After Babs et al left,I packed up my butty bag for the trip to Swona for ringing fulmar chicks, not that I can ring as you need a licence but I think that I was invited as bait so that the chicks would have somebody to spit their evil smelling fulmar oil at.
I got picked up by the others at the village shop in Burray. I had driven down to the shop and left the car there. I had a minutes thought about whether it would be safer to lock the car and risk the keys falling out of my pocket when I was scrambling over some rocks. I then shoved the keys under the dashboard for security, left the car unlocked and departed for the day.
We went down to Burwick to board the boat. I had previously seen the seas around Swona when passing on The Pentalina and was a bit relieved to see that the boat we were going on was an ex lifeboat, The Pentlandsker.
Unfortunately the boat could not get close in at Swona as there is only one landing place and it is a narrow inlet surrounded by rocks. We therefore had to be ferried ashore in a rubber dingy but at least we were all issued with life jackets although by the time some had figured out how to fasten them we were ashore.
Apparently Swona used to have a population of about 75 and some of the houses are quite imposing but the last people left in 1974 and it has not been used for anything since then as it is to difficult to get on or off. It is now an SSSI.
There had obviously been people here for a long time before that though.
There is a herd of feral cattle which I believe have now been designated as a separate breed because they have been isolated for so long. There are only 10 or 12 cattle and about half of them are bulls. To my mind somebody should cull out some of the bulls. The herd would then be better placed as the island will not support more than about 15 cattle through a bad winter.
Swona is surprisingly large, especially when scrambling around cliff tops all the way round the edge of the island.
We managed to get a great number of fulmar chicks ringed missing only a few that we could not get to. The chicks are unceremoniously pulled from their nests on the cliffs using a long pole with a bent coathanger on the end, firmly held in an attempt to stop them spitting, ringed and then returned the same way as they were taken out.
We also managed to find a few Black Guillimot chicks. These are called Tysties up here and nest under large rocks so they are difficult to see, probably a good idea when there are so many Black backed gulls around, not to mention the Bonxies (Great Skuas).
I was checking some stone walls for fulmar chicks and was getting attacked quite closely by a pair of Bonxies (Thet are really large and unattractive thugs), so I had a look to see if I couls find the chick and nearly stood on it before I saw it. It was probably not far from fledging. It made a nice change from fulmars for the ringers.
.All in all the ringing went very easily with nobody falling off a cliff or getting otherwise injured. The only iffy bit was when the group leader managed to drop his glasses in their case down a cliff and they stuck on a ledge. Dave Wakefield tried to retrieve them but there was no safe way down so he tried to get up from the bottom unsucessfully. I went down to try to help him up and by cupping his feet first and then directing him to ledges he managed to retrieve the glasses. On the way to help him I managed to slip on some wet rocks at the bottom of the cliff which was on a little inlet and get my boots full of water so spent the next couple of hours with soaking boots and socks.
I did however manage to get through the day with just a little fulmar vomit on my hands and none on my clothes. The boat picked us up about 4:30PM.
Back home about 6PM, Knackered but a good day.
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