Returning to landlocked Bedfordshire after a week on Dream Island was a bit of a shock.
'Dream Island' isn't a far-flung Caribbean location, but the name given to Skokholm, off the coast of Pembrokeshire in Wales, by the naturalist Ronald Lockley. And that's where I met the mysterious Mother Carey's chickens...
Skokholm is small but beautiful, measuring roughly 1 mile long and half a mile wide. By the time I visited in August, the puffins (2,000 pairs) had all left and the red sandstone cliffs were fairly quiet. But the island came alive at night - and the darker, the better.
I was part of a team of volunteers visiting Skokholm to help with monitoring the island's birds by catching and ringing them (we put a lightweight, uniquely-numbered ring around the bird's leg and release it unharmed). By identifying each bird as an individual, ringing helps build a better picture of what's happening to bird populations.
'Like fairies being sick'
'Mother Carey's chicken' is an old sailors' name for the storm petrel - a little seabird that breeds around parts of our western coasts. They make an odd sound which has been likened to 'fairies being sick'! (have a listen on our page). They nest in rocky crevices, so Skokholm's dry-stone walls are ideal homes for them.
And at roughly the size of a house sparrow, they appear rather fragile. You wouldn't think they were capable of spending most of the year in the middle of the south Atlantic, but that's just what they do! They flutter along the surface of the water and peck at plankton (have a look at the photo in my post from Monday).
Because of their size, storm petrels are vulnerable to attacks from the large gulls with which they share the island. So we had to wait for a dark night, where thick cloud gave the petrels the cover they needed.
The last (and first) time I saw a storm petrel, it was a tiny black speck disappearing towards the horizon as I peered over the rail of a ferry crossing the Bay of Biscay. It was a very disappointing encounter with such an enigmatic bird. But now I had one in my hand!
A bird with a special smell
After putting on the petrel's ring (made from saltwater-resistant metal), measuring its wing and weighing it (most were around 27g - about the weight of a packet of crisps!), I took a moment to admire a remarkable bird before I released it.
The blackish feathers were dense and silky, with a white rump; the legs were slender and the webbed feet felt cold on my hand. Close-up, the bill was like nothing I'd seen before - birds from this family aren't called 'tubenoses' for nothing! And I'd been told earlier that the smell of 'stormies' is unique, and I can still smell it now - it's a bit fishy, but by no means unpleasant.
As I opened my hand, the stormie perched on my fingertips and looked around, before fluttering off into the darkness to its burrow, where a fluffy chick awaited that night's meal.
As if that magical experience wasn't enough, we had an extra-special treat one afternoon. The wardens on Skokholm spend a lot of time monitoring their breeding seabirds, and there was the rare chance to have a look at a storm petrel chick as it was weighed and measured.
The latest news from the island is that the chick is doing really well and is putting on lots of weight (it weighs more than its parents!) and growing those all-important wing feathers.
I wonder where it'll be in a few months' time? Perhaps off the coast of South Africa. Skokholm has around 5,000 breeding pairs of storm petrels (about 20% of the European total), so hopefully this youngster will return safely from its long journey.