WDCS Fieldwork Blog

I can't believe it's already been two weeks that I've been back in the "normal" world with showers, round the clock electricity, running hot water and... (drumroll) flushing toilets! I've also quickly realised that everybody seems to be in a hurry going places, but there's only one place I want to go and that's back to my magic island! 

It's been an absolute fantastic experience! The island itself, like stepping back to the 1950s, but then somehow modern beyond my grasp; the Risso's dolphins and the porpoises - elusive like never before, but oh the joy when we did see them and got our hard-earned photo-ID shots of them. But it's not just about the cetaceans, there are the birds - Bardsey is on an internationally important migration route; the butterflies and moths - my two favourites being the hummingbird hawk moth that came to the fuchsia bushes at the Bird Obs regularly to feed and the crimson speckled moth found by the farmer's son, Ben, on the mountain. The haunting calls of the seals at night and seeing their newborn, megacute pups - all 11 of them that were born during our time there - will stay with me forever. For such a samll island (2.5 x 1 km), the range of habitats was amazing - from the heather-strewn mountain to the meadows and the rocky coves and beaches - stunning views all around! I have met some amazing and unique people and have come away with a real appreciation of the community spirit in this special place. I've had experiences on the island that I will forever hold dear - looking at the amazing night sky with its gazillion stars of the Milky Way clearly visible, going for a nightly stroll to find the Manx Shearwater burrows and their fluffy inhabitants, curry night at the Obs with songs and laughter, playing Bananagrams with Lis, the Obs' booking secretary, her husband, Bob, my colleague Rob and birder Simon (and me losing every game) or helping farmer Steve herding his ewes from one end of the island to the other. Rob and I have officially passed our sheepdog exam being sheepdogs that is, not actually controlling them!

Was it a good trip? Weatherwise - no! The seas were rough and the winds were high with a constant stream of hurricanes coming in from the Atlantic Ocean which made spotting our beloved cetaceans challenging. But the sun was shining a lot, giving us the opportunity to enjoy the island in all its splendour. As for the research, we did collect 24 hours of land-based data on 10 survey days and spent a total of 7.5 hours on farmer Steve's boat gathering photo-ID data of Risso's dolphins. From land, we saw a total of 25 harbour porpoise groups with 52 individuals and 14 groups of Risso's dolphins totalling 67 individuals, including five calves. From the boat, we encountered five groups of Risso's dolphins witha a total of 28 individuals, one of which was a very young calf. The valuable photo-ID pictures we collected wil enhance our current calalogue of known individuals and keep us busy during the dark winter months ahead.

All that's left for me to do now is thank Defra and Elite Couriers for their generous funding of our fieldwork and much needed equipment, my fabulous colleagues and volunteers - Rob, Mark, Vicki, Roger, Harriet and Pete for all their help and all the laughs; the Bird Obs crew - Steve Obs, Emma, Rich B, Icky Steve, Giselle and Connor for their help, advice, patience and willing enthusiasm and all the wonderful guests who were staying at the Bird Obs and were great company at all times. From the Bardsey Island Trust, special mention must go to the resident warden, Emyr, who has the most amazing vegetable garden in the whole world and looked after us beyond measure while we were staying in the Trust cottages, Nant and Hendy. And last, but by no means least, a huge thanks to the Porter family, the island's resident farmers, Steve, Jo, Rachel and Ben. You are an inspiration and have provided us with lots of happy memeories! Your willingness to help us with our project and with all our weird and wonderful requests was hugely appreciated and will never be forgotten.

It's been a pleasure meeting you all and I hope to see you all again next year!

Bardsey, I salute you! Diolch yn fawr!

This blog instalment comes from Harriet Alvis - a 2nd year Marine Biology student at the University of Wales, Swansea and a WDCS volunteer.

I had been volunteering with WDCS at their Chippenham office for about three months and my job there was to assist with their scientific document library.

One day in mid-September I was sat at my desk watching enviously as the WDCS Science Team packed for their latest expedition to Bardsey Island, North Wales. After expressing my interest to the Volunteer Manager who coordinates my work, I was offered the chance of joining the expedition for a couple of weeks. The timing was perfect and I jumped at the opportunity as I had a few weeks free before continuing my university studies. As a Marine Biology student with an ambition to work with cetaceans, WDCS seems like a dream job - in fact, my plan was to refuse to leave until they give me one!

So off I set on a long train journey to North Wales passing several towns I couldn’t even begin to pronounce. My attempts to get across to Bardsey were thwarted on the first day due to bad weather so I had an unplanned overnight stay in Pwllheli. The next day dawned bright and, most importantly, calm so I set off on the final leg of my journey to the very tip of the Llyn peninsula and then across by boat to Ynys Enlli – Bardsey!




I was met on the island by the Pine, WDCS’ Conservation Officer and given a quick tour of the island which revealed several new born squeal – sorry, seal pups! They got the name squeal pups as that was most people’s reaction on seeing these super cute babies for the very first time!

Photo © Pine Eisfeld

I was trained up on collecting data and happily spent the next few days surveying the waters around Bardsey for signs of the elusive Risso’s dolphin. People on the island had been coming up to me with that age- old annoying statement – “You should have been here last week; we had dolphins practically every day”!!

The following few days went by with little more than a passing glimpse of their unmistakeable dorsal fins and I was beginning to feel a little disheartened. Indeed, sharing a house with several bird watchers I was close to considering a change of career choice (but not quite!).

However, all the waiting was to make the afternoon of September 29th all the more exciting. Whilst on the lookout an excited call came from the terrace of the Bardsey Bird Observatory - “Risso’s!” A few shrieks and dashes for the scope and binoculars later and in our sights we had at least 8 Risso’s, including one calf! It was an amazing sight to see and we were kept entertained for over an hour as they milled around the west coast of the island, coming to the surface regularly with some wonderful acrobatic behaviour.

