What do we do at Alisa Craig

Ailsa Craig is a tiny island in the Firth of Clyde, off the West coast of Scotland, famous for its granite being used to make 60-70% of the world’s curling stones.  However, as workers for the RSPB we were going there for the 73,000 breeding seabirds, including the UK’s third largest gannetry! 

After a slightly rocky crossing from Girvan, we set up camp and re-fuelled with a round of tea (an integral part of doing conservation work I’ve found).  Several of us then went off to start checking the rat bait stations.  The importance of the monitoring the island for the presence of rats is that they heavily affect the breeding puffins, which are especially vulnerable as they nest in underground burrows.  As well as checking the ground for threats to seabirds, we also did counts of the many gull nest sites around the island, providing us with a few views of young fluffy chicks amongst the eggs! 

During our second day, we conducted onshore and offshore seabird counts of gulls, kittiwakes, puffins, shags, razorbills, oystercatchers, guillemots and black guillemots.  All the while with several grey seals following us as we walked around the bottom of the cliffs, but of course whenever a camera lens appeared they would dive back down underwater.  After a day of bird counts and walking up to the top of Ailsa, where we only ended up seeing a lovely view of the inside of the cloud and a few gulls that were close enough, we spotted a small pod of harbour porpoises milling just offshore! 

One other bird that we had to try to find was the Manx shearwater.  When we were sat gathered around our driftwood bonfire and the light had finally faded, we started to hear the characteristic calls that could only be coming from a shearwater flying overhead.  Unfortunately, though, we were not able to confirm that they were breeding in any of the many old rabbit burrows on the granite cliffs.

Our last day brought the best weather we could have hoped for, blue skies and flat calm sea, perfect for our round the island boat trip.  Each of us had an assigned seabird species and was sat with binoculars and a clicker at the ready to count the island totals, with hats on and hoods up in preparation for the threat of aerial attack from the masses of gannets we were about to encounter!  Luckily, as this was my first big seabird count, I did not have one of the more abundant species; instead, I got to focus on one of my favourite seabirds, the puffins!  After we had circled the island once to complete our counts, we went around again giving us a chance to focus on the whole view of the island and not just that of one species through binoculars.  At the end of a long couple of days we set off back to the mainland.  After a final appearance of a harbour porpoise behind the boat we made it back to civilisation and headed straight to the nearest chip shop.