Wednesday 17 June 2015

June

It's somehow June already! Been busy on Oronsay. 



I've been surveying for wader chicks the last couple of months, lapwing chick pictured. It has been a very strange spring, feels like winter more often than not and I suspect the breeding birds will have suffered as a result.



Skylark nest in the grass.



Marsh fritillary on the wing last week.



We had a trip out to seal island which is just off the end of Oronsay to the south west. There is a wreck somewhere offshore and this pottery was its cargo. The broken china washes up along the southern beaches.


Tuesday 19 May 2015

Isle of Colonsay

Been a very bust couple of weeks with lambing and calving on Oronsay but we managed to squeeze in some time to check out a few sites on Colonsay.


Carlsberg don't do survey sites....

Not a bad office is it?

Photo: Luke Wake

Monday 11 May 2015

Corncrake


The corncrake are back. Lots of calling males this week, had a few very good views too!

Monday 2 March 2015

The bunting are out

Up to four snow buntings have been on Oronsay the last few weeks. I managed to get these close ups the other week of two picking through old silage.



There are signs that spring could be just around the corner on the island. Skylarks have started building in number the last week. I even saw some singing and displaying earlier in the week when the sun was out. A couple of gales have up an end to it for now.


Sunrise on a rare calm weather day. This is the view from my kitchen window. Looking towards Jura and Islay. The paps of Jura have still got loads of snow/hail over them.


Peregrine falcon over territory.


The exciting visitor this past week has been this juvenile Iceland gull. Really surprised that this is the first of the year considering the Northerlies and Westerlies we've been having. A real treat to see one of these white winged Arctic breeders on the island.


Great Northern divers have also been pushed closed to shore with the winds. Will start coming into breeding plumage soon. I've noticed a few black guillemots close in as well, already in summer plumage.


Meanwhile, I quite like the winter nights......



Sunday 1 March 2015

Lutra lutra

Last weekend we took part in the beached bird survey. This meant walking at coastline of Oronsay searching for any seabirds that had washed ashore. The survey is coordinated across the UK on the same dates to help build up a picture of seabird casualties and any underlying causes such as oil spills etc.

Our search of Oronsay turned up no beached seabirds, which is fantastic and a wonderful contrast to last year when we found several birds ashore.

While surveying the East coast of Oronsay I was fortunate enough to have a female otter and her young cub emerge from the sand dunes not 10 meters away from me.
 




The mother went into the shallows and called the pup out. After it went into the water they then foraged around the rocks for 20 minutes or so. I watched from the dunes before leaving them to it.




Really quite the privilege. I spent a lot of time last winter on Oronsay trying to get good views of otters. I've been having better success this year, sheer determination and spending more time out and about is the key. And with sights like this, absolutely worth it.

Sunday 15 February 2015

History in my hands


I found something very special last weekend. A piece of hand worked flint. Probably not seen by human eyes for thousands of years. This archaeological treasure is likely to be from the Mesolithic period. Mesolithic hunters are believed to have started arriving to the area here around 7500BC. Flint doesn't occur naturally on Oronsay so this piece would have likely been traded. 
  

Some preliminary research has revealed that this large flint was likely a scraper, used for working animal hides and other materials. I found it on the high water line down on the strand. Following the storms we've been having it perhaps came loose from somewhere on the strand and washed ashore. The strand would have been an area used by the people here without doubt for foraging for shellfish and molluscs in between the tides.



Signs of Mesolithic man are all around us on Oronsay.  The middens here rank only 2nd in Britain for  the amount of information added to our  understanding of early post-glacial settlement. Carbon dating of the shell middens has shown that Oronsay was inhabited for at the very least 700 years between 4100BC and 3400BC.

The photo above shows one of the middens on Oronsay. One of the best examples in the whole of Europe. The team here fenced off the middens on the island in order to preserve and protect them. We've opened the middens up to the cattle for a couple of weeks in order to graze them back a little and provide lots of dung for the chough to search through for tasty invertebrate larva!

The middens have yielded some fascinating artifacts that let us glimpse the Mesolithic world on Oronsay. While their bulk is made up of limpet shells and blown sand. The middens have also been found to contain bone pins, seal, otter, red deer, pig and dolphin remains. The diet was evidently very varied. Avian species featured heavily on the menu too, cormorant, shag, goose, shelduck, water rail, ringed plover, tern, gull, razorbill, guillemot, gannet and red-breasted merganser bones have all been excavated from the middens.  

Perhaps one of the most interesting finds for a budding ornithology fan are the bones of Great auk found in the middens. The now extinct species was eaten here on Oronsay which is just amazing to think of now. It is likely to therefore have been found breeding on Oronsay or on the surrounding coast. 

Oronsay is a true window into our history and so many chapters can be seen in just a short walk around the island. The weight of heritage here can really be seen and I'm so fortunate to be living on such an archaeological gem.