30 Days Wild | Day 13 - meeting the Manxies and Stormies

Today’s wild encounter actually took place last night, but as it was after midnight, I’m counting it for day 13! Since we arrived, most of us (including both people staying in the Observatory and also in the other houses on the island) had been excitedly waiting to find out when the Observatory ‘Meet the Manxies’ event would be happening. It needed as dark a night as possible, preferably fairly calm and dry. Last night the conditions were perfect and we all met in the Observatory shop at 23:30 for an introductory talk about Manx Shearwaters from Steve, the warden. After that we walked down to Nant Valley where Mark and Sian had already made a start on ringing Manx Shearwaters and also playing Storm Petrel calls through a massive speaker to try and lure these tiny sea wanderers into the mist net they’d set up on the cliffs.

Sunset from the Observatory while we waited to meet the Manxies and Stormies.

As we walked down to Nant the air was full of the weird sound of Manx Shearwater calls – I’d never heard anything like it before. Steve had told us that their surveying indicated that there were probably around 21,000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters nesting on Bardsey this year – they are everywhere! In the daytime you don’t see anything of them on the island though – just thousands and thousands of burrows in the walls, earth embankments, cliffs and basically any non-horizontal bit of ground. The Manx Shearwaters only come to land at night so as to avoid predators, and they come to their nest burrows where they swap over with their mate to take their turn at incubating their single egg.

I was looking forward to seeing the Manx Shearwaters, but I was MEGA EXCITED at the prospect of hopefully seeing some Storm Petrels! I’d never seen one before but had wanted to for a long time. They also nest on Bardsey but only in very small numbers. When we arrived at Nant Valley quite a few Storm Petrels had already been caught and were bagged up waiting for us to see them. I knew they were going to be small but even so I was surprised by how tiny they were – smaller than a Swallow and obviously VERY cute! Steve showed us how they were ringed, then released. Because their legs are set so far back on their bodies, they are pretty rubbish at moving around on land (being highly adapted to a pelagic lifestyle – they only come to land to breed), so to release them Steve held them out on the palm of his hand and gently wafted them up and down to encourage them to take off. Some were more amenable to this than others! Some only managed to flutter a few metres before landing on the ground again, some flew straight back into us and others managed to fly off back to the sea on their first attempt. Steve and the other staff assured us this was quite normal! It was important to make sure that they all made it back off the island, as apart from anything else, if they were left wandering about on the ground you could easily stand on one by accident without realising – so the wardens made sure that all the Storm Petrels were able to fly off again. It was hard to believe that these tiny and seemingly quite inept birds were mighty enough to survive most of their lives on the open ocean, but that’s just what they do! We all had a sniff of the distinctive aroma of Storm Petrel, and I was allowed to release one from my hand :o) Because they will just sit on the ground or crawl about slowly, it was quite easy to get nice photos of them.

Storm Petrel.

Storm Petrel.

Storm Petrel.

Storm Petrel.

While all this was going on, the wardens were also busily catching and ringing Manx Shearwaters. These didn’t require a net or lure to catch them, as they all fly in at night to visit their burrows and spend quite a bit of time just sitting around on the grass, so the wardens can just lean down and grab them off the floor! We all had to be careful where we stood as there were Shearwaters everywhere, dotted around on the slopes and all along the tops of the earth embankment walls that criss-cross the island. Steve showed us how the rings have to be bent into a special shape to fit around the Manx Shearwaters’ legs, as their leg bones are not cylindrical but are elliptical in cross section to reduce drag when they are swimming through the water. Some of the Manx Shearwaters were a bit more feisty than the gentle Storm Petrels, with much larger beaks that could give a nasty nip! Before we knew it, over two hours had passed and it was definitely bedtime. We walked back up the valley to the track, passing many more Manx Shearwaters along the way, and made our way back to the Observatory with the Shearwaters flying overhead and their constant calling in our ears.

Manx Shearwater.

Manx Shearwater.

Manx Shearwater.