The Swona trip today. Short notice as I only found out last night but still it should be fun. It was a lovely fine day and just a bit of a swell on the sea so a nice pleasant trip.
I went to Swona last year with the ringing group ringing fulmars but it is a bit earlier this year so they were out to ring razorbills and puffins.
There were hundreds of puffins, I have never seen so many and it was good to see them all sat outside their burrows.
Back to the birds though. We got a couple of real surprises. While we were looking for the bonxies a snipe flew up out of a clump of grass and we managed to find the young snipe and so that got a ring as well. then on the way back home somebody saw a curlew chick from the car and so we came to a screaming halt and another bird was rung.
I even got to stroke one.
They also managed to ring some razorbills, some bonxie chicks and some black backed gull chicks.
It was not all just birds though. When we were looking for bonxie chicks we were wandering about in the centre of the island. There were hundreds of beautiful orchids. I am not sure what sort of orchid they were but it doesn't really matter. They were just as beautiful whatever their name was.
Another really pleasant day but unfortunately it was marred a bit as for the last couple of hours on the island my leg started acting up and as I had no magic tablets with me it kept getting worse untill I was only just hobbling. (It's no good this old age)
I managed to survive but the leg finally siezed up in the car on the way back. This meant that I had to cancel my trip to Auskerry which was supposed to be tomorrow. (You can't win them all though)
In the evening Dennis brought the geese back. They should now be to big to be able to get out through the netting so hopefully I will be allowed to keep them this time.
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