Bardsey's Wildlife

Tuesday 10 August 2021

It was a stunning day today with little wind and blue skies. This break in the wind meant that Stuart and Louis crammed in as much field work as possible. It was an early start and the nets were opened in the Withies. A total of 20 new Willow Warblers were ringed as well as two Whitethroats and four Sedge Warblers.

With birds moving through it was not a surprise that there were 30 Willow Warblers and a Common Redstart at Nant. The bird of the day was a Wood Sandpiper that flew over the South End calling whilst Stuart, Louis, Megan and the Enlli Trust team were having an evening barbeque.

The moth traps were fairly quiet this morning but an Orange Swift was new for the year.

Orange Swift

After moths, Stuart and Louis made the most of the dry and calm weather to complete the last seabird monitoring check around the East Side. The Storm Petrel nest box at Bae Felen now contains a small chick. There are also three Fulmar chicks sitting on ledges. Stuart was sure to not get too close given their ability to shoot a smelly oil to deter predators!

Storm Petrel chick

Fulmar chick

To top off a sunny day on Bardsey I am pleased to say that the Obs Solar Array is now fully operational. This means that the generator will no longer be needed in the evenings and the microwave and kettle can be used any time of the day! A big thank you to all involved, it was a big task but will allow the Observatory to run a lot more smoothly from now on.

Thanks to all who donated via one form or another to the Bardsey Bird and Field Observatory fundraisers that we have done over the past few years including our good friends at West Midland Bird Club. We can now announce that after a great deal of sweat, blood and tears (and yes there really were all three!!) our now 24 panel solar array and accompanying 10kW inverters and 14 KWh of state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries are installed and up and running. 

Back in July last year Mark Carter and Connor cleared all the vegetation from the garden and fitted the mounting frames for the panels. 

Last week Connor and Steve and Stuart helped Chris Williams from Island Electrical and Phil Woollen to fit the system. Chris and Phil were just brilliant as you will have seen on previous posts. Working all the hours that God sent they got the mounting board up, inverters mounted, panels mounted, and all the electrical wires done before they left on Saturday. 

Then Chris came back over today (with Mark Crane) to fit another cable to take power from the generator in an emergency, whilst Mark, Connor and Steve programmed the inverters. 

And then the great switch on!!!! It worked. We had a few teething troubles with settings, but soon after we had our first solar powered cuppa!!!

Thanks again to all who donated, and the lads for fitting it all together. Also so many other people helped in many ways, the guys at Cwrt for accepting all the deliveries of parcels, Colin for shipping it all over at no cost, Roy Milnes and MarkCrane for technical help and advice during the design process, Connor for setting up the GoFundMe pages, the list goes on!

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Click to see inside!

Edited by Mike Archer, Mark Grantham, Peter Howlett and Steve Stansfield and published by T & AD Poyser, this fabulous book describes how much has changed since the first edition of Bird Observatories in Britain and Ireland was published in 1976. There are detailed accounts of the history and work carried out at each of the 18 observatories, with personal accounts by wardens and staff of the excitement of discovering a rarity, watching thousands of migrants attracted to a lighthouse after dark, and the pleasure and experiences that working at some of the country’s most remote and beautiful locations can bring. Click the picture of the book to see inside or to buy your copy.

Migrants

Being sited on the main migration route of many species, Bardsey (or Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is a well-known site for migrant birds, turning up many scarcities and rarities, as well as large numbers of common migrants. The island’s list now stands on 326, after the recent addition of Citrine Wagtail in October 2012.

Although Bardsey’s reputation for rare birds may not quite match that of some observatories, it is almost certainly the best site in Wales for rarities. Among Bardsey’s rarer visitors are the first Summer Tanager (1957) and Yellow Warbler (1964) to have been recorded in Britain and Ireland, as well as American vagrants such American Bittern, Sora, Kildeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Grey-cheeked Thrush, American Robin, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-eyed Vireo, Black-and-white Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Blackpoll Warbler. To add to this impressive list of rarities, Black-winged Stilt, Lesser Yellowlegs, Lanceolated Warbler, River Warbler, Western Orphean Warbler, Booted Warbler, Blyth’s Reed Warbler, Eyebrowed Thrush, Thrush Nightingale, Red-flanked Bluetail, Isabelline Wheatear, Black-eared Wheatear, Collared Flycatcher, Blyth’s Pipit, Pine Bunting, Rock Bunting, Yellow-breasted Bunting and White-throated Sparrow have all been recorded.

Besides the rarities, Bardsey regularly attracts large numbers of weary migrants during 'fall' conditions in Spring and Autumn, largely a consequence of the fully operational Bardsey Lighthouse. In 2011, for example, a single grounding of migrants resulted in over 1000 Willow Warblers making groundfall on the island in August. In the not-so-distant past, a single attraction of 40,000 Redwings occurred in late October at the end of the last century.

Breeding birds

Bardsey is home to some 26, 000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters, which can be heard on dark nights from mid-March to August. They breed in their excavated burrows, which are scattered all over the island. Chough is the most important species of conservation concern, with between four to eight pairs nesting around the coastal cliffs most years, and a wintering flock of up to 50 individuals. A pair of Peregrines breed on the island, and a 1-2 pair of Ravens also nest most years. There are several species which nest only occasionally, such as Sparrowhawk and Little Owl, along with Afro-Palearctic migrants like Sedge Warbler, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. Up to ten pairs of Stonechats can nest in the isolated gorse patches around the island, along with many Linnets and Meadow Pipits. Corncrakes were once a common breeder on the island, although since 1970 there have been no confirmed pairs nesting. In recent years the likes of Lapwing, Yellowhammer, House Sparrow and Starling have also all become extinct as breeding species. In contrast, Shelduck, Puffin, Long-eared Owl, Grasshopper Warbler and Goldcrest have been added to the breeding bird list since 1998.

Ringing

Ringing is a very important part of the observatory’s role on the island. Since 1953, the observatory has ringed over 315,00 birds of 198 species. The highest number ringed in a single year was 1988, with a total of 11, 301 birds ringed of 93 species. There have been many days in the observatory’s history when several hundred birds have been ringed in one day; these occasions have mostly involved breeding seabirds, although these numbers can also easily occur with migrant species.

Lepidoptera

A total of 561 species of moths have been recorded on the island. Bardsey is not an overly good location for scarce moths, although the existence of Thrift Clearwings (Nationally scarce) has been established on the Thrift plants around the coast in recent years, after first being recorded in the years 1980 and 1996. Migrant moths arrive in small numbers every year, for example the annual arrival of Hummingbird Hawkmoths in the autumn; rarer immigrants in the past have included Death’s Head Hawkmoths, Vestals, Crimson Speckled and Red-necked Footman.

In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed on recording and identifying the so-called ‘micro-moths’, which has resulted in the finding of 41 new species for Bardsey since 2011. In 2012, the coastal subspecies of Eana penziana (E.p.colquhounana) was re-found on the island, which was the first time that this Nationally Scarce species had been recorded on Bardsey since 1966. Apotomis semifasciana is also amongst the scarcer species of micro-moths to inhibit the island (also Nationally Scarce).

Butterflies are present on the island in small numbers, with species such as Common Blue, Small Copper and Small Tortoise-shell being the most common. A scarcer breeding species is the Grayling, which can be found in small numbers on the top of the mountain. Migrant butterflies such as Painted Lady can arrive in their hundreds, although other migrants such as Clouded Yellow and Dark-green Fritillary are quite rare.

Bardsey's Wildlife

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Tuesday 10 August 2021

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