Bardsey's Wildlife: Guided Wildlife Walks

Guided Wildlife Walks

Come and join Bardsey Bird Observatory staff on a guided wildlife walk and learn about the island and its wildlife, with our local expertise on the array of wildlife to be found here. There are three different walks (see below).

Everyone is welcome to join us!

Adult £10 per person

Child £2.50

Under 5 free

How to book your place on a guided walk

Staying guests

A member of Observatory staff will call round to your cottage (usually Sunday evening) to take bookings

There will be a sign at the Observatory giving details of Guided Walk times each week

Or call to the Observatory to enquire and book

Day trips

Come for the day! Bespoke nature walks with a personal guide are available by arrangement, on any day, at a cost of £25 per person, with a minimum fee of £50 (i.e. £50 for one person).

email warden@bbfo.org.uk

For information about day boat trips

Message Colin Evans on 07971 769895

Wildlife Walks

We run a guided walk once each week for visitors staying on the island, the exact day varies due the to weather and other commitments. We take a circuit of the middle of the island, normally lasting two or three hours, encompassing the west slope of the mountain, the coast, the central lowlands and bird hotspots such as Pen Cristin, Solfach and The Narrows. It’s a fairly easy walk, and wellies are advisable if it has been wet!

Visitors at the start of the guided walk

On Pen Cristin having seen the seabirds

Looking at the Golden-hair Lichen

On the Narrows being shown how to identify immature gulls

What you will see varies widely depending on the time of year, but there are plenty of regular staples like the acrobatic Choughs, and large numbers of Grey Seals loafing on the rocks in Henllwyn. Spring sees the first wild flowers in bloom, and a good chance of migrant birds (too many potential species to mention!) alongside those breeding on the island, which include Wheatears, Stonechats, Peregrines and Ravens. Summer sees the meadows in full bloom, with Butterflies like Green-veined Whites and Small Coppers on the wing as well as uncommon plants including Small Adder’s-tongue Fern, Sharp Rush and Western Clover.

By autumn the main focus is again on birds, however the beautiful Autumn Lady’s-tresses orchid can sometimes bloom in spectacular numbers in August and early September. Migration is in full swing by September, with a good chance of arrivals of migrant warblers like Willow Warblers, Blackcaps and Whitethroats, or finches and thrushes in October like Siskins, Chaffinches and Redwings. The list of species we could potentially see is vast, and no two days are alike! Occasionally rare birds like Black-browed Albatross, Citrine Wagtail and Western Bonelli’s Warbler have all been seen in recent years, with some years producing record numbers of “drift migrants” such as Yellow-browed and Icterine Warblers. The chance of seeing a scarcity, or even a major rarity, is higher in September and October than at any other time of year.

Alongside all this excitement, there’s much unique and under-appreciated fauna on the island, such as the rare Golden-hair Lichen. Bardsey is a good spot to find cetaceans, with Risso’s Dolphins frequently recorded in late summer/early autumn and annual but irregular reports of Common Dolphin, and occasionally Harbour Porpoises. Even Minke and Killer Whales have been seen offshore in recent years!

Meet the Manxies walks

From April to August, Bardsey is home to one of the largest colonies of Manx Shearwaters in the world with a staggering 26-30,000 pairs nesting. Ringing studies on Bardsey have recorded the presence of one Shearwater at least 54 years of age, at the time it was last trapped in 2008 it was the oldest living wild bird known to science and entered the Guinness Book of Records! This elegant, oceanic species can often be seen out to sea during the day, riding the wind and banking over waves while it's wingtips almost clip the surf (hence the family name 'Shearwater'). They only visit the land after dark, when the cries of over 50,000 Shearwaters resonate across the island.

Adult Manx Shearwater

Guests waiting for the first shearwaters to arrive at night

Joining the Bird Observatory staff for a night walk (run twice a month, the week before and week of the new moon), you will be able to get up close and personal with this mysterious and charismatic species, as they utilise the cover of darkness to visit their burrows and their chicks. Shearwaters, for all their elegance on the open oceans, are remarkably cumbersome on land. This means that, with a careful and responsible approach, it is possible to get fantastic views of them, and a very rare insight into the lives of one of Britain’s most secretive breeding birds.

Guest holding a shearwater

We begin each walk with a fifteen minute talk and presentation in our information center/gift shop. When possible, we will try and coincide these walks with Storm Petrel ringing during the summer months, giving visitors the chance to see another exclusively nocturnal and incredibly elusive visitor to Bardsey! This walk is only available to guests staying overnight on the island.

Listening to the informative talk about the life of a shearwater

Showing guests a Storm Petrel

Manx Shearwater Chick walks

While the adult Manx Shearwaters feed offshore during the hours of light, their chicks bide away the day in one of thousands of burrows found all across the island. Observatory staff are all qualified and licenced to handle these chicks as part of our ongoing research into Manx Shearwaters, and we are able to offer visitors a rare opportunity to see young shearwaters. Initially, when they hatch in late June, they resemble nothing more than a fluffy grey pom-pom, though soon becoming the size of a football as they get fed by their parents, with the characteristic long bill of a Shearwater, they’re quite a sight! Like our other walks, this one will be run once a week, whenever the weather looks most suitable.

A fluffy shearwater chick in August

A guest with a shearwater chick

Shearwater chick a few weeks before fledging

No comments:

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

Pages

Guided Wildlife Walks

No comments:

Post a Comment

Pages