It’s been almost six weeks now since we arrived on the island and it feels like it’s flown by! Every day is totally different with all sorts of jobs to do and the weather and tides play a big part in dictating what we do. It's been very different to my previous job where I was office based (in my spare bedroom) 5 days a week! It's really nice to be active and to spend most of my days outdoors.
Building works are continuing in the bungalow and deliveries are arriving, including a big delivery of food. This was very good news for me as I had run out of coffee and was down to my last bar of chocolate!
New windows for the bungalow arriving
Precious food!
We’ve been busy getting things organised for when we can reopen to the public. The compost toilets have been cleaned, repainted and varnished. The picnic benches, boat shed and sign posts have all been painted and everything is starting to look smart and ready for visitors. New signs have been made, hand sanitiser stations have been created and we’ve been carefully planning how the day to day operations will work safely with social distancing etc.
Compost toilets before and after painting.
A selection of Covid related signs
On the ecological side as Greg mentioned in his last post, we’ve been busy monitoring chough nest sites. We have also started our breeding bird surveys, the aim of these is to find out how many pairs of each species we have breeding on the island. The island is split into six different sections for this and each section gets visited 4 times between now and June. Greg tends to do the south and I tend to do the north. It’s a lovely way to spend a morning, wandering around with a map and recording the locations of all birds behaving territorially. It gets me to all the nooks and crannies of the island that I may not have reason to go to otherwise too!
A wren singing on one of the stone walls, singing is territorial behaviour and suggests that this bird will breed nearby
Two grumpy looking male wheatears competing for space
Nice blog Nia. Lovely to have news of the island. Abd those toilets were desperate. I remember me and Steve Bool doing them.Nice colour and good works! Im sure the visitors will appreciate all the hard work that has been done.