A success story

I first visited the Welsh island of Skomer about 15 years ago with two work friends. Since then I have been numerous times and both myself and Judith have fallen in love with it. For those that don't know, it is an island off the south-west tip of Wales, closely allied to Skokholm and Midland island. Its claim to fame are the puffins and manx shearwaters which nest there. Despite other islands either completely losing their ground-nesting birds or seeing them decimated, the colonies at Skomer are thriving - over 40,000 puffins and almost a million shearwaters. The success is due to the eradication of rats which are lethal to these unprotected birds. Vigilance on behalf of the wardens and volunteers is maintaining this but it's a constant job. 

We stayed overnight at Solva and after a full Welsh breakfast got to Martins Haven where the boat departs about 10 for our 11am sailing.It was pretty busy with divers, canoeists and puffin-pesterers waiting for their various boats to arrive. It's only a short 10 minute ride from the jetty to Skomer so by 11.30 and after our safety briefing (don't step off the path, don't pick up a puffin, walk anticlockwise around the island) we were off exploring.

The island is pretty flat compared to some in Scotland but does have cliffs which are busy with guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and kittiwakes. You can't get that close and the main attraction is the puffins anyway.

We ignored the suggestion to walk anti-clockwise round the island as this would have taken us away from the best areas for the puffins!!!

As you walk around the area either side of the path is just dotted with puffins. 

It's really easy to get all anthropomorphic with puffins. They stand around in little groups or pairs having what look to be animated conversations about child-rearing or the quality of this years sand-eel crop!!! This is apparently very good this year with two large shoals not too far off the coast. This means that there were lots of birds coming back from fishing expeditions with fully-loaded beaks.

Once back to the island they then had to withstand the scavenging gulls,

land near their burrow

and then scuttle across the paths to get into their burrows with the morning breakfast for their chicks.

Depending on your source the record for sand-eels-in-the-beak is around 50 or 60. They do this by having backward-facing barbs on their tongue and beaks though it still defies logic to see how they manage to catch that many. Either way, apparently, it's such a good year that the birds are very fat. They also only need one trip per day so expend much less energy. This also means they spend more time loafing about on the sea round the island.

Hopefully all that points to a bumper year for fledging which is needed.

Of course on an island this size it's not all about one species. We were there over the middle of the day when it was very hot so things were a bit quiet and the light was horrendous for photography. Despite that there were a few stars. One was a wren which was really giving it full chat on the audio in the the ferns. 

There were loads of meadow pipits around as well, flirting about, parachuting their territorial songs and catching food from the lush undergrowth. 

A bird I normally only see on migration is the wheatear. Here, a few pairs were obviously nesting and one had a youngster which was hanging around waiting for food despite it being clearly big enough to cope by itself!!

Finally, and a speciality of rocky coasts, is the chough. Not so many years ago they were very rare and birds to be cherished. Now they are spreading along the Welsh and Cornish coasts and are almost expected in the right areas. Skomer is one of those and did not disappoint. We saw one family group on the cliffs and another one much closer whilst waiting for our boat to disembark the island.

The stars though were the puffins, a bird which always makes you happy when you see it.