Bardsey

Wow! Six weeks over already! I can’t believe it, it went way too fast! It feels like I’ve only arrived on my magic island yesterday! But then again, it doesn’t, because so many things happened…

Last week, there was a weather window with calm seas and balmy sunshine, and farmer Steve wasn’t busy doing farm stuff, so we, that is Vicki, Lucy and myself, went out on Pererin, farmer Steve’s boat. We had just come round the south end of the island and thought we’d spotted something to the north, when Ben, farmer Steve’s son, hailed us on the radio saying he was seeing something going on in the distance. He couldn’t quite make out what it was, but there were gannets circling and diving and a group of dark shapes underneath. We steered the boat in the indicated direction and lo and behold there was a group of common dolphins in a feeding frenzy, gannets circling above and diving in amongst the dolphins! It was a fantastic sight.

We counted about 30 dolphins including five calves one of which was just barely longer than my arm! They came to check out our boat and get a free ride on our bow wave and whenever we pulled away or slowed down, they all slowed down to see what the matter was. It was quite magical to see the calves surface rush just like the adults, coming to the boat, just to be reigned back by their ever vigilant elders. While Vicki and I were frantically trying to capture what was going on around the boat with our cameras (which sometimes was impossible as the dolphins were too close for our cameras to focus on), Lucy had settled down on the bow of Pererin with our little video camera and was filming the whole scene. Imagine our joy when we came back to the Obs and were able to relive some of the encounter again! Brilliant!



I must admit that Bananagrams played a big part in our entertainment, and you will understand our obsession with this game once you’ve played it just once, as it’s seriously addictive! Qi, Zo, Aa and Ai are only a few of the words I’ve learned playing this game (and sorry, you will have to go and look them up if you don’t know what they mean). Oh and I didn’t lose every game this year! Ha!



We also once in a while gathered in the Bird Obs gift shop to watch a movie in the evenings. I will never forget how Ben did some birding while we were watching the movie “The Woman in Black” one evening! While Lucy and Vicki were fearfully hiding behind their blankets, Ben was shouting out names of birds he saw and heard in the movie! We seriously considered doing a bird log after the movie was over!

And yes, it can get even weirder than that! Here’s just one of our discussions while casually scanning for cetaceans from the Bird Obs:

Pine: “Great, now we have a horizon, but lots of white caps!”

Vicki: “Yeah, that’s Sod’s law for you!”

Pine:“Speaking of Sod’s law, you know that Murphy’s law says that a piece of buttered toast will always fall onto the buttered side, right?”

Vicki with a wrinkled brow: “Yeah?!”

Pine: “…and a cat will always land on its paws?”

Vicki with an even more wrinkled brow and slight concern on her face: “Er… yeah?!?”

Pine: “So, if I were to strap a buttered piece of toast with the buttered side up onto the back of a cat and let it drop from a certain height, would it spin in space?” (grinning madly).

After some contemplation, we came to the conclusion that the cat would probably land on its paws, because it is not an inert object and can change its fate! Ta-dah! And because I’m already at it, I will also share our fantastic supercallifragilisticexpiallidocious song with you - The 12 days of survey (to the tune of the well-known Christmas song, The 12 days of Christmas):

On the first day of survey, this is what we saw:

One fantastic master baker.

On the second day of survey, this is what we saw:

Two trampolines
And a fantastic master baker.

On the third day of survey, this is what we saw:

Three birding Steves,
Two trampolines and
A fantastic master baker.

(You’re getting the idea? I’ll skip to the twelfth day then!)

On the twelfth day of survey, this is what we saw:

Twelve sailboats sailing.
Eleven waves-a-crashing
Ten porpoise leaping
Nine compost toilets
Eight sheep-a-grazing
Seven gannets diving
Six Risso’s jumping
Five bottlenose dolphins
Four lovely dogs
Three birding Steves,
Two trampolines and
A fantastic master baker.

And no, we didn’t lose our minds.

