My Orkney Summer

Apologies for not posting anything for the past few months, I’ve been unbeliveably busy with work over the summer! I’ll try and cover everything that’s been happening up here without rambling on for too long…

So work wise, I’ve been very busy indeed! Over the past few months I’ve been surveying all of the wildlife that can be found on the reserve, with a focus on the seabirds. Twice a week I have been monitoring the Guillemots, Razorbills, Shags and Kittiwakes nesting on the cliff faces along the area of the reserve known as Fowl Craig, as well as going over to Westray at least once a week to monitor the seabirds nesting on the RSPB’s Noup Cliffs reserve. However, there are too many seabirds at each of these reserves for me to monitor them all, so thankfully I only have to do a selection of sites. This monitoring involves regularly visiting each site and recording what every nesting pair of birds is doing – whether they have eggs, chicks or nothing at all. Each site may have a few hundred birds, so it can take some time! The point of this monitoring is to see how many chicks each species manages to rear to fledging (flying), as the chicks are much less vulnerable to predation when they can fly away from the nest, so it gives us an idea of how well the breeding season has gone, and since these species will return to the same nest each year to breed, we can follow each pair throughout their lifetime and track any changes in breeding success. This monitoring is important as seabirds are at the top of the foodchain and they exclusively eat fish and other marine life such as squid, so by following the fate of these seabirds, we can see how healthy our marine environment is - the more seabirds there are, the healthier our seas must be, as they can support a larger number of predators.

Me surveying the seabirds at Noup Cliffs on Westray

However, over the past decade, our seabirds have been rapidly declining, especially in the northern isles (Orkney and Shetland). A lot of research has been carried out to find out why our seabirds are declining, and climate change has been found to be the answer. Climate change is causing our seas to heat up and is pushing Sandeels (the preferred fish of seabirds) further away and into deeper waters, making them harder to get at. Due to this lack of food, the majority of our seabirds have been showing a rapid decline in numbers, as they are unable to find enough food to feed their chicks. Last year none of the Guillemots and Razorbills nesting on the cliffs on Papa Westray managed to fledge chicks, but this year we are seeing a different picture. My monitoring has revealed that we have had at least 26 Guillemot chicks and 5 Razorbill chicks fledge, an amazing result! Let’s hope they can keep it up for a few more years!

Puffins!!

In addition to my seabird monitoring, I have also been carrying out Corncrake surveys. Corncrakes are small, unassuming birds related to Moorhens, although they don’t really spend any time in the water. But there is more to them than meets the eye! Every year they migrate from Africa to breed in Europe, Orkney and the Western Isles. And as soon as they arrive here, the males start calling. Their distinctive ‘crex-crex’ call can be heard all night, every night, coming from areas of suitable habitat such as iris beds, nettles and silage fields. This makes Orkney the perfect destination for these birds, as the main crop here is silage (which is used to feed livestock over the winter, the main export being beef). Their calls are incredibly loud and the males will call all night without stopping so that they can attract in as many females as possible. So naturally, the best time to survey them is at night! So, between midnight and 3am I carried out surveys for these birds, visiting every area of suitable habitat. Luckily, this only needs to be done twice at each location, so I did two surveys across Papa Westray (unfortunately we only have 1 Corncrake this year), and one on Westray, which has the most Corncrakes in Orkney this year, a massive 12 calling males!

In addition to these surveys, I have also been following the fates of the Arctic Skuas, Great Skuas, Fulmars, Gannets, Arctic Terns, Sandwich Terns and the various wader species that have been nesting on the two reserves. I have also been doing guided walks around the North Hill reserve twice a week, showing visitors all of the wildlife on the reserve, from Puffins to Primroses and shipwrecks to seals. Currently I am busy counting the Scottish Primroses that grow on the North Hill reserve on Papa Westray. There are about 50 colonies across the reserve, each holding anything from 1 to 8000 Scottish Primroses. I managed to get a group of volunteers and staff to come down for a visit to count the largest colony of 8,134 plants and I am slowly getting through the rest of them, although it takes a long time, crawling along on hands and knees to look for these tiny but beautiful plants!

A Scottish Primrose (Primula scotica)

A very cute Arctic Skua chick!

Please click on the following links to read my posts on the Orkney RSPB blog:

• Primroses
• Gannets
• Arctic Terns
• Westray Regatta (written by our Corncrake Officer)

Despite carrying out such a variety of work, I am still able to have something closely resembling a social life! I get to the coffee morning as often as I can so that I can catch up with some of the locals that I wouldn’t see very often otherwise, and I go to the film nights and Saturday pub nights as often as I can to socialise with the islanders and any visitors that are staying on the island. I also get down to Kirkwall to see the other RSPB staff and have a look around the shops a couple of times a month. I had a visit from my dad in mid-June, and he seemed to enjoy his trip to my little island quite a lot! We visited all of the historical sites and he came on one of my guided tours across the reserve, but seemed to be nervous of how close I was getting to the edge of the cliffs! But at least he got to see lots of seals and seabirds, and got a short introduction to the island in general. Hopefully his visit has made him want to visit Orkney again – it really is a beautifal part of Scotland.

In action - the bike basket that my dad sent me!

My awesome Papa Westray socks! Thanks dad!

In mid-July we had the 7^th annual Papay Fun Weekend! This is basically an entire weekend of fun and frolics, including BBQs, arts and crafts, tattie and spoon races, obstacle courses, tug-of-war, tea and cakes, carty races ‘doon the brae’, Scottish pipe bands, and two ceilidh dances! I was in charge of face painting and hook-a-duck for the weekend, both of which proved to be very popular, and I now know several of the Papay versions of the traditional Highland dances! I managed to get to the Westray Regatta, a sailing race between yachts of various sizes from Westray to Papay and back again on the last weekend in July. I went over and set up an RSPB stall, sat out in the sunshine, talked to passer’s by, and got to watch the boats sailing around! I also saw another pipe band playing, and ate some more cake…I really should stop eating so much cake! I’ve even manged to squeeze in a bit of bird ringing in my spare time, but unfortunately I’ve not managed to get to any of the other islands yet. However, I am planning a trip to North Ronaldsay at the beginning of September after my contract here ends, so I’ll let you know how it goes! Next weekend is the County Show down in Kirkwall, which should be entertaining!

The carty that won the prize for being the best looking!

Me ringing a Hen Harrier chick!

It really is a very beautiful island and such a lovely place to live, I’m so glad I’ve had the opportunity to spend such a long time here! I’m hoping to come back again next year, but it hasn’t been decided yet – watch this space!