Photo © Rich Brown

My experience that afternoon was definitely worth the wait and a highlight of my time on this wonderful island. A big thank you to WDCS.

Photo © Rob Lott

The fieldwork is still ongoing - the sun has even been shining - and the team have managed to forward this image of their recent encounter with those illusive Risso's dolphins. Note the characteristic scaring, high dorsal fins and pale heads.

More blogs to follow.

We think our second summer here on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles, Scotland has been a big success, but you can judge for yourself! Here’s a quick summary of everything we have seen in the last 7 weeks.

The first list shows all the animals that we recorded from our land-based watching site at Tiumpan Head. The second list shows all the animals that we recorded during the time we spent out on the boat… not bad for quite a wet and windy summer, eh..?

Land-based sightings from Tiumpan Head
Species (Groups)
Fin or sei whale (1)
Minke whale (5)
Risso’s dolphin (4)
Common dolphin (2)
Bottlenose dolphin (1)
Harbour porpoise (7)
Unidentified dolphin (too far to identify) (7)
Grey seal (2)
Basking shark (2)


..



Sightings during boat surveys
Species (Groups)
Minke whale (1)
Risso's dolphin (3)
Common dolphin (4)
Harbour porpoise (36)
Grey seal (15)
Seal (1)
Basking shark (2)
Sun fish (1)
Unidentified dolphins (2)

2010 was a bumper year for many species (as least when we were here in August and September), including basking sharks and Risso’s dolphins, so we are a little disappointed that we didn’t see more of these species in 2011. But we did encounter some of the same Risso’s dolphins as we saw last year. Excitingly, we also saw a female with a young calf who was seen here in 2004 by our colleague Dr Weir.

We had our first identifiable harbour porpoise, imaginatively (and affectionately) known as Scratchy.



We also had a mixed group of Risso’s dolphins and bottlenose dolphins, our first sun fish and more beautiful rainbows than is surely possible, due to the rain.. and more rain.. and more rain..!





Also, we have retrieved 3 of our 6 acoustic C-PODs and we have taken a sneaky peek and have GREAT porpoise and dolphin data on them!

And the most important thing we would like to do now that we have packed up our equipment and rushed off for the ferry back to the mainland at the crack of dawn... We’d like to say a BIG thank you to everyone on Lewis who made our surveys possible, and endlessly more enjoyable. Some of these folks include: Lewis at Hebrides Fish n’ Trips, Martin Scott at RSPB, Iain and Roddy at SNH, Tony Marr, Janet Marshall and a mighty shout out goes to Ruaraigh and the fishermen who helped us to deploy and retrieve our acoustic equipment.

We would also like to thank DEFRA and Elite Couriers for funding, as well as SNH and Fish n’ Trips for in-kind support of the project.
More from us in June 2012! Until then, we wish our colleagues on Bardsey Island in North Wales the best of weather for the rest of their survey! Please
keep an eye out for their next blog.. And in the mean time, some pretty pictures to end on..

Here is the latest update from Bardsey Island. Project leader Pine Eisfeld reporting.

Being on Bardsey has the strangest effect, as time seems only to exist in terms of meal times, but events that people think have happened days ago, actually happened just that same morning or the day before.

I call this phenomenon BOT - Bardsey Other Time.

So, every day, lots of stuff happens here on this little island.

Last week, Wednesday, we suddenly had a spell of calm weather after all the ex-hurricanes and there was a quick changeover on the island. Mark, Vicki and Rob got off and Roger and a car load of food that could feed an army came on. I got moved with all the kit from the Bardsey Island Trust house, Nant, in to the Bird Observatory where Roger joined me.

I quickly trained him up in our protocol to spot whales and dolphins from our site on the North End, explaining why and how we do 10 min. scans with special binoculars, how to record the data, etc. We even saw a couple of Risso's in the distance!

On Thursday morning we rose bright and early to a flat sea and while we were just getting our gear ready, Steve, the Bird Obs warden, shouted "Rissos!". He had spotted them through his scope from the terrace in front of the Bird Obs. We radioed farmer Steve to see if he could take us out in his boat and about 1 hour later, myself, warden Steve and assistant warden Richard were on our way towards the dolphins guided by Roger and Giselle from the terrace.

The first group we met was made up of five adults and a tiny calf. They were very elusive and hard to photograph, but we tried our best and then moved on to another group of three juveniles who were frolicking around the boat. Looking around, there were more Risso's in in the distance leaping out of the water and when we got closer to them, we were met by a group of about ten older adults, all with really white heads surfacing in two by two in perfect synchronicity! This was a stunning sight and everyone on the boat was oohing and aahing and shooting lots of pictures.

The dolphins didn't seem to be going in a particular direction as we saw them constantly changing direction, doubling back on themselves, zig zaging back and forth between the horizon and our boat. We observed some surface rushes and breaching and fast swimming which indicates they were foraging and feeding. Following them, we were about half way to Anglesey and realised we would need to get back as otherwise we would run out of fuel. All in all, we met four subgroups of at least 25 Risso's, but the photo-identification pictures we have taken still need to be analysed to confirm this estimate.

I couldn't stop grinning for the rest of the day!

Roger got to see Risso's in the afternoon from our observation platform at North End. Again they were zig zaging back and forth, going off towards Ireland, then coming back in our direction, but always staying at least 500m off the coast of Bardsey. As we realised this, we stopped our scans, as we were recording the same animals over and over again and just kept watching them and directed the Pedryn, the Countryside Council for Wales' boat which was on the water to get some ID photographs, towards the dolphins.

What a fantastic day!

Pine Eisfeld.