The beginning of the busy season...

Today marks the beginning of the busy season here on the Farne Islands, as we have finally switched to doing half days! So Staple Island will be open to visitors only in the mornings, and Inner Farne will be open to visitors only in the afternoon. This is to reduce disturbance to the birds, the majority of which are now on eggs (apart from the Arctic Terns, which haven't even made nests yet. Therefore, my morning will be taken up with bird monitoring work, chores, odd jobs and inspections, and my afternoons with visitor work. Which is what I would be doing right now, but it's my day off!! Yay! :) no work for me! Instead, meand Michael went over to Seahouses on the mainland very early this morning to have a shower, do laundry and buy some more food, and now I'm just chillin out :) Michael was able to go because he's on boats today, and therefore has no chore to do. My turn to cook tonight, though, so I do have to do something!

We were all going to go to the mainland yesterday to have showers etc. and to get some dinner, but it all went wrong. We spent ages getting our stuff ready, getting the boat sorted out and in the water, putting on life jackets etc. and we were finally all in the boat and ready to go. We went a short way out, but the engine was making a very weird sound and the boat was only going slowly. So Steely stopped the boat to have a look at the engine it turned out that we were only running on one cylinder, as part of the engine had snapped off! So back to Inner Farne we came.

Apart from that, yestrday was a good day! No visitor boats as there was a very strong wind, so spent the day sorting stuff out and doing odd jobs such as testing the fire alarms and putting the extinguishers in place. And I got to do some strimming! Which was sooo much fun! I had to wear loads of protective gear, including a visor, ear defenders and a harness (see photos at the end)! Got covered in grass whist I was doing it, and accidentally strimmed a couple of snails, so got covered in that too, which wasn't very nice. And the whole time I was worried that I would maim an Eider duck, but it all turned out ok in the end...until I broke the strimmer that is. I hit a stone, the end flew off and it totally broke. Whoops! Luckily we have more and the strimmings nearly all done now! In case you're wondering why I was strimming, it's because the Terns like very short grass to build their nests in. Also, the Kittiwakes and Shags like to use the excess grass to build their nests, so everybody wins! I'm sure I'm forgetting to include something else that happened, but I can't remember everything, so I shall leave it there for now!

Me wearing all of the strimming gear!

Me doing some strimming in the vegetable garden

P.S. - I have been nicknamed Westie. How original...