of Blackcaps, Goldcrests, and Chiffchaffs are also starting to appear. Yellow Wagtails have been heard calling over the Waterings the past couple of days. Large mixed flocks of Gulls were also taking up residence in the Central and Northern fields gorging themselves on the flying ants that were emerging from the ground over the past few weeks.
We have been out to Grassholm on several monitoring trips over the past few weeks and the colony is looking much more active with plenty of big chicks starting to appear. We also had a wonderful sighting of a leucistic gannet chick spotted by Dave Astins which has completely white feathers and pink skin.
The heather is looking very beautiful right now as the bell and ling heather is in full bloom, which is making the South End of the Island and areas around Abermawr look incredible with its bright purple flowers!
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In other exciting news, Nia spotted an interesting fungus back in April on the Southern end of Ramsey near Porth Lleoug. After taking some samples of the spores and sending them off to a specialist we have found out recently that it is the first record of little orange cup fungus Pseudoleuria fibrillosa (Cheilymenia fibrillosa) for Ramsey and the 2nd record for Pembrokeshire with the first being on Skokholm in 2014 where it was found in similar habitat.
We conducted our Marclim marine surveys of the intertidal species in the Ramsey harbour on the 7th of August and found some new species for the island, which included Queen Scallop and Spotted Cowrie. We also discovered an interesting stripy Beadlet anemone, although they are very common none of us had seen one quite like this before.
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