What else? The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees… I digress. But there were birds, lots of them, and we were allowed to watch the ringing and once in a while let them go too. Rob’s goldcrest almost flew into his face after he’d released it and my dunnock was just happily sitting in my hand when I took the other hand away, not flying anywhere for a full minute! It was quite comfortable there!

And there were bees too! I helped farmer Steve feed the bees for the winter. It was pouring with rain that day and the bees weren’t that happy about the disturbance, but we were quick and managed not to aggravate them too long. Bottling the dark heather honey in the Porter’s kitchen is another memory I will hold dear.

Coming back to the office (with round-the-clock internet access, a desk, a chair and no prickly gorse poking me all the time!), I now have the task of analysing all the data we gathered and to go through the hundreds of photos we took during our encounter! That will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks!



What’s left for me to do now is to thank everyone who made this survey possible and a success! Thanks to the Ecosystem Resilience and Diversity Fund of the Welsh Government, the BBC Wildlife Fund and Elite Couriers for their financial support. A big thank you to my lovely volunteers James, Kirsty, Harriet, Bea, Pete, Lucy, Ben and Ingela, and my colleagues Vicki, Rob and Mark for all their help, support and good humour! You were all fantastic and made the time on Bardsey really special!

Also thanks to the Bird Obs team, Steve Obs, Icky Steve, Rich B, Mark, Chris, Emma, Conner and Giselle, as well as Steve, Jo, Rachel and Ben Porter for their warm welcome back to the island and all the lovely memories I will have for the rest of my life!

Once again, Bardsey I salute you! Diolch yn fawr!

Pete Taylor, a WDCS science volunteer, and I, Vicki James, WDCS’s Science Assistant, arrived on the beautiful island of Bardsey for the third week of survey replacing Bea and James. We joined Harriet and our fearless leader Pine. I’m fortunate enough to be here for the next few weeks and have already relaxed and unwound into island life.

We had a beautiful ferry crossing to the island and were soon having our welcome talk from the bird observatory staff, along with a cuppa. There were many familiar faces from when I have been here on previous surveys. I am fortunate enough to have been here at least five times before. It was lovely to see everyone and it felt like being welcomed back and catching up with old friends.

My first day was spent at the north end platform scanning the seas for any whales or dolphins that may pop up out of the water. Pine and I were treated to a number of harbour porpoises first thing in the morning as they passed through Bardsey Sound heading west. We had our lunch sitting outside the front of the bird observatory; however we still didn’t take our eyes off the sea as you never know when one may make an appearance. Very quickly the shout of “Risso’s” went up as a group were spotted slowly passing along the west coast of the island heading south. Pine was soon on the radio to farmer Steve to see if he was free to take us out on his boat so we could try and take some photographs to hopefully later identify the animals. He was currently busy, but said he may be available in about an hour. We just had to hope the Risso’s were still there then.

However it wasn’t long until we lost them, and we thought our chances of getting out were scuppered. That soon changed when Pine picked them out again through her binoculars coming back south. This time farmer Steve was free and in 20 minutes we had kitted up and were ready to go. After some expert manoeuvring by Steve to get the boat out of the harbour (the tide was very low, so there wasn’t much water to move in), we were on our way out to try and find the Risso’s dolphins to photograph them.

We headed in the direction they were last seen, everyone had their eyes peeled. Pine spotted a group of gannets circling, seabirds can sometimes be a sign of cetaceans feeding beneath the surface, so we headed there and soon sighted a group of 3 Risso’s dolphins, including a mother and calf. Photographing provided highly tricky though, they seemed to be camera shy! We moved around them to try and position ourselves to their side to get shots of their dorsal fins; however each time they surfaced they were in a different location to where we thought they would surface! We didn’t want to disturb the animals so left them to it and headed to another group that we saw not too far ahead of us that were displaying like mad.



