By Thomas Weston
Monday is a travel day, so morning meeting started the day. Eleanor was on a Housekeeping Day today, so her plan for the rest of the day was cleaning properties and making sure they looked extremely presentable ahead of the new guests that were going to arrive later in the day. Tara was on helicopter duties so was based around the Village throughout the day.
Simon and I decided to undertake census together. The weather was west and windy so not ideal for opening nets in Millcombe Valley so we thought a joint census would be good. A new in Song Thrush and some nice signs of Spring with breeding birds and the start of the Blackthorn blossom was great to see. The Landing Bay was a hive of activity and continued our great run of divers with three Red-throated Divers and two Great Northern Divers who have been overwintering individually but occasionally seen together. We had some good numbers of Shag and Gannets with a unusual species for our census being a Fulmar. This species breeds around the island, but are somewhat unrecorded generally when undertaking census, odd. Moving on round to Benjamin’s Chair and the wind brought the swell up again. South West Field held very few birds apart from a few hardy Meadow Pipits. No sign of the Caspian Gull today in the gull flocks, but nice flyby views of the female Merlin again who is now residing up to Quarter Wall from the South. She has her favourite places too! The Airfield held a couple of singing Skylark and a couple of singing Meadow Pipits with females of the latter seen too. Over at Quarry Cottages, a single Grey Wagtail flew over and passed heading South. The Landing Bay was glistening in the hazy sun and heading back to the Village saw flocks of Starlings and Meadow Pipits in Tillage and Brick, plus our female Merlin again.
After a break, my task was to complete a ring stock check of all the bird ringing rings we have on the island. The task took most of the day to complete and included counting our main store, walking into Millcombe and walking to the Heligoland Trap on the Terraces. On my journey to count rings and record ring strings a Jackdaw was an undoubtable highlight, as well as more flocks of Meadow Pipits and three Chaffinches in Millcombe Valley. The sun was out and the wind was calming a bit, a good sign for the next few days.