The most noticeable change as we slipped from spring into summer was the demise of the weather! Following the halcyon days of April and May, the driest spring on record on Ramsey, we saw the wettest June with over 100mm (4" in old money) of rain. This was not ideal for our newly fledged chough and house martins. The pendulum swung the other way again in July and August with just 38mm being logged over the two months. 2020 was turning into an unpredictable year in more ways than one....
June
June is a busy month on Ramsey. Even without visitors this year our days were full. We threw ourselves into seabird monitoring. Annual guillemot and razorbill plots were counted, full island kittiwake counts and productivity monitoring (the number of chicks fledged per pair) for kittiwake and fulmar. We also monitored our storm petrel colony and began weighing the Manx shearwater chicks when they began appearing in our research nest boxes.
In amongst all this we were making daily observations of our chough nest sites, logging each family as they made their first tentative steps on the cliff tops after a life inside a cave or crevice up till now. 20 fledged in total, another good year
Guillemots packed on ledges in June
Storm petrels didn't breed on Ramsey until 2008 (8 years after rat eradication) but now there are up to 12 pairs and many more visit the colony on dark, moonless nights (170 pairs breed on the Bishops and Clerks, a small group of islets that are part of the reserve)
The persistent, nasal call of begging chough fledglings is one of the sounds of Ramsey in summer
Long working days in June are rewarded with scenes like these if you are up early enough
July
As we edged further into summer the first job on the cards was shearing. The first week of July for this task sounds late to many, but everything is late on islands. The seasons come later, flowers bloom later, birds breed later and the sheep's wool 'lifts' (becomes ready for shearing) later. Shearing later also means they only need one clip as their fleece remains short during the peak 'fly period' but grows back in time for winter. Aled and his crew from the nearby Gwaun Valley have been shearing here for many years but this was the first year we hadn't been able to help them in the shed. Due to social distancing rules we had to remain outside and concentrate on keeping the pens filled while their family bubble got on with the real work indoors.
The Manx shearwater chicks continued to hatch and we continued to monitor their weights on a weekly basis, a valuable way to keep track of how successful the adults have been at finding fish that year. The good news for 2020 is that all chicks that hatched fledged successfully with the highest average fledging weight on record. Science rears its head again in July as we swap over the geolocator tracking devices on our adults pairs which helps us monitor the route and timings of the 6 months of the year they spend away from the island going to and from the coast of Argentina.
Socially distanced shearing
Week old Manx shearwater chick
Weekly weigh-ins of the chicks in the research nest boxes allows us to assess food provisioning by the adults and compare mean weights year on year - 2020 was a good year (well it had to be good for something!)
A small number of adult birds are fitted with geolocators which allow us to track their movements throughout the year, crucially during migration and during their overwintering period. This is a long running project with Oxford University. Long running tracking datasets are a vital tool when trying to protect seabirds away from the safety of their breeding colonies.
August
August is usually our busiest month visitor wise but with social distancing restrictions still in place we were unable to reopen due to the difficulties of safely loading and unloading passengers from small boats. It was therefore a very unique, if a bit strange, month for staff. Luckily the fine late summer weather continued most of the month (not all, see below!) and we got on with habitat management work and the ubiquitous building maintenance jobs which we had a lot more time for.
One of the most impressive ornithological highlights of the month was our chough roost numbers. Every year, all through the breeding season and to a lesser extent in the winter, there is a nightly roost at two traditional sites on the west coast. It is not uncommon for numbers to build to 40-50 birds in late summer, the breeding population swollen by fledglings and non breeders. But in 2020 we saw a record 73 birds recorded in late August. Most of these birds spent all day feeding on the island with flocks of 50+ birds logged most days from July through to the end of September. Such consistently high numbers of chough have not been seen before. One summer doesn't tell us much but could it have been because of fewer people on the island? Or perhaps due to higher numbers of people on the mainland in summer. As the country opened up again by the summer holidays, Pembrokeshire saw record numbers of tourists arrive, many of whom would have been walking the coast path. Or maybe none of the above?!....
August gives us a chance to crunch the numbers from our Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data from spring. Record numbers of northern wheatear were seen in 2020 with 121 pairs (surely the densest breeding site in the UK?). Other species fared well too with record numbers of stonechat (34 pairs) and blackbird (21 pairs). Other heathland specialists did well too: meadow pipit (89 pairs) and linnet (50 pairs)
There were first breeding records of blackcap and sedge warbler and a pair of short-eared owls bred for the first time in 3 years. In total 40 species bred on the reserve in 2020
The month ended with a bang as Storm Francis came crashing in. Just as the grey seal pups were starting to be born. Luckily not many had be born at this early stage in the season but with another named stormed a week later we began to worry it was going to be 'one of those years'.
Tune in tomorrow for the final chapter and a look at autumn on the island..... and how those seal pups fared.
Remember the Ramsey Island Warden vacancy is still live, with a closing date of 11 January - see here for more details
Large chough flock coming in to join the communal roost
A record 121 pairs of wheatear bred in the drystone walls and burrows
With fledglings seemingly popping out of every crack
August finished with Storm Francis pounding our coastline