This time we were in for a treat, as this group of about 10 Risso’s were breaching in unison and tail slapping right in front of us. They all seemed to be concentrating on one area of the sea; a number would breach together landing almost on top of each other; this behaviour made us think it could be a feeding frenzy. Pine had one camera and I the other, we were on opposite sides of the boat photographing the dorsal fins as best we could in this frenzy of activity. Harriet did an amazing job of recording all our sightings and Pete was keeping an eye on the different groups and pointing us to where they all were. Unusually we also noticed two common dolphins in with the group in the midst of all the activity. Common dolphins are quite curious and love to bow-ride; they came over to our boat and passed right beneath us, turning on their sides, almost as if to look up at us as they passed beneath.



We were with the group for about 40 minutes before we had to leave them and head back to the island. We could still see them displaying even as we got back to the island. Needless to say all of us were grinning from ear to ear – for the rest of the day and evening - after such an amazing encounter.

We had hoped for more days like that, but it wasn’t to be. So far the weather hasn’t been that kind to us for surveying. We have been out most mornings, but conditions have deteriorated as the day has gone on with choppy seas and poor visibility making it impossible to scan the seas and spot any animals out there. One day we were scanning in blue skies and calm seas watching a slowly approaching front of bad weather coming up from the south, thinking it would take a while before it reached us, but in a matter of minutes we were enveloped in thick fog and we could barely see the cliff edge in front of us. We sat there in the (deluded) hope that it would pass and we could carry on, but it was stubborn and stayed for the rest of the day.



Our down-time has been well spent; we have gone to watch when the bird observatory staff have been ringing manx shearwater chicks. These little balls of down are super cute and it has been fascinating learning all about them.



We also decided to do a beach clean one afternoon and it was a staggering amount of rubbish that washed up even on the small beaches here on Bardsey. Plastic was the main culprit we picked up, there were lots and lots of plastic bottles and bottle tops along with large pieces of netting. We picked three big bin bags full or rubbish and could have filled many more. The damage that this litter can do was apparent just the other day when a seal was spotted with fishing line around its neck that was deeply embedded. Unfortunately we weren’t able to help. We will certainly be doing other beach cleans before we leave.



We also picked damsens for Emma, the wardens’ wife, to make jam and sell in the bird obs shop. We did this wearing moustaches given to Pine by our boss, Mark Simmonds. It was a hilarious sight and caused squeals of laughter all around.

Evenings and time off has been spent playing football, volleyball (badly!), trampolining, hiking over the mountain to enjoy the stunning views over the island and across to the mainland and finding Merlin’s cave and the hold hut circles. Also the addiction to the game bananagrams continues….

Torrential rain, looming fog banks, and grim mountains that appeared only as vast shadows rising from the mists – these were the conditions in which we ventured through northwest Wales en route to the fabled isle of Bardsey in August.

While we stuck to the main roads, we made good progress through that craggy and sheep-strewn land, stopping off for a trolley-load of supplies at an exotic roadside emporium that went by the name of Lidl’s, before motoring off into the byways of the Llyn peninsula, in search of the B&B we had booked ourselves into for the night. But then the rain came down ever harder, the fog held us so tight in its clutches that we couldn’t see 20 yards ahead, the roads narrowed, and the signs by the roadside faded away into the dank night. In short, we got lost. Thank god for mobile phones. After a detour down a track into a deserted farmyard, we rang the B&B and got directions and clues on how to track it down, turned back around and headed in the right direction this time for the village of Rhiw, our destination. Now armed with the crucial information that the sign for the B&B had a different name on it from the one on our directions, we scoured the foggy banks of the road until lo and behold, there were the crossroads and there was a sign for a B&B. We headed down the side-road, past silent farms and closed iron gates, around twists and turns, until a mile into a sodden and fog-cloaked wilderness, we turned into the driveway of what turned out to be the most charming B&B you could hope to find. A mere 9 hours after we had set off from Chippenham, we had arrived. Mrs Jones greeted us with a friendly wave and showed us around and after a cup of tea and a natter, we settled into our warm beds and were soon fast asleep.

