There was a slight drop in the breeze today which meant that nets could be opened early in the morning. There was a threat of drizzle, but it never amounted to anything, luckily!

Bardsey from the South End

Although the garden was profoundly quieter this morning, one interesting thing to come out of the nets was a controlled Blue Tit (a Blue Tit that was ringed somewhere else) so it will be interesting to see where that has come from.

Today was a day for doing a few small jobs around Cristin. Firstly, the dining room has mould growing from the wall behind the paint (of course, a problem everyone is familiar with...), so in a few patches, Sam and George scraped away the paint in order to get rid of the mould. In some places the paint came off fairly easily, in others, it felt as though we could have done with bringing a pneumatic drill to the wall. Never-the-less, all the mouldy patches are scraped clear now and ready for painting.

George giving the walls a scrape

Another job was to cut the grass around Cristin before it gets too long to mow. That was a fairly quick job once the mower and strimmer were up and running. 

Free time in the afternoon gave an opportunity to check on the South End Choughs, which are still going strong as a pair. However, they are yet to be seen with nest material like many of the other pairs on the island, but it is almost certainly only a matter of time before this happens! Choughs are a great Bardsey bird, it's genuinely impressive if you manage to come here even for a day and don't see or hear one. There are around nine pairs that breed annually around the rocky, craggy coastline. Feeding on invertebrates in the short grass, and occasionally on the beaches too.

The South End Chough pair. Chough sexes are similar, the males are subtly larger though.

A walk around the perimeter of the island didn't result in a great variety of birds, the usual Oystercatchers (96), Turnstones (13), Rock Pipits (eight). But a Grey Heron was seen too, which isn't guaranteed here on Bardsey, so that was something different. Three Curlews also made it onto the day's records, a number that will hopefully pale in comparison to what will be had in the next month or so! The obs' ringed Black Redstart was once again hanging around in the front garden, making its presence known only in the early evening. The tit invasion lingered on for another day, with four Great Tits and two Blue Tits present in the garden.

Grey Heron on the South End

Curlew on the West Coast, long length of the bill suggests a female bird

Other sightings today include: one Gannet, five Shelducks, 35 Meadow Pipits, one Skylark, one Little Owl, nine Dunnocks, two Wheatears, seven Choughs, eight Chaffinches, two Siskins, five Goldfinches and ten Linnets.

Ringing totals today (re-traps in brackets): Chaffinch 1, Great Tit 1 (1), Blue Tit (control - 1), Goldcrest 2 (2), Chiffchaff 1, Willow Warbler 1. Six species, six new, four re-traps.

No moths were caught today, unfortunately.