Surveys, seabirds and sunshine!

June is the busiest month in any conservation job. The breeding season in in full swing, with birds either sitting on eggs or looking after their newly hatched chicks, visitors are everywhere, and there are about a million surveys to do. But it's even busier on seabird sites, as June is when counts, surveys and monitoring of the breeding seabirds begins! I've been kept incredibly busy since I first arrived back here in April, but since the start of June I've been twice as busy as before! I'm doing seabird counts and monitoring two or three times a week, which involves sitting and watching the birds or an hour or two at each of my seven monitoring sites, and waiting for them to move slightly so that I can see whether they have eggs or chicks - it sounds tedious, and it can be if the birds aren't cooperating, but most of the time I enjoy it! Especially if the weather's nice! 

Nesting season also means attacking season for some of our seabirds! This is a Great Skua, and he's very annoyed at me for being in his territory! Photo taken just before he hit me in the head with his feet!

I've also been continuing with my surveys of all of the other birds that nest on the North Hill reserve (on Papa Westray), doing my guided tours twice a week, and of course doing paperwork and going to team meetings! June is also THE time to count seabird colonies, and that is exactly what me and the RSPB team spent last Saturday doing! Read more about this on our RSPB Orkney Blog. So, I've definitely been kept busy so far this month, and I'm sure there will be many more things for me to as the month continues!

It's not all work, work, work though, and I have found the time to go to many of the social events here on the island! I go to the cinema nights and pub nights whenever I can, and I really enjoy the Coffee Morning on Wednesdays - some of the best cake I've ever had, not to mention the cheese scones! And I was even asked to bake for the coffee mornings a few times now - a high honour indeed!

I made Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake Brownies. They seemed to go down well, what do you think?

I've even had a visitor come to stay, which I feel would have been more interesting if I hadn't been working the whole time, but despite that, it's still a wonderful place to come and visit! But the main social event of the year so far has to be the AAKnowledge weekend, commemorating the last pair of Great Auks in Britain, which bred on Papay. The male of the pair was killed in May 1813, the female was killed the year before, so this was the 200th anniversary of it's death which we commemorated. It was a lovely weekend, with dances, dinners, a farmer's marknet, a walk up to the Great Auk statue, and talks by a variety of people, including a very informative talk by Dr Jo Cooper, who looks after the Papay Great Auk at the Natural History Museum in Tring. We even had a 3D representation of the Papay Auk, as unfortunately it is too fragile to make the journey all the way up here. A wonderful weekend, which hopefully helped to spread the story of the Great Auk and it's extinction, and to point out the many similarities between it's extinction and the current decline that we are seeing in our seabirds up here and elsewhere across the UK and Europe. The weekend was made even nicer as a few people from the office came up to stay and join in the festivities! 

The AAKnowledge Poster

Commemorative tea-towel - everyone on the island drew an Auk! Can you find mine? HINT: I did a Black Guillemot

The Papay Band playing on the Sunday night after the talks and a mighty feast!

The 3D Auk. This is the actual one that was killed on Papa Westray in 1813 and is the only surviving British specimen. It looks better when you actually see it in 3D!

Even the beer was Auk themed!

The AAKnowledge weekend was part of the larger Orkney Nature Festival, ran by the RSPB with support from various other organisations to get people more interested in Orkney nature and wildlife, and to get people out to look at that wildlife! The festival lasted just over a week and included a wide variety of events both on Mainland Orkney and on several of the islands. Unfortunately I didn't get to attend very many of the events as I had walks and surveys to do, but I did manage to get to the events on Westray up at our Noup Cliffs reserve, and was lucky enough to go on the boat trip around the cliffs - a lovely and unique way to experience this seabird city! I also went to a few events on Mainland, including a guided walk and market!

Approaching Noup Cliffs on the boat trip for the Orkney Nature Festival

75m high and covered in seabirds!

Me on the boat trip round the cliffs! (Won't let me make it the right way up...)

Anne's amazing mural on the wall of the office for the Orkney Nature Festival's marine day

In bird news, the season has been off to a very slow start, with the cold weather continuing well into May. We saw many late migrants coming through, and noticed that most birds were quite late in nesting and egg-laying, a trend which is evident all across the UK. However, things are starting to look up, as all species are now either on eggs or with young chicks. The species that seems to have been worst affected by the extended cold spell seems to be the Arctic Terns. Many passed through in late May as the weather got a bit warmer, but our breeding birds didn't return until early June and are only now starting to lay. Their numbers are much lower than last year, across both Westray and Papay, but I'm hoping it's just going to be a late season for them. Another species that seems to have been greatly effected is the Corncrake. Orkney is one of the few places in Britain that Corncrakes still breed, but this year we seem to have a lot fewer birds. Last year there were 12 males on Westray and 1 on Papay, but this year it looks like there's just 5 on Westray, and none at all on Papay. It's likely that the cold weather put them off of their migration, and that they just stayed in Europe to breed rather than making the extra journey over here. It will be very interesting to see how both of the species do over the season, but I'm hoping that things get better for them soon! The weather has significantly improved now, with many warm, sunny days, low winds, and general niceness, and long may it last!

An amazing sunset after an evening spent surveying Curlews across the island