If you're in any doubt, go for a "shag"

Well, that got your attention! 

That was the conclusion we came to after a chat about the difficulty in telling the difference between a cormorant and a shsg, from a distance. Cormorants are seen on rivers as much as at the coast, but shags are almost exclusively coastal birds so we agreed that if you're at the coast and you're not sure, "go for a shag" 😉

There are no visitors to the island on Mondays, so it usually means island maintenance, but it can also be an opportunity to get involved in monitoring the various fauna of the island. 

Today's jobs were scything bracken in the morning, and cetacean monitoring and checking reptile refugia in the afternoon. 

Cetaceans are dolphins, whales and porpoise and we had to monitor two different points on the island. So we split into two groups and basically sat in the sun for two hours, watching the sea! We didn't see anything in those two hours. However, there were some Risso's dolphins seen off North Haven. They normally prefer to be out in deeper water, so everyone's very excited about them. 

The reptile refugia are sheets of tin or rubber that are left off the beaten track and every so often you lift them up and see what's gathered underneath. Today we found loads of slow worms and a couple of toads. I also learned that the Welsh for slow worm is "neidr ddefaid" or "sheep snake". 

We're on for a good sunset tonight so I'm hoping to get some nice photos. I say it every time, but Skomer sunsets are spectacular. 

Busy day tomorrow -  there's an overnight guests changeover, so we'll be up early to clean the visitor hostel and some of us will have to go down and help get stuff on and off the boat.  

xxx