The next day, we were due to catch the boat to Bardsey at 11.30am, so we made our way under a blue sky to the farm where we parked the cars and loaded our mountain of gear and food into a trailer, which was then towed by a landrover down to the small bay where we were to catch the boat to the island. The boat when it arrived looked like a magnified lego boat, a bright yellow carbon fibre vessel with a cabin at the front but open to the elements at the back, where we would be sitting. Together with the land and boat crew, we loaded all our gear onto the boat and took our places, then the boat was launched back into the sea and we were off. When we cleared the headland, Bardsey hoved into sight.

The mountain (in truth, shy of 600ft high) on the east side of Bardsey hid the rest of the island from view for now, and you could imagine the first explorers of this part of the planet having little idea of the fertile land they would find once they got past that rocky peak. As the boat surged and dipped its way through the choppy seas, we saw the lowlands of Bardsey emerge from behind the mountain, along with the red and white lighthouse and the ‘harbour’ where we would be landing. It looked so peaceful even from a distance across the waves, and this first impression would be borne out.

We landed on the east side of the island, with a beach and rocky cove stretching away to our left, where grey seals swam and basked on the rocks, awaiting the arrival of the first seal pups of the season. Our greeting crew included Farmer Steve, who had turned up with his tractor and trailer, onto which we helped load all of our gear and food. Then we walked up the main track on the island, past Farmer Steve’s house and the old school house, heading north until we reached the Bird Observatory, an old- and sturdy-looking stone building that is hunkered down on the lower slopes of the mountain and acts as the headquarters of the bird watching activities on the island. The Bird Observatory, or ‘the Obs’ for short, is a comfortable place to stay, with a kitchen, dining room, common room, two offices and a washroom with a proper shower. The grounds of the Obs are populated by a few chickens (one of them, Hedwig, likes to be picked up and petted and fed elderberries, but most run away when you try to pick them up), and there is an abundance of flowers, the buzzing of the honeybee colonies over the bushes to the south side, and a large courtyard on the west side where you can find a deserted gift shop and space for hosting talks and a food shop, where you have to choose your purchases with care – we bought some Branston pickle there, only to discover that its Use By date was June 2010!

There were three of us from WDCS on the island for my first week there, namely Pine Eisfeld, Kirsty Brookes and myself (James Taylor). We managed to get out looking for cetaceans on about half of the days I was on the island – some days it was rainy but the sea was flat, so we donned our waterproofs and got out to the North End of the island, where we spent up to 8 hours a day scanning the sea within a few miles of the island for cetaceans and logging down data on any cetaceans and boats we saw. Some days the weather was glorious but the sea was too choppy, making watching impossible to carry out with any consistency. Most days we were out observing, the weather was fine and we got lucky and saw some harbour porpoises, which was a first for me – I had seen a whale in the wild before and been on a yacht with bottlenose dolphins riding the bow-wave, but never before had I seen a porpoise.

The harbour porpoises we saw were surprisingly diminutive creatures, about the size of an adult man or woman, sleek and black amongst the waves, usually preferring to mill about in the quiet stretches where two currents met and caused an upwelling of food that attracted the fish the porpoises were hunting. When the porpoises raised their arched backs and small, triangular dorsal fins above the waves, it was magical to watch as they surged and dipped past us in the distance. From the North End of the island, we also often saw grey seals bobbing about and cruising through the waves, sometimes pulling themselves up onto a rocky outcrop or onto the foot of the cliffs at the base of the mountain to the east.

While there were three of us observing together in a team, as there were in the first week I was on the island, it was fairly relaxed work – one of us would be scanning the sea with binoculars for 10 minutes at a time, one of us would be recording the bearing, location and timing of any sightings the observer made and one of us would be relaxing. For Pine, time off from observing or recording sometimes meant it was time for a few press-ups and crunches, which offered the dual benefit of keeping her warm and keeping her fit! For the other two of us in the trio, and for Pine too, most of the time, time off from observing or note-taking meant it was time to loll in the grass, tell bad jokes and talk about everything and nothing. The time we spent observing in this fashion passed surprisingly quickly, four hours would pass by, the sun would rise or dip in the sky, clouds would gather or dissipate, the wind would redden our cheeks or cool our brows and before you knew it, it was time to head back to the Obs for a well-earned break.

