Last week I was lucky enough to travel to the tiny island of Copinsay with seabird researchers Juliet Lamb and Yvan Satge. To the east of the Orkney mainland, Copinsay is one mile long, half a mile wide and has been uninhabited since 1958. The island is now an RSPB reserve, home in summer to thousands of nesting seabirds. Here is the island seen from Corn Holm, which is reached by a tidal causeway and is home to a colony of grey seals (seen here in the water):
Juliet and Yvan are working for the Future of the Atlantic Marine Enviroment (FAME) project and are studying fulmar, shag, kittiwake and razorbill on the islands of Copinsay, Swona and Muckle Skerry. On this trip they were catching shags (using a fishing-pole device) and fitting them with GPS tags that, over the next fews days, will track their journeys to find food. The birds need to be re-caught to download the information, which will be used to inform legislation on Marine Protected Areas. Here is a shag, about to be released after being fitted with a tag.