On April 1st, Tom Jamieson starts up his ferry service to Mousa. And so yesterday, we made our first trip of the year to Mousa RSPB nature reserve. It was a blustery crossing on the Solan IV, with quite a swell. It is always great to get back to Mousa.
The first birds we saw were some eiders, shags, a robin, chiffchaff and various gulls. The shags (or scarfs as we call them in Shetland) are looking particularly gorgeous at the moment, with their tufts and metallic green sheen. On walking around the island, there were a good few skylarks singing, 124 purple sandpipers, a couple of hooded crows and (my favourite of the day) a pair of red-throated divers. Following Dave Sexton's remarkable discovery on Mull yesterday morning, we were hoping to have a similar experience
Rob, Assistant Warden, took visiting PHD researchers around the island, to look for seal poo. The reason for this is the researchers are looking into the diet of harbour (common) seals and, to a lesser extent, grey seals. Their study will take them all across the country and hopefully give a valuable insight into these marine mammals and the health of the sea. We will try and help them locally by gathering and logging samples. Seal poo can be quite camouflaged, so it is not just like looking for dog poo on a pavement. It turns out that Rob has quite an eye for turds. He says that seal turd is surprisiningly variable in colour (greens, browns, grey) and texture (hard, soft, flaky, squishy). Rob is sure to become a scataological expert and has promised to share some photos in a future post. So make sure you don't miss that!
All the best from Shetland