However, I think one of the big highlights of this role was surveying breeding raptors. This is something that I had done before in small doses but never quite to this scale, covering large areas of land and monitoring the nests of any raptor species that I came across. It seems to have been a fairly good season for most raptors too, with many of the nests that I was following fledging chicks. I really enjoyed all of the raptor work that I did but I think my favourite was monitoring a pair of nesting Merlin on one of my sites. They proved to be quite elusive at times but I did eventually find the nest with 3 healthly young chicks, all of which fledged successfully! I was also able to help with ringing three Peregrine chicks in a nest that I was monitoring, applying little radio tags so that they could be followed throughout their lifetime - an amazing experience!
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| Merlin chicks! |
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| Peregrine chicks being ringed |
As well as all of this, I also had the chance to visit another RSPB reserve up in the far north of Scotland this year to help out with the monitoring of the seabirds that breed on the beautiful Priest Island. The island is host to a variety of habitats, from heathland to bogs, and rocky caves to boulder beaches and scree, but there is one seabird that can nest in any of these conditions - the Storm Petrel. It is a tiny black and white bird, about the size of a sparrow but it spends it's entire life out at sea, only coming ashore to nest. These tiny birds nest in burrows and will make a burrow anywhere they can - in crevices between rocks, in cracks in the underlying peat, and even in old rabbit burrows. As they are so small they are very vulnerable to predation and can only nest in areas where there are no ground predators such as rats, although predation from other birds is still a possibility so they only come out of the burrows at night, with the adults switching over incubation duties every few days. Priest Island is a haven for these birds as it has no ground predators and is host to one of the largest Storm Petrel colonies in Britain - making it an incredibly important place for nature conservation. It is a SSSI and an SPA, giving it legal protection and it is managed by the RSPB who visit the island every year to survey these birds as part of an on-going study into their survival and breeding success. In addition to this, once every five years the RSPB surveys the breeding population of the Storm Petrels across the island to see how they are doing.
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| Priest Island |
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| View across Priest island |
I went along to help out with this five-yearly survey. This involved camping out on the island in the only spot where there are none of these birds nesting and going out each day to survey a different area of the island. We didn't do any surveys at night as we didn't want to disturb these birds or prevent them from re-entering their burrows. The survey itself involved playing a tape of Storm Petrel calls and counting how many birds sing back to the tape, announcing their territory. However not all birds will respond all the time, so we had to use study plots to calibrate these results. At no point did we try to catch the birds or find the burrow entrances as we wanted to cause the least amount of disturbance possible whilst surveying them. This is all part of a long-running study with very experienced staff and I'm very happy that I got to be a part of it! I'm not sure of the final numbers but I'm hoping that the population of Storm Petrels on this island is remaining stable or increasing, despite some issues with habitat destruction caused by visitors to the island knocking down walls where these birds breed, or disturbing the birds in the breeding season. However, a recent paper on the subject shows that they may be declining at this site - you can read the abstract of this paper here.
Another big plus of my job this year was that it was based near the city of Perth, providing me with easy access to supermarkets, shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs, clubs, a cinema and much much more! So I was able to have a bit more of a social life which was very enjoyable! I even went rock climbing a few times with people from the office (even though I'm a bit rubbish!), as well as meeting up with them for drinks and clubbing, hill walking, and I even managed to get to yoga a few times. Pretty good going really! We also took a team trip to the Isle of May to visit the lovely seabird colony there, climbed Ben Vrackie as the leaving do for the summer staff (i.e. me!) and I helped out the Orkney Seabird Heritage Project by making a paper mache Arctic Tern!
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| Rock climbing in Dundee |
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| Beautiful sunny day on the Isle of May! |
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| The seabird colony on the Isle of May |
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| The team at the top of Ben Vrackie! Not my photo but I thought it was too great not to use it! Hopefully I will be forgiven. |
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| Alex the Arctic Tern, now all the way up in Orkney for the Heritage Project, which will be coming to Edinburgh at some point I think. Check the website for more info. |
So what now, you ask? Well at the moment, not a lot. I'm back home, looking for jobs and hoping something good comes my way and taking the opportunity to relax a bit whilst I sort stuff out for going to Mauritius. Yes, that's right, MAURITIUS! I've been accepted to volunteer with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) for six months starting in January, where I'll be helping out with the seabird project - you can find out more information about this project here. It sounds like it's going to be an amazing experience, and everyone that I've spoken to that's volunteered with MWF previously has really enjoyed it and highly recommends it! So I've put in my application for a visa/work permit and am now just waiting to hear if it's been accepted before I can book flights and insurance and sort out everything else. It's not paid, but I'm really looking forward to it and all the more reason to find a job in the meantime! Watch this space!!
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| I had a great time on holiday in Mauritius a few years ago and I'm really looking forward to going back! |
