We have had some incredibly warm and calm weather this past week which has been brilliant for getting out in the field and finishing off our main monitoring work.

Gower Ranger leaving the harbour after a land © Alys Perry.

We welcomed another lovely volunteer onto the island this week and it was none other than the well-known and loved Gwyneth. Gwyneth has been coming for many years and always gets stuck in with her…

We've had another busy week on the Island filled with more visitors, new volunteers, and exciting seabird fieldwork!

Thrift looking beautiful in full bloom over Glyma © Nia Stephens. 

We welcomed Ally & Vicky as our volunteers from the 27th of May to the 3rd of June. Vicky and Ally completed numerous tasks including chough nest monitoring, visitor work, painting plastic puffins, assisting with seabird counts…

In our last blog, I introduced Mick as our first to volunteer for the season. Well, Mick has now finished his first week of volunteering with us for 2023. Mick got stuck into all things Ramsey and did a fantastic job of painting the plastic puffins ready to go back out on the Western cliffs, clearing teasel, helping with visitors, and monitoring chough nest sites. Thank you so much for all your help Mick, we look forward…

We've had another good week on the Island. We have been busy with welcoming visitors and getting on with more biological monitoring. 

We welcomed our first volunteer 'Mick' back to the island on Saturday. Mick has been coming to the island for many years now and straight away got stuck in with the evening rabbit count at Carn Ysycbor on the 13th. Mick had a busy first day today helping with visitors, monitoring…

We had some changeable weather this week which stopped us from having boats on Thursday but it cleared up in time for a beautiful weekend for the Coronation. We carried on with our usual monitoring work, checking the Chough nest sites and more breeding bird surveys alongside some admin and welcoming visitors. 

The East Coast of the Island in the sunshine ©  Alys Perry.

The big news of the week is that after 3 years…

We have had some very misty weather this week with several days of the Island shrouded in low clouds. Unfortunately, it wasn't great conditions for spotting and counting birds but it was very atmospheric.

Thousand Island's Gower Ranger arriving with visitors between patches of mist. © Alys Perry

The low cloud surrounded the island on the 26th with only the top of Carn Llidi near St. Davids's head visible…

It's been a busy few weeks on the island so much so that this blog has been a tad delayed. 

So it's definitely time to fill you in on all things Ramsey!

After a bit of a delay, and some very stormy weather we welcomed our first visitors for the season onto the Island on the 14th of April. It was a beautiful day, and the visitors and ourselves thoroughly enjoyed it. We have continued to welcome visitors to the island…

Even though we are now into April we are still waiting to welcome our first visitors to the island for the season. A combination of big swells and some issues with the low tide landing stage has sadly hampered our efforts. The pillars on the gutter have now been replaced, so hopefully, we will welcome the public back very soon.

Shanni catching up on some sleep in the sunshine on the back of the Quad © Nia Stephens…

It has been a week of strong winds, big swells, and lots of rain so the majority of the jobs have been undertaken indoors. Myself and Nia have been busy redecorating the island shop and ordering new stock. The swell subsided enough for Derek, Greg, and the team to get over on the 27^th. Derek spent his day fixing the crane that had ceased up over winter. New parts for the crane have now been ordered, so fingers crossed…

It’s been a week of strong winds and big swell but the sunshine has managed to peep through the clouds on occasion.

We have had another busy week trying to fit in as many outdoor jobs as we can in between the rain. Our activities included monitoring our chough nest sites, putting in new Manx Shearwater nest boxes in our study plot, conducting marine surveys, doing the final preparations for visitors to return next…

We are now back on the Island for the 2023 season but with a few changes …..

There is a new team on the Island this year. So without further or do it's time to introduce you to the 2023 team!

Greg Morgan

Many of you will know Greg from previous blogs as the Site Manager of Ramsey Island. After 18 years on the rock, Greg has decided to take up residence full-time on the mainland. However, Greg will still be…

Below is a blog written by Greg (RSPB Ramsey Site Manager) and Lisa (now WTSWW Head of Islands and Marine Conservation) about Dewi, a member of the Ramsey team many of you will have got to know in person or through this blog over the years. Greg and Lisa managed Ramsey together for 14 years and Dewi was their dog...but he was so much more than that.

