Snails and shearwaters

Well it all happened after I left you lot last night! Bird log was uneventful, apart from the assistant warden telling us about their dinner which had consisted of snails from the island. Yes, you heard correctly. So I'll give you one guess what happened after bird log... (photo below).

I think the snails went to my head a bit as I also agreed to go out for a late night walk to see the Manx shearwaters coming in. They usually spend most of their time at sea unless they're raising a chick, but when the weather is bad at sea they do what anyone else does and they come onto land for shelter. Yesterday's weather was pretty rubbish so we were expecting them to come in in huge numbers.

So at 11pm I found myself togged up in my wet weather gear heading out with some of the other guests and one of the other volunteers for a walk in the pitch black! 

I say pitch black, we had torches and red lights so as not to disturb the Manxies too much. It was fairly quiet at first but gradually we started to hear them calling. By the time we got back to the farm an hour later I'd had one run over my foot and had narrowly missed being hit by a few more; navigation over land isn't their strong suit! It was also really noisy on the island by then.

I also saw my first glow worms (it's the green light in the otherwise black pic attached)! The females glow to attract the males and they're quite unassuming little things apart from their glowing green bums!

Today has been tame in comparison to last night; no boats again so more scything, cleaning the RIB (inflatable boat) of algae and a reptile transect. A transect is an area that is covered with a tile or piece of wood/metal sheet and left for things to gather under it. You go back in a few weeks to see what's there. Today we found three toads and a slow worm.

No boats tomorrow as it's Monday so who knows what joys are in store...

Nos da pawb x