By Jessie Dermody
My first job of the day was a pup check! There were strong easterly winds last night, so I was worried that there would be a lot of dead pups on the beaches. Thankfully, I did not see any dead pups, only live ones! We are up to seven pups now, spread out on beaches around the island. Asrai was the first pup found, followed by Dunnie, Emer, Fext and Golem. The most recent two appeared last night on the landing bay beach - one is named Heffalump, and the other one is yet to be named. We are worried about their chances of survival, with all the disturbance from traffic on the road. If they are disturbed often, their mothers may be too afraid to return to the beach to feed them. All we can do is try to minimise disturbance and hope for the best! We have closed the beach, and put up signs explaining best practise for veiwing and photographing the pups from a distance for visitors. Both pups are extremely cute.
Baby Heffalump - photo by Jessie Dermody
After pup check, I had a butterfly survey to do! On my way to the start of the survey route, I spotted a Pied Flycatcher! This was very exciting for me - I'm not much of a birder, especially not for terrestrial birds. I was very happy to see a new species without anyone having to point it out. There were 4 Pied Flycatchers seen across the island today. It was a grey and windy day, so I didn't think there would be many butterflies around. I was proven correct, only recording one Painted Lady on the whole survey route. I did see 3 Small Whites, 2 Red Admirals and another Painted Lady outside of the survey route, but unfortunately these do not count.
Manx Shearwater from the artificial nest boxes by ThomasWeston
The rest of my day was to be spent in the office, identifying species from our rockpool surveys earlier in the month. One rockpool we surveyed had a total of 51 different species in it! I ran into Thomas on his way out to check if any of the Manx Shearwater chicks in from the nest boxes had fledged. Three of them had! The youngest of the box chicks (my favourite), is still looking very fluffy, but the others have grown a lot of their adult feathers.
On census this morning, Greg saw the first 2 Whinchat of autumn, a Dunlin and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.