A very eventful week

This past week has been a very eventful one! It's my day off again today, and I've got every Saturday off now until I leave. The ringing team were back this morning, and we did some ringing of both Arctic Terns and Eiders. I really like Eiders, but ringing them was not fun. They poo alot, and its unbelievably stinky and gets everwhere!! Not very nice, but was a good experience all the same. Currently there are visitors on the island, so I don't have much to do at the moment, but I have no idea whats going to be happening later tonight.

For the past 2 days me, Graeme, Jamie and Wez have been in Amble learning how to drive the Zodiac boats! So now we are all officially able to drive them around whenever we need to...I'm a bit nervous about it all though! The boat course ran from 12-8 both days, most of which time was spent getting actual experience driving 2 different powerboats! It was a really fun course, but I think I need more practice driving the Zodiacs! The 2 research students from Newcastle Uni arrived on Thursday as well, but I've only really had today to talk with them, as I was on the boat course. They are both carrying out research for their MSc projects. One of them is looking at the effect of disturbance on Puffin chicks, and the other is looking at the effects of disturbance on Arctic Tern chicks. They are both girls and will be here for the next 2 months, so I'll have some female company while everyone else is obsessed with the world cup!

In other news, I rescued 5 Eider chicks from certain doom, which was quite nice! The mother ran off and left them all in the nest. We waited for 2 hours but sadly she didn't return, and it was beginning to turn cold. So we Scooped them and the nest into a bucket and tried to find another Eider with chicks, as they will take in the chicks of other Eiders and look after them, forming 'creches' of chicks. Unfortunately though we couldn't find another Eider with chicks, so took the bucket into the living room for a while and kept them warm and looked after them :) We did eventually find another mother Eider though, so I grabbed bucket and chicks and hurried to find her. I set the chicks down as near to her as I could get and they immediately started calling to her. The Eider started to call back to them, and one by one they all jumped into the water and swam over to her. She took them all in perfectly fine and they all went off together. (Photos of chicks to follow in next post!) Hope all is well where you are