Ramsey Reserve Intern Sarah Parmor with an update on her season

I’m already half way through my internship on Ramsey and the new experiences just keep coming.


I had very little experience of field and survey work before I started here and this was one of the main things I was looking forward to doing. For the first three months of the season, Greg, Lisa and I have been doing regular breeding bird surveys and it looks like being a good year on Ramsey for many of the breeding birds. I have been amazed at the numbers of linnets, stonechat, wheatear and meadow pipits; all do really well on Ramsey most years. The sound of skylarks singing has sadly become unusual for me back home but here they seem to be everywhere and even singing from the ground in places! In particular there have been two pairs of short-eared owls confirmed breeding this year which is a first for Ramsey. One of these is close to the volunteer’s bungalow and it has been an almost daily occurrence to watch the “shortie” hunting from our patio. Buzzards, peregrine and ravens have been successful too… it must have been a good year for the “Ramsey” vole! 

Talking of voles, another one of my roles is to do the rodent monitoring on Ramsey. Following the successful eradication of rats from the island 15 years ago we regularly check that the only rodent presence we have are voles and the common shrew. This is done by setting ink traps and chocolate infused wax block traps in various locations over the whole island. So far all I have found are vole footprints and vole teeth marks with the occasional rabbit also having a taste for the chocolate blocks! 

One of Ramsey’s priority species is the chough and I have really enjoyed the chough monitoring too. They are amazing birds, full of character and I have definitely got a soft spot for the birds in the two sites that I have been responsible for. One of these was the first to fledge this year and with a healthy productivity of four chicks at that!  As I write this a total of 16 young have fledged from 7 nests with more still to come.

It was great to get some of the chicks ringed as well this year on Ramsey. This is can be quite a challenge with chough as they nest in sea caves which are virtually inaccessible. Luckily one of the nest sites was deemed a possibility and in late May a team of ringers and cavers joined forces and three chicks were successfully ringed. This will be great for monitoring them in future years. In fact both parents of these chicks happen to be ringed too. The male we know is 16 years old and has successfully raised 43 chicks! What a bird.

14 day old chough chick being colour ringed - it has now fledged and can be seen flying around the island. Look out for our ringed birds if you visit

Once we got to June, seabird monitoring season kicked off and although we are not doing a full seabird count this year we do fulmar counts and kittiwake productivity. I have been doing the productivity monitoring for the main kittiwake colony which has been really interesting and important for me to learn official seabird monitoring procedure. It was also great being able to go out on the Gower Ranger (thanks to Thousand Islands) to count the fulmar and kittiwakes that we can’t see from the island. Counting birds through binoculars on sea swell was an experience in itself - especially given my lack of seafaring prowess. Luckily for me (and the rest of the boat) it was relatively calm and I felt ok.

Counting cliff nesting seabirds from the Gower Ranger

The big seabird event for Ramsey this year is the whole island manx shearwater survey which was last completed in 2012. This entails playing a recording of a male and female shearwater call into thousands of burrows over the whole island. The sight of us kneeling down, heads in a burrows listening for shearwaters has been an all too familiar sight for the first two weeks in June. A good pair of knee pads was definitely essential! A response from an incubating manx shearwater (male or female) is recorded and after some special maths a figure will be generated for the new total of breeding pairs on the island. After listening to recordings of the shearwater calls hundreds of times over I think I can now do a half decent shearwater call myself…and you never know when that may come in handy!

Manx shearwater population census

With our trusty 'shearwater finding' sheepdog, Dewi!

So in a nutshell my Ramsey experience continues to be amazing and much of this is down to Greg and Lisa who do such a great job in running the whole reserve between them and hopefully I have been able to help in some way this year. Also, it goes without saying that we couldn’t manage without all the weekly volunteers who have been so supportive and keep all the visitor work going while the survey work is happening. I do seem to have acquired the name “head of bungalow” though….I am hoping this is meant more as a term of affection rather than that I’m too bossy! 

Finally, there is a lovely “end of day” routine here on Ramsey, where after a hard day’s work and all the visitors have gone, we all sit around one of the picnic benches with a cup of tea (and occasional pack of chocolate biscuits) to mull over the day’s events. Everyone who knows me is aware how I like nothing better than a proper strong cup of tea - I like to call it “special” .…just like the island.