It’s just over 6 weeks since we lost Dewi and it’s taken till now for…

A ferocious gale force easterly wind raged all day and made doing anything outside tricky. In an attempt to seek out a few birds in the relative shelter of the gorse I was pleased to find our first 3 fieldfares of the autumn. It wasn't long before I saw a few more, and then a few more! It soon became apparent a large arrival of both fieldfare and redwing was underway. Wave after wave of birds were arriving from the NW…

October is always an exciting month at coastal locations with birds on the move and so it has proved on Ramsey this year. A barred warbler on the 6th October was only the 9th record for Ramsey and the first since 2018. Since then we have had a flurry of good birds by island standards. A ruff found by warden Nia on 11th was only the 5th record for Ramsey while a green woodpecker on the same day was only the 4th record and the…

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For links to previous updates see here and here

By now I had hoped to be reporting that avian influenza was starting to subside in our northern gannet population on Grassholm as the season wound down, but sadly that doesn’t appear to be the case. Reports of dead and dying birds washing in on the Welsh mainland coast (mainly Pembrokeshire but stretching from Carmarthenshire to Anglesey) have been…

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On 3^rd August we reported that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) had reached Grassholm island and had killed a small number of northern gannets

Since then we have been monitoring the situation and, unfortunately, the situation has become worse week on week. It is very difficult to assess how many birds have died in this outbreak but based on the number of dead birds we have counted…

(For Welsh please scroll down)

RSPB Grassholm is home to 36,000 pairs of northern gannet, making it the third largest colony in the world for this sea bird. It is one of only two gannet colonies in Wales and of international importance. As you may have seen in the press this year, gannets, along with a host of other seabird species have been hit by an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). The highly pathogenic…

Regular readers of this blog will know the chequered history that burrow nesting seabirds have had with Ramsey / Ynys Dewi over the years. Brown rats arrived in the 1800’s through shipwrecks and decimated the puffin and Manx shearwater breeding populations through the 1900’s.

By the time the RSPB bought the island in 1992 puffins had long been extinct as a breeding species and the shearwaters were reduced…

After a winter spent to-ing and fro-ing to the island, Nia and myself (and Dewi the sheepdog, now in his 14th year!) settled back permanently for the season on 3rd March. This followed hot on the heels of a very entertaining 1st Aid course with friends and colleagues from our neigbouring islands of Skomer and Skokholm. It's not often you get all the staff from all three islands under one roof, even if we did spend most…

During November I was lucky enough to attend a 2 week Conservation Detection Dog Handlers assessment course with Kryus Ltd - this is part of a project with Biosecuirty For Life of which RSPB is a lead partner. The project aims to protect the 42 seabird Special Protections Areas (SPA's) around the UK from introduced mammalian predators and lead on biosecurity measures.

For more on this, and how detection dogs are joining…

We are currently in an 'unsettled spell'. No named storms yet this year but the past week has seen strong to gale force winds every day. After several days of groundhog day like weather consisting of rain and low cloud it was nice to actually see some sunshine today. The trade off being it was accompanied by torrential showers! Myself and the hound spent most of the day on the grey seal monitoring round. The season is…

Grassholm is a spectacular reserve. The oldest RSPB reserve in Wales, the only northern gannet colony in Wales and, with 36,000 pairs, the 3rd largest in the world behind Bass Rock and St Kilda. It is a privilege to manage the island and to have the honour to land on it a few times a year as part of my job. Back in the summer that is for scientific research and monitoring purposes but in October, as regular readers of…

Time flies and before you know it one of the harbour pups has left and the other is about to go! Thought I'd better get a quick photo of this one uploaded in case I missed them both. This was known as 'badger' due to the look they had when the all black face was moulting through their white natal coat. In this photo 'badger' is 19 days old and the cow is long gone. She abandoned the pup at 15 days old and the pup was…

The Manx shearwater fledgling season is in full swing. If you live, or are on holiday, in Pembrokeshire (or Carmarthen, or Cerdigion....or even Cardiff!) keep an eye out for these birds that can become disorientated by mainland lighting or blown inland by strong winds. More information and who to call if you find one on the posters above (click on posters to see at full resolution)

Suddenly a week has gone by since the 2nd harbour pup was born and 10 days since the first. They have changed a lot in that time and there's been a bit of drama too! We have just passed new moon which means big spring tides. With it being close to the autumn equinox they are the biggest of the year (over 7m at high tide for a few days). Despite it being calm the pups are forced to swim for a few hours twice a day at each…