It’s been a week of strong winds and big swell but the sunshine has managed to peep through the clouds on occasion.

We have had another busy week trying to fit in as many outdoor jobs as we can in between the rain. Our activities included monitoring our chough nest sites, putting in new Manx Shearwater nest boxes in our study plot, conducting marine surveys, doing the final preparations for visitors to return next…

We are now back on the Island for the 2023 season but with a few changes …..

There is a new team on the Island this year. So without further or do it's time to introduce you to the 2023 team!

Greg Morgan

Many of you will know Greg from previous blogs as the Site Manager of Ramsey Island. After 18 years on the rock, Greg has decided to take up residence full-time on the mainland. However, Greg will still be…

Below is a blog written by Greg (RSPB Ramsey Site Manager) and Lisa (now WTSWW Head of Islands and Marine Conservation) about Dewi, a member of the Ramsey team many of you will have got to know in person or through this blog over the years. Greg and Lisa managed Ramsey together for 14 years and Dewi was their dog...but he was so much more than that.

It’s just over 6 weeks since we lost Dewi and it’s taken till now for…

A ferocious gale force easterly wind raged all day and made doing anything outside tricky. In an attempt to seek out a few birds in the relative shelter of the gorse I was pleased to find our first 3 fieldfares of the autumn. It wasn't long before I saw a few more, and then a few more! It soon became apparent a large arrival of both fieldfare and redwing was underway. Wave after wave of birds were arriving from the NW…

October is always an exciting month at coastal locations with birds on the move and so it has proved on Ramsey this year. A barred warbler on the 6th October was only the 9th record for Ramsey and the first since 2018. Since then we have had a flurry of good birds by island standards. A ruff found by warden Nia on 11th was only the 5th record for Ramsey while a green woodpecker on the same day was only the 4th record and the…

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For links to previous updates see here and here

By now I had hoped to be reporting that avian influenza was starting to subside in our northern gannet population on Grassholm as the season wound down, but sadly that doesn’t appear to be the case. Reports of dead and dying birds washing in on the Welsh mainland coast (mainly Pembrokeshire but stretching from Carmarthenshire to Anglesey) have been…

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On 3^rd August we reported that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) had reached Grassholm island and had killed a small number of northern gannets

Since then we have been monitoring the situation and, unfortunately, the situation has become worse week on week. It is very difficult to assess how many birds have died in this outbreak but based on the number of dead birds we have counted…

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RSPB Grassholm is home to 36,000 pairs of northern gannet, making it the third largest colony in the world for this sea bird. It is one of only two gannet colonies in Wales and of international importance. As you may have seen in the press this year, gannets, along with a host of other seabird species have been hit by an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). The highly pathogenic…

Regular readers of this blog will know the chequered history that burrow nesting seabirds have had with Ramsey / Ynys Dewi over the years. Brown rats arrived in the 1800’s through shipwrecks and decimated the puffin and Manx shearwater breeding populations through the 1900’s.

By the time the RSPB bought the island in 1992 puffins had long been extinct as a breeding species and the shearwaters were reduced…

After a winter spent to-ing and fro-ing to the island, Nia and myself (and Dewi the sheepdog, now in his 14th year!) settled back permanently for the season on 3rd March. This followed hot on the heels of a very entertaining 1st Aid course with friends and colleagues from our neigbouring islands of Skomer and Skokholm. It's not often you get all the staff from all three islands under one roof, even if we did spend most…

During November I was lucky enough to attend a 2 week Conservation Detection Dog Handlers assessment course with Kryus Ltd - this is part of a project with Biosecuirty For Life of which RSPB is a lead partner. The project aims to protect the 42 seabird Special Protections Areas (SPA's) around the UK from introduced mammalian predators and lead on biosecurity measures.

