The plan was for Emma and I to return to the island on Friday 18th March, with the staff arriving on Monday 20th.
We left Norfolk on Sunday night at 5.30 (10th March) after cleaning the whole house down ready to take guests for holiday let. We arrived at my Mums in Rotherham at 9.30pm, chatted with my mum and went to bed at 1am.
Monday's plan was to do shopping in Rotherham and take my mum for dinner in the late afternoon and then head to Southport at 7pm.
I received a message on WhatsApp at 0830 on Monday morning. “Can you be at Cwrt by 5pm? Weather is poor for rest of week and for foreseeable"
I rushed downstairs, said to mum, 'Change of plan we are leaving!'
‘When?’ she asked…
NOW!!!!
Quick hugs and goodbyes and we were off! We had a car load of stuff - stuff that had just been thrown into bags and boxes in Norfolk and needed to be re-packed in Southport at Emma’s mums before our final leg of the journey - however this was evidently not going to happen. We called Emma’s mum and explained that we were no longer going to be heading there…
Traffic was ok and we made good time. Got to Lidl in Pwllheli and had to shop like you have never seen before. Colin arrived and we went over on a very flat sea. Landed on Bardsey at 1800hrs. Loaded and unloaded trailer. Thanks to Elen, Gareth and Meriel for their help.
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| Boat load of stuff straight from Norfolk to Bardsey |
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| Back home! |
Got unpacked to a certain extent and then had a lovely welcome home meal with Gareth and Meriel. Thanks to Gareth for alerting us, and to Colin for running us over at super short notice, we are now back home and starting to get sorted for the season.
Bird news over the past week - Gareth had Brent and Canada Goose last week (6th-9th). There was a Hooded Crow and the first Wheatear of the year on the East side on 11th (Gareth and Ben respectively)!
Over the next few days there was a steady trickle of birds passing through, Ben Porter is volunteering for the Trust and has been out most days, but Emma and I have been busy trying to get our house de-moulded and cleaned after the winter. On the first night the smoke alarm went off in the middle of the night as the Raybun went crazy and bellowed soot out all over the house! The following three days we spent trying to get rid of the greasy soot that had landed on all the surfaces, frniture etc. Lots of soap and Elbow Grease (both in bottle and muscular form) and it started to look like nothing had ever happened. We had to re-paint some of the walls as well as get rid of all the cob-webs etc that were covered in soot.
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| Inside the Rayburn - post fire |
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The burner in the Rayburn
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| freshly painted wall behind the Rayburn |
The 13th was a miserable day and the highlights were two Wigeon on the Narrows and a male Black Redstart and six Chiffchaffs at Cristin, one of which flew into our house and was carefully trapped and ringed.
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| The first Chiffchaff of the year to be ringed |
The 14th produced just five Chiffchafs at Cristin along with the regular four Goldcrests that have been seen almost daily since our return.
Meanwhile, Emma and I have continued to clean our house, one of our Solar inverters had failed somehow over the winter; Connor and I spent hours trawling the internet and video-calling each other trying to figure out what was wrong. The two inverters would work independently, but when they were on together we were getting a very poorly described error code, which sugested that there was some type of comms fault. I started by doing the usual re-boots, jiggle wire and cables etc. Then more in depth cable swapping, before deciding that we would have to strip down the potential broken inverter and see if I could locate the problem. Getting a solar engineer out was going to cost somewhere around the £500 mark plus transport and boat crossings in the hopes they might be able to diagnose and fix it in four hours, and would likely be the same costs again to come back and repair it. So most of 14th was taken up with carefully dissasembling one of the inverters, taking out all the thick mains-type wireing that Chris Williams had put in, then carfully take out circuit boards and try and locate the fault. Fortunately, with remote help from Connor, I found the fault on one of the parrallel boards. Thankfully I had a spare inside the other inverter that we have not commisioned yet! so it was a case of carefully taking both boards out of the inner workings of the inverters and replacing the broken one. Then, putting it all back together!
The moment of truth came when I turned them back on and hoped and prayed the red warning light stayed off - thankfully it did. I gave a hughe sigh of relief. I could not settle however, and that night I spent most of the night awake - keep checking that the inverters were still comunicating and producing power. On the up side, the first Manx Sheawarter of the year made itself heard at 0330 over the Observatory whilst I was being an insomniac!
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| disassembled inverter |
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| Yay - fixed inverter |
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| Corroded terminals |
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| rough sea keeping the boats away |
On 16th Ben had a Merlin and I heard Whimbrel calling from the Narrows at dusk - presumably one of our regular over-wintering birds. There were five Chiffchaffs and four Goldcrests at Cristin, and six Chaffinches and a Siskin flew north in the morning.
The 17th saw a single Swallow (per Gareth), but only one Chiffchaff at Cristin, with three Goldcrests. As the weather had dried somewhat, I serviced the lawnmower and gave the courtyard its first trim of the year - the grass was very long and it looks like its been a good growing season over the winter.
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| The grass was super long! |
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| grass haircut in progress |
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| that looks better |
The 18th was a nice rain-free morning again, a little less wind, but still a very rough sea. Six Teal were on the pond below Cristin along with four Mallards. A small number of Goldcrests were on the move with birds in the lane and hedges towards the narrows and in the gorse on the South End, the total by evening was 22, the best counts so far of the year. A fine male Ring Ouzel was chacking and singing on the Mountain high above the Schoolhouse. A Siskin was heard at Ty Pellaf, where a Buzzard was seen. Four Wheatears were seen on the South End, along with a flock of 76 Meadow Pipits. Many Stonechat pairs seem to be on territory - the males singing their scratch songs. A nice flock of 57 Purple Sandpipers were in Henllwyn. There were also over 90 Grey Seals on Solfach, which is quite unusual, presumably sheltering from the continuous strong-to-gale-force southerly winds we have been having. Around in Henllwyn there were a further 34.
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| Grey Seals on Solfach |
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