News From The Rock 77 - Bit of a catch up

Sorry for the tardiness in blog posts of late, time is flying by and we have been immersed in trying to get everything ready to hopefully be able to open to the public to some degree again soon (more detail to come on that next week).

Chough continue to do well - 9 of the 10 pairs are incubating now. It looks like the 10th won't breed this year but it's possible they have switched sites and we are yet to find them! Although seeing both birds around regularly suggests otherwise as the female would be on eggs most of the time now if they were. There is possibly an 11th pair too which we are keeping an eye on. They are certainly holding territory. Good numbers of non breeders around again this spring with up to 28 on some days.

 Chough / Bran Goesgoch in the sun showing off it's iridescent plumage

I can't believe it was only 11th April that we were sheltering from fierce driving hail and snow showers! It was quite a burst of weather that morning, turning the island white briefly, before quickly reverting to sunshine a few hours later.

And sunshine has been the order of the day this month - too much of it dare I say?! To date we have had just 7.5mm of rain in April and there is nothing in the long rang forecast up to the end of the month. If that holds true it will make this the driest April on record by some distance. March wasn't much better! This follows the pattern of last year (both coming on the heels of very wet winters, 2020/21 being the wettest we have logged here). The grass is scorched from winter storms and has no chance to recover in these conditions so we are continuing to feed the sheep. Short grass with warm dry soils is good for soil invertebrates and hence chough, but go too far the other way and the ground becomes too hard for chough to probe the soil - we need some rain soon!

Keeping the ladies topped up and hoping we get some rain soon

You'd be forgiven for thinking it was mid July not mid April with scenes like this!......

The nice weather has at least allowed us to crack on with ploughing. We try to sow an arable plot each spring to provide winter feed for sheep (to reduce biosecurity risk of bringing feed on - plus it's cheaper to produce our own!) and also to provide autumn and winter stubbles for skylarks, various finches and chough to utilise. We did wonder if it would be too dry to plough but its just about ok at the moment with the discs able to cut through the parched top soil

Our Massey Ferguson tractor hails from the 1950's and she is worth her weight in gold. Starts first time, every time, and is entirely mechanical (apart from the electric start) so if anything goes wrong it is usually easily replaceable

I *try* to plough in straight lines....which is why most of the photos you will see are from only a short distance into the line!

I really enjoy ploughing as you can see! My 'from the plough' bird list has built up nicely this past week to pied wagtail, white wagtail, wheatear, meadow pipit, herring, lesser and great black backed gull and my favourite, red kite!