Seabird Numbers and Island Updates
It is time for a blog update after a hectic couple of weeks on the island for Nia and I. We can't quite believe it is August and that we are already halfway through the season! Looking back at Ramsey from the North Bishop, 31st June © Alys Perry. June and July were packed full of monitoring and fieldwork, and we were lucky enough to have beautiful weather to land on the Bishops & Clarks to conduct the Storm Petrel population census (this is completed every five years, but this was the first time since 2017 as the weather isn't usually calm enough to land) and stay the night on Grassholm to do Gannet productivity surveys, lichen monitoring, insect and marine surveys, and the population census of Storm Petrels. In between seabird survey work, we have spent our time doing various maintenance tasks, clearing visitor paths (which get overgrown quickly with less foot traffic), monitoring plants and lichen, moth trapping, monitoring the nesting Chough and Peregrines...