On the days when we weren’t observing, due to unsuitable weather, we had to find ways to amuse ourselves. The first choice for passing time was to play a game I had not been introduced to before, but that proved addictive and fun in equal and titanic measure. This game was bananagrams – it’s a bit like scrabble, a bit like boggle, and basically involves the competing players trying to make as many words as they can from the letter tiles they pick at random, as quickly as possible.

As well as bananagrams, there were the other pleasurable pastimes of baking bread, going for walks and runs, playing football, going trampolining at Farmer Steve’s farmhouse, playing with the island’s resident dogs and chatting with the diverse mix of people who either lived on the island or who had come to stay for a week or more to see the wildlife and soak up the blissful ambience of the place. On the days when we weren’t out observing, I for one could find perfection in just making a cup of coffee and sitting out front of the Obs and taking in the view across the fields to the Irish Sea (you could see Ireland from there on a particularly clear day). It was simply a beautiful place to find yourself.

The football games were great fun – most of the island’s residents turned up on each occasion, meaning that we could field teams of 8 a side or more. Starting at 7.30pm and playing on until nearly 9pm, stopping only when the fading light meant that we could no longer see our teammates in the gloom, the score on the first night we played was 13-13. We would go on to play two more games while I was on Bardsey, and despite injuring myself in the line of duty in the third game I played in, and having to spend the next day with my sore knee up resting, the football games were one of the highlights of my time on that peaceful isle.

The second and final week I spent on Bardsey, Kirsty left to prepare for her return to university, and two more WDCS volunteers joined Pine and me, namely Bea Chater and Harriet Alvis. With a now four-strong team, we could divide ourselves into two teams of two when we went out observing, meaning that we could observe from the lookout post at the North End and also from the other land-based lookout post at Pen Cristin on the east side of the island. With just two people in a team, observing was now a bit more intense – you were at any one time either scanning with binoculars or noting down observations.

For most of the second week, we had to content ourselves with seeing some more beautiful harbour porpoises, as the main reason for our being there, the Risso’s dolphins, refused to put in an appearance. But on the last full day of my stay on the island, the Risso’s dolphins finally appeared. I was injured and laid up with a bad knee, but Pine, Bea and Harriet were out observing from the North End, when they spotted some harbour porpoises, some bottlenose dolphins and then, last but not least, a pod of six Risso’s dolphins that appeared moving across the sound between the island and the mainland from the east.

Risso’s are big animals, with adults coming in about twice the size of your average harbour porpoise, and their fins are so large that they can often be mistaken for orcas by a newcomer to cetacean watching. Pine and the rest of the observing gang high-tailed it back to the Obs in the hope of finding a boatman to take them out to see the Risso’s at close-quarters, and radioed in the news when they got clear of the mountainside. I had my binoculars and scope out ready and started scanning the sea to see if I could spot the Risso’s, as they were apparently heading down the western side of the island towards the patch of sea overlooked by the Obs. Mark, a volunteer who helped out Steve (the warden of the Obs), spotted them first, and when I raised my binoculars back to my eyes, there they were, less than half a mile out to sea, passing by a couple of small fishing boats bobbing in the water. They were so graceful to see, rising above and then dipping back under the waves, and they weren’t in any rush, but after about 10 minutes, the Risso’s decided to make a move for pastures new and headed off towards the horizon and the Irish coast.

Overall, I would say that I feel immensely fortunate to have been offered the opportunity by WDCS to take part in this year’s fieldtrip to Bardsey. To have seen harbour porpoises, Risso’s dolphins and grey seals in the wild, to catch glimpses of these graceful, wild creatures living free in the natural world, was an awesome experience. And as well as that, I got the chance to discover the little-known, blissful and beautiful island of Bardsey. I will be returning before too long, of that I am sure.

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