We are now on Twitter! You can follow us at @RSPBRamsey

Click here to read photographer Drew Buckley's blog about his recent visit to Ramsey

Click here for a nice round up by local birder Mike Young-Powell of what was a memorable month for rare birds in Pembrokeshire

Western Bonelli's warber on Ramsey 8th-10th September 2013

It may have been a little overcast this week, with the visibility drifting between murky and thick fog, but our grey seal pups are as entertaining as ever. Sunday morning was a real ‘pea-souper’ (a strictly nautical term for visibility under 100m!) We were wondering if our visitors were really going to see very much. But then, just half an hour before our boat was due to land two pups were born in the harbour, just below…

Ramsey’s rich run of form continues with a Booted warbler on the island yesterday!

I found it on the way back from a seal round skulking in a bramble bush at the top of the farmhouse valley. It's discovery was all the more surprising as I hadn't seen another migrant all day! Typically I didn’t have the camera with me and had to wait an hour for Lisa to get back with it. Even more typically by that time…

 Finally after 5 days with no boats due to strong winds we saw people again today! 29 in all enjoyed a very pleasant day on the island. Seal pups are the star attraction with good numbers on the beaches at the moment. Each year around 500-700 pups are born here making Ramsey the largest grey seal pupping colony in southern Britain. Following today's monitoring round there are 101 pups on the 9 beaches that we study

A distinctly autumnal spell of weather has seen no boats running to Ramsey since Saturday. This type of weather is good for a spot of seawatching so the dog and I plodded up to the hide in a gale force north westerly at 06:30 this morning to try our luck

While the dog sighed and curled up in the corner of the hide I trained my telescope seaward. It was a good couple of hours with 5 sooty shearwaters being the highlight…

A great blog about shearwater fledging time from our neighbours on Skomer - click here to read

The Western Bonelli's warbler was still here today. It is a cracking bird and we managed to get a few more photos of it

Frequently 'flycatching' the bird is taking a rest in this photo giving a good view of the clean white undersides

Lisa found a cracking Western Bonelli's warbler when doing a butterfly transect this afternoon!

Below are some pics of the bird. Thanks to our friend Dave Boyle for helping to confirm the ID.

Forecast is good for tomorrow so boats should be running from St Justinians's lifeboat station at 10am and 12pm, returning at 4pm. Phone Thousand Islands Expeditions on 01437 721721 to book.

We will try and confirm if the bird…

In 1999 Ramsey was cleared of brown rats which had been accidentally introduced to the island via shipwrecks in the 1800’s and were having a devastating impact on the island’s ground nesting seabird population. Puffins had become extinct, there were no storm petrels and Manx shearwater numbers were severely curtailed.

Since then puffins have continued to elude us as a breeding species but storm petrels were…

After 5 all too brief months Amy, our summer reserve assistant, left Ramsey this morning. Lisa and I want to say a huge huge thank you to her for all her hard work this season. She has been a joy to have around and has helped us out so much.

I know these sentiments will be shared by the many volunteers who shared the bungalow with her and the thousands of day visitors who she met each day with a smile.

Amy is off to…

In April of this year I was fortunate enough to accompany the Project Shearwater team to Mallorca as part of my RSPB sabbatical. The project is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the critically endangered Balearic shearwater using GPS and geolocator tracking as well as carrying out population monitoring.

Thanks to Miguel McMinn, Ana Rodriguez, Tim Guilford, Russell Wynn and Rhiannon Meier for having me along.

 Bank Holiday Monday was probably not the day we would have ordinarily picked to move sheep off Ramsey but our plans to move them late on Sunday evening were curtailed by a stiff northerly blowing straight into the harbour and Ramsey Sound looking less than inviting with wind against tide on the flood! So we had little choice but to delay to Monday morning. The sheep were sorted and waiting and the ram lambs were starting…

Last Saturday we were delighted to welcome children and staff from the Rhydyfelin section of the charity Valleys Kids

This visit to Ramsey was arranged through our RSPB Cymru office in Cardiff and it was great to see our colleagues Gareth and Carly on the island.

Apart from giving everyone a great day out the aim was to raise awareness of the importance of the marine environment from an environmental, educational and…

Dr Sarah Beynon from Dr Beynons Bug Farm was leading a guided insect walk on Ramsey on Thursday and discovered a new species of dung beetle for the Ramsey Island list.

It is called Aphodius foetens. It is widespread but local in the UK but Ramsey is only the second location in Pembrokeshire that Sarah has found it.

Don’t be fooled by the scale of the photo below, it is only 6-7mm in length!

Sarah led a successful…

Well done to Zeman, Martin and Jess from Thousand Island Expeditions for rescuing a sub-adult gannet they discovered on a trip out to the RSPB reserve of Grassholm yesterday. The bird was tangled in mono-filament fishing line and would have died a slow and lingering death without their intervention Click here to see a video of the event.

RSPB staff head out of Grassholm each October to cut free young birds which are tangled…

In an earlier blog we reported that House Martins had bred on Ramsey for what we think is the first time (certainly the first time since RSPB ownership). A group of birds arrived late in the breeding season (mid June) and began investigating the eaves of the farmhouse. Thinking they were simply non breeders prospecting for next year we put up some artificial nests in the hope they might return in 2014

We were therefore…

 Lisa went out to film at Grassholm today with BBC 4. It is for a forthcoming 3 part series on the history of paleontology presented by Richard Fortey. The episode in question concerns the evolution of birds. The sun shone but after strong winds overnight there was a fair swell around and the seas around Grassholm were quite lively!

I stayed put on Ramsey on what turned out to be a busy day visitor wise with lots of very…

A great video from RSPB Scotland.....

http://vimeo.com/67199080

The below is a nice video montage put together by one our residential volunteers Christine Fintham during her 2 weeks on the isalnd in August this year

www.youtube.com/watch

 There are still a few spaces left on a Bug Hunt on RSPB Ramsey Island led by entomologist and wildlife TV presenter Dr Sarah Beynon on Tuesday 6th August

For more details click here or phone Thousand Islands Expeditions on 01437 721721 or 721686 to book - boat leaves St Justinian lifeboat station at 09:30

For Sarah's latest documentary on the BBC Urban Jungle series click here

Dr Sarah Beynon leading a Bug Hunt on Ramsey…

Really interesting article on Derek Brockway's blog today about an atmospheric phenomenon seen off the Pembs Coast recently affecting some of the offshore islands including our RSPB island of Grassholm. We've witnessed it a few times ourselves over the years. Great photos by Adrian Owens.

Click here to link to the BBC blog

Last week I accompanied scientists from Exeter and Plymouth Universities to our RSPB reserve of Grassholm, home to nearly 40,000 pairs of northern gannets, making it the 4^th largest colony in the world for this species and accounting for nearly 10% of the entire world population.

This was the 3^rd of three trips this year, the purpose being to deploy small GPS devices on around 40 gannets to track their feeding trips…

A Grey Seal pup was born this afternoon in one of Ramsey’s caves. This is the second pup born this July and it is not uncommon to get one or two early births before the pupping season gets into full swing in the middle of August.

The cow in the photo was seen circling on the beach yesterday and ‘flippering’ the sand and pebbles. This is very similar behaviour to the ‘nest building’ activity of dogs before they…