Bird Sightings

After a late night ringing Manx Shearwaters on the west coast, I started the morning ringing another Manx Shearwater fledgling who had ended up in the engineer's workshop overnight. After ringing it, I took him to Benjamin's Chair and placed him in a burrow so he can have another go at fledging on Friday night! This was not the only Manxie of the morning... about an hour later a second one was discovered outside Old House North, so I also ringed him and took him over to Benjamin's Chair.

Meanwhile Thomas and Eleanor had been sea watching in the Landing Bay, where they saw 178 Gannets, 118 Manx Shearwaters, 7 Fulmars, 3 Arctic Skuas, 9 Guillemots, 5 Kittiwakes, 3 Great Black-backed Gulls, 1 Herring Gull and over 70 Shags. There was lots going on on the land too; 'Flossy' the Glossy Ibis was still enjoying Barton Field, Greg spotted a Wryneck on the Terrace and Steve, our cargo man, found a Ringed Plover by the boat building.

After lunch, Roger, Emma and I took on the job of dismantling the large tent in the campsite that the conservation volunteers had been using in August, this took most of the afternoon! Meanwhile, a Sparrowhawk was spotted in Barton Field by Thomas and Eleanor, Greg found a Whinchat in Tillage Field and – amazingly – 3 Buff-breasted Sandpiper flying over Quarter Wall in the evening!

After doing the weekly fire equipment checks, I set out on a pup check. Most of this was spent at White Beach, as there were 5 Seal pups sleeping quite close to each other! I took lots of photos with the hope of being able to work out who they were back in the office! I had some success with this and manged to identify 3/5 pups, with the possibility that the other two are new!