Over the last few weeks the character of the island has
changed. With the exodus of many sea
birds the coast and cliffs are strangely quiet – the guillemots, razorbills and
puffins have long since left; now the kittiwakes and many fulmars have
followed. Out on the plateau the gull
chicks have fledged, with just a few mottled brown stragglers stalking the
paths, and the adults have dispersed from their colonies. Walking over to Skomer head the low
‘cronking’ of the ravens is audible as these massive, heavy-billed birds fly
acrobatically overhead, or stand broodingly on outcrops of rock, in apparently
solemn consideration of the island.
Everywhere the bracken has been browned by the wind, chocolate dark in
the rain, as if a fire has swept through the vegetation. The only colour comes from splashes of yellow
ragwort, and a few stands of purple loosestrife, crumpled and tired with
age. When it is dry, the seed heads of
red campion rattle at the slightest touch and deep down amongst the tangle of
plants the high pitched squeaking of shrews can be heard.
Much of the interest now is at sea – crossing Jack Sound on
the Dale Princess yesterday Sarah spotted a sunfish – these can grow to two or
three metres in length, and cruise close to the surface, one fin lazily waving
above the water. Many porpoise and
common dolphins have been seen out in St Brides, gathering where the gannets
circle and dive for shoals of fish, sometimes acrobatically bursting from the
sea as they hunt or play. There are many
seals too, gathering on the beaches to pup, the cows watched over by large,
territorial males which coral them close to the shore, waiting for their chance
to mate (two weeks after pupping, the females are ready to breed again).
With Phil and Lewis, I joined Dave on one of his survey
rounds. Each year he records the
breeding success of the seals, using spray paint to mark new pups, and then
following them through to their first moult.
The job involves climbing precariously down to the secluded shingle
beaches and dark caves where the pups lie amongst the rocks. Some of the caves are deep, cutting in under
the island in dark, sharp edged crevices with dripping walls, around which the
sound of breakers on the shore outside echoes loudly. Out at the far end of The Neck several of
these caves have pierced right through a headland, forming The Lantern, named
because of the shape of the mouth of the arch.
At low tide you can scramble into this high, narrow aperture, scrambling
over mounded shingle and then wading deep through a pool left by the receding
tide, to stand in the dark with a vault of rock high above, and tall windows of
light from the cave mouths to the north, south and east. We found a couple of seals there, lying on
the pebbles in a dark recess, hissing and growling at our approach. We left them alone – they had no pups with
them – and as we left we heard them heavily lumbering over the shingle towards
another exit. They can move surprisingly
fast despite their bulk, and it can be a little unnerving to hear their heavy
advance without being able to see which way they are heading.
It is a windswept, cloud broken morning as I write, and
before I settle down to a variety of computer based tasks I will head out to
the coast to see what birds have been blown in from the sea and to look for
cetaceans in the rough waters of St Brides Bay.
