Katharine (my housemate in Sheffield) has a sister who is a bird geek (and won't mind me calling her that - would you Sam!?!?) That means she spends her time studying bird behaviour, something she studied for her phD. She is currenltly being paid lots of money to study sea birds on Skomer Island, a little island sanctuary off the SW corner of Wales, and we decided to visit for a couple of days. There are shearwaters, razorbills and countless gulls and other birds, but the main attraction for me are the puffins.
Puffins remind me so much of penguins it's hilarious. They are goofy, confident, walk straight up to you and if a penguin were to fly this is what they'd look like, wings having to flap like mad just to stay afloat. We picked a good time to go - the bird life was at frenzy point, the bluebell season was at it's peak creating this wonderful purple carpet that smothered the landscape.
Gulls sat amongst the flowers while the puffins clumsily landed on the cliff tops before wandering to their burrows. Razorbills held onto their tiny ledges on the cliffs for dear life while grey seals cruised around the beaches below. Twitchers wandered around with their scopes and tripods, sporting camera lenses bigger than my right arm and got hugely excited when someone rang to say a Golden Oreole had been spotted in field No. 4.
We went out for a late night mission in the dark when the shearwaters crash land straight into you or whatever gets in their way, lay stunned on the ground for a while before getting on with their business.
I have to apologise to Sam for not remembering what type of rare moth this is. It was huge and sat basking in the sun for many hours though, watching us through it's wings.
And after what felt like ages wandering amongst the wildlife it was time to head off on the boat with the friendly welshmen back to the mainland. A drive north took us to Machynlleth for a weekend of awesome mountain biking before returning home.
A huge THANK YOU to Sam and infamous Pete (who half the people I know seem to know!) who let us stay on their amazing island and showed us around.Next I'm off to Greenland, to the Danish run NEEM Ice core drill camp, to work with crazy Frenchman Zorro for a few weeks carrying out a radar survey followed by lots of time assisting at the drill site, helping prepare it for the winter months ahead.......