For more on this, and how detection dogs are joining…

We are currently in an 'unsettled spell'. No named storms yet this year but the past week has seen strong to gale force winds every day. After several days of groundhog day like weather consisting of rain and low cloud it was nice to actually see some sunshine today. The trade off being it was accompanied by torrential showers! Myself and the hound spent most of the day on the grey seal monitoring round. The season is…

Grassholm is a spectacular reserve. The oldest RSPB reserve in Wales, the only northern gannet colony in Wales and, with 36,000 pairs, the 3rd largest in the world behind Bass Rock and St Kilda. It is a privilege to manage the island and to have the honour to land on it a few times a year as part of my job. Back in the summer that is for scientific research and monitoring purposes but in October, as regular readers of…

Time flies and before you know it one of the harbour pups has left and the other is about to go! Thought I'd better get a quick photo of this one uploaded in case I missed them both. This was known as 'badger' due to the look they had when the all black face was moulting through their white natal coat. In this photo 'badger' is 19 days old and the cow is long gone. She abandoned the pup at 15 days old and the pup was…

The Manx shearwater fledgling season is in full swing. If you live, or are on holiday, in Pembrokeshire (or Carmarthen, or Cerdigion....or even Cardiff!) keep an eye out for these birds that can become disorientated by mainland lighting or blown inland by strong winds. More information and who to call if you find one on the posters above (click on posters to see at full resolution)

Suddenly a week has gone by since the 2nd harbour pup was born and 10 days since the first. They have changed a lot in that time and there's been a bit of drama too! We have just passed new moon which means big spring tides. With it being close to the autumn equinox they are the biggest of the year (over 7m at high tide for a few days). Despite it being calm the pups are forced to swim for a few hours twice a day at each…

Our small harbour beach is getting a bit crowded with a 2nd pup being born there this afternoon! Again it looks like one of the cows that pupped here last year. 2020 was the first time she had pupped in the harbour and it showed. She was very skittish, jumping at the slightest noise or movement. She still seems a little skittish this year but much better. We were servicing the crane above the harbour today and although…

Our latest survey count, yesterday (1/9) revealed there are now 69 pups on the 9 study beaches (which account for roughly 50% of all pups born on the island). This is very similar to the corresponding date last year when 64 were counted, but both years were well up on 2019.

It's always a pleasure when the first pup arrives in the harbour and sure enough we said hello to pup#1 for this year on Tuesday morning. Born to…

High pressure is dominating our weather at the moment meaning largely dry and settled conditions. This is all good news for the grey seal pups that are starting to pop out all over the shop now. From just 12 on our study beaches 3 days ago, we saw a rise to 29 today! This compares with 21 on this day last year and 26 in 2019.

We should see a rapid increase over the coming few weeks with numbers peaking around the middle…

Artist and good friend of the island, Jazz Austin, has taken a few of my Ramsey photos and given them a makeover by turning them into a lovely set of watercolour postcards. They are available to buy via her Etsy web page and from the Thousand Islands boat booking office in St Davids. £2 from every sale will be donated to us here on Ramsey Island and will help fund our conservation work.

Jazz has taken a range of…

Like everywhere it's been a warm week on Ramsey. Heatwaves are a rarity out here thanks to the surrounding cool sea, anything over 20c is considered 'hot' by our standards. This week we saw the mercury register at 25c or over on 5 consecutive days (max 27c on two days). Our weather data set only goes back to 2005 but this is the first time we've recorded 25c or over on anything more than two days. The record since 2005…

And so to the final instalment of this year's seabird count update and two of the seabirds with the smallest breeding populations on Ramsey and the Bishops & Clerks. 

Kittiwake have never bred here in large numbers but at their peak there were 489 pairs in 1995. Subsequent years have seen a steady decline to a new low of just 51 pairs this year. The figure had been stable around 80-90 pairs for the past few years…

Moving slightly further up the cliff face and away from the hustle and bustle (and smell!) of the auks we find the northern fulmar. The closest relative to the albatross family we have in the northern hemisphere you can find this graceful flyer arcing through the sky at most northern and western seabird colonies in the UK. Flying on stiff wings, covering miles at a time with minimal energy usage they breed on narrow ledges…

After razorbills yesterday we're moving on to their close cousins, the common guillemot. With the smallest breeding territory of any UK bird, these gregarious seabirds can be found around large parts of the UK coastline, crammed precariously on ledges that look barely wide enough to support the adults let alone an egg and chick.

Seabird colonies are noisy affairs and a lot of that emanates from this species - their…

The first few weeks of June are busy times for staff on seabird reserves (its busy times for the seabirds too!). Nia and myself have just completed a full island count of all our auks (guillemots and razorbills, plus puffins on the North Bishop), fulmars and kittiwakes.

Overall its good news, with one exception. Rather than bombard you with graphs and figures for all species in one blog, I'll do a short blog for each…