I am sorry for lack of blogs lately I have been busy and not got round to writing any but there should be a few more within the next couple of weeks. This one is about my week on Bardsey Island!
23 students and 3 staff left Bangor University in the early
hours on the 16th June. It
took 3 boat trips for us all to arrive, the boat trip allowed us to have our
first look at some of the birds that lived and visited the island one boat was
lucky enough to have a Gannet flying over. We were keen to start making up for
lost time, as we were delayed a day because of strong winds, so we did a bit of
exploring around the observatory. After we had a brief introduction to the
island, the observatory and the people who worked there; we continued exploring
the island and went to the north coast and up the mountain and back down to the
observatory in the evening.
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| Observatory |
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| South side of island |
Even after an early start the day before, some of the
students managed to get up at 5.30am to join one of the wardens on a bird
survey around the island, which they do every morning. The group split into
two, one of which went with the warden whilst the other group, me included,
went with our lecturer to the south side of the island. We saw a variety of
shore birds including; Shelducks, Rock Pipits and Oystercatchers. We got back to the observatory in time for
breakfast and then had a look at the results from the moth trap set the night before.
The findings included Brown Rustic moths, Bright Line Brown Eye and a White
Ermine moth. The moth trap was looked at every morning and even though there
wasn’t a huge diversity, the moths amazed me with anatomy and physiology. Later
in the day we went on a boat trip around the island to look at the shore birds,
many of which were rearing young, these included Puffins, Razorbills, Shags and
Cormorants. It was a unique chance to see the east side of the island, despite
sea sickness there were some amazing sights and I would defiantly do it again.
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| White Ermine Moth |
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| Brown Rustic |
On the third day we went out with our lecturer, Charles
Bishop to watch him while he was carrying out his pilot study on finding out
where Manx Shearwaters travel when they forage during the day by using GPS and
tags which measure acceleration and heart rate of the bird. During which several birds were found these
were ringed, had their wing length measured and then weighed before tags were
added. The third boat trip went out to go around the island were lucky enough
to see Risso Dolphins swimming around the boat. Throughout the week we had to
carry out a project on the island, a wide range of topics where chosen, these
included; pit fall trapping of insects, bat surveys, adder tongue fern survey,
sharp rush survey and a seal survey. In the evening we went up the hill side
and waited for the Manx Shearwaters to return to their nests, it was amazing
hearing them flying over and calling to their mates in the burrows. Some people
were lucky enough to have some land near their feet; it was a surreal
experience to be so close to animal that migrated from South America to breed
on this island.
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| Manx Shearwater |
In the morning of the fourth day all of us went to the south
side of the island to perform a survey on the Manx Shearwaters by looking at
the burrows. We were all given an area to survey in which we had to count the
number burrows, how many looked occupied and how many of those responded to a
recording of a Manx call. This took a while but was good fun. Along the way
Steve the warden found a Thrift Clearwing which is a rare but beautiful species
of moth. Later that day it was decided that it would be good idea to do a
butterfly count along the island, however, once we started the temperature had
dropped which meant it wasn’t ideal for butterflies. But we continued through
the fields along the west coast and down to the shore. We saw many insects
throughout the walk; Pill Millipedes, Common Blue Dragonflies and Green Tiger
Beetles were among our finds. Afterwards
a small group went off to go and tag some more Manx Shearwaters, they found a
week old chick in one of the burrows and it was thought to be the earliest in
the year that a chick had been found on the island.
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| Common Blue Dragonfly |
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| Thrift Clearwing Moth |
Another moth trap started the fifth day off. The group of
students who were studying the seals went for a walk around the island to do a
total count, which came to be around 100 seals. In the afternoon we all went
down to look at seashore ecology, in which we did transect’s of the different
intertidal zones. There were many species of seaweed, lichens and a few species
of crab. We were all happy to find 4 common eels in a small rock pool. How many
zoologists does it take to catch an eel you may wonder? It turns out about 10.
After this small groups went to go and see the Golden Hair lichen which is rare
in the UK. Whilst the second group went to go and see the lichen they spotted
one of the little owls which breed on the island. The results from the all
projects had come in and there were many very interesting findings, for example
a group working on surveying the population of Palmate newts on island found 22
adults, 15 of which were in the pond by the observatory, and 18 effs (young
newts) and a Horse leech was found with the use of the pit fall traps.
Sadly on the fifth day we found out that the weather
forecast for the weekend wasn’t looking good so the decision had been made to
go back a day early. It was sad to leave the island and even though we had lost
2 days I think we certainly managed fit a week’s worth of activities into the 5
days we had there. All the students and staff would like to say a huge thank
you to the staff on the island for being very welcoming and helpful to us all
and allowing us get involved with their day to day activities.
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| Bardsey Coast |
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| Common Eel |
Even though there is no sewage system on the island and it is likely you will be unable to take a shower due to limited water supply, I would recommend a visit to the island, even if it is just for a day, for anyone who is looking for a retreat for religious reasons or for natural interests. If you are there, a nice gift shop is on the island. As well as Bardsey fudge, which is made by the Wardens son, it is very nice and well worth the £2.50.
Please visit the website or blog if you are interested:
- Bardsey Blog http://www.blogger.com/home
- Bardsey website (english) http://www.bardsey.org/english/bardsey/welcome.asp
- Bardsey website (welsh) http://www.bardsey.org/cymraeg/bardsey/welcome.asp
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