Maxted Miscellany: Skomer

Wednesday 29th June 2005, Marloes, Pembrokeshire.

Today we continued our journey from Tenby towards this beautiful stretch of the Welsh coast overlooking St. Bride's bay. We have settled in a near deserted field which represents a very basic but quiet and peaceful campsite attached to the last farm at the end of the narrow road leading down to the tiny harbour of St. Martins with its little jetty from where tomorrow we hope to take a fishing boat across to the island of Skomer.

Once we'd settled Modestine into her field we left her and followed the coastal path into the setting sun down to the tiny, rocky bay with a couple of small fishing boats bobbing amongst the gulls on the water.

The cliff top beyond the bay gave us a wonderful view of the island of Middleholm with Skomer immediately behind. Around us we heard the plaintive, demanding cries of young red-legged choughs, seemingly quite unconcerned by our presence. They were as big as their parents who were frantically gathering beaks full of beetles and worms to feed them. They are the emblem of Cornwall, from where they are now naturally extinct yet here they are definitely quite at home.

We sat watching the bright sun set behind Skomer, the sky diffused a beautiful pink-red, before returning along the cliff path to our campsite. Here we enjoyed the warm, still evening with a bottle of Chillian wine, a quiche and salad followed by strawberries, chocolate cookies and mugs of tea as we watched darkness gradually fall around 10.45pm and the lights of the oil tanker moored out in the bay twinkle through the darkness.

Thursday 30th June 2005. Same campsite.

It rained in the night. Today is grey, chilly and showery. How typical. Still, we've come all this way to visit Skomer so we'll go just the same. It may even be better if we are walking around the island all day as it won't be so hot.

Friday 1st July 2005. Same campsite.

We were so weary yesterday there was no possibility of writing this up last night.

We walked the few hundred yards down the road to the little quay and along with around 50 other walkers, twitchers, school children and pensioners crowded onto the tiny fishing boat for the 20 minute trip across to the landing steps on Skomer. We were accompanied on our journey by several lesser black-backed gulls which either hitched a ride on the pilots cab or flew alongside the engine house being handfed with titbits as we progressed across the tiny straits between the mainland and Middleholm, and along the northern coast of Skomer. As we approached the landing steps the sun shone, sea birds filled the air, puffins shot past us, their tiny wings whirring rapidly to propel them like tiny canon balls across the water where they'd then land with ungainly plops, disappearing below the surface momentarily before bouncing up again.

Skomer is a nature reserve managed by the Countryside Commission for Wales. It has been uninhabited since the 1950s except for a warden, a few seasonal volunteers and some research scientists. It is a birdwatchers' paradise with thousands of breeding sea birds. There are the awks which include puffins, guillemots and razorbills. There are noisy red-beaked oyster catchers, little-eared owls, peregrine falcons and gulls. These include the greater and lesser black-backed varieties as well as common and herring gulls and kittiwakes. The island, along with neighbouring Skokholm, is most famous however as the breeding ground for 50% of the world population of Manx Shearwaters. These birds are nocturnal, living underground in burrows as protection from the predatory gulls for whom they are easy prey in daylight being ungainly on land. The island is unfortunately littered with their bedraggled, decaying skeletal feathered corpses, frequently dismembered and scattered along the paths and rocky ledges. These are the few who have fallen victim to the thousands of gulls wheeling and crying overhead. When not hidden underground the Shearwaters are in their natural element, far out to sea, skimming the water, gathering food for their single chick hidden in its burrow back on the island. Their food searches will take them up to a week and carry them as far south as Portugal. They are amongst the World's best natural navigators. In a recent experiment a parent Shearwater was released of the coast of California, way outside it's natural feeding limits. In less than 12 days it was back in its burrow on Skomer!

At this time of year however it is the Puffins that are the great attraction. There are many thousands of them. Agile on the sea, whizzbangs in the air, they are smart little butlers on land, beautifully turned-out, pottering around with very upright postures. They are about 1 ft high, seem oblivious to visitors but are socially interactive with each other. Like the Shearwaters, and indeed most creatures on the island, they live in underground burrows and are forever popping out from under one's feet, or looking anxiously down into a hole from where the dark face of a young fledgling will peer out waiting for its solicitous parents to return with a beak full of dangling sprats. The adult has a cute beak in hues of yellow, orange, scarlet, white and grey. That of the juvenile is monochrome.

Puffins will trot across the path, obliging visitors to give way. They chat together in small groups. Landing and take-off are more carefully accomplished on land than at sea. Their little orange feet dangle as they make the final vertical descent, wings flapping frantically until they feel their feet make contact with solid ground. Along with the other day visitors we could have watched them for hours.

On our arrival on Skomer we were greeted by the warden who warned people not to stray from the paths, for our own safety and that of the island's wildlife. The island is a total honeycomb of burrows, originally mainly constructed and occupied by neurotic rabbits and subsequently by puffins, shearwaters, wood pigeons - there is not a single tree on the island so how they came to settle is a mystery - and a number of other mammals including the Skomer vole. Each time the poor rabbits dig a hole, a squatter moves in! Generally the rabbits have given up diving for cover on the approach of a human as they've put their front ends down so many holes, only to find their way blocked by a family of Puffins or a Shearwater's larder of herrings! There are more rabbits and fewer sea birds to be seen in the interior of the island which is rich in ferny bracken and has a couple of meres with many wildfowl including curlews and teal.

Skomer is about 1 mile by 2 with a narrow neck of land separating about one third from the main body. This area is inaccessible being a nature reserve and research area.
We must have walked most of the paths several times during our 5 hours or so ashore.

The flora of Skomer is very lovely. We were too late for the profusion of bluebells that colour the clifftops in early spring, but there were sheets of pink campion, orange sorrel and white sea campion. Away from the immediate cliff edges shearwater burrows were hidden amongst a thick vegetation of wood sage, brambles and bracken. Altogether it's a very pretty place.

There is no shelter, the farmhouse in the centre providing accommodation for the warden and researchers only and is currently in the process of being restored anyway. We arrived in bright sunshine, but then the wind developed, a misty wet mizzle blew in and the spectacular views were blotted out. There were several groups of soaking schoolchildren standing in huddled groups on the cliff tops, like so many penguins, while kittiwakes and gulls flew overhead laughing hysterically and puffins peeked out with sympathetic worried little faces from the thousands of snug dry burrows beside the footpaths.

There is a limit of about 200 people per day permitted on the island and you are free to wander at will so long as you do not stray from the paths. With no trees we were in competition with the seabirds for the meagre shelter offered by any rocky outcrops on the coastal headlands. These were pretty useless however and littered with the corpses of hapless shearwaters. So we stood, soaked to the skin, in a cold wet mizzle trying to eat a sandwich with the wind whipping my hair into my face. Our cagouls stuck to our skin and we wished we'd brought our pullovers. Eventually we discovered a tiny hide in the interior of the island and, developing a very rapid enthusiasm for observing the habits of wading birds, took shelter with gratitude.

At last the sun came out again and we steam dried as we continued our peregrinations around Skomer. - Talking of which, a volunteer warden pointed out to us a nest of peregrines on the cliff top and we were able to observe them feeding their young. The poor lady became confused talking to us about our telescope and watching the peregrines. She ended up talking about the juvenile feeding periscopes!!

Off shore we could see the white isle of Grassholm. We were told it is white because it is the breeding ground of one of the largest colonies of ganets in Northern Europe. What we were seeing from several miles distance was seabirds and guano! Overhead, through the telescope, there was the appearance of snowflakes as the birds wheeled and dived!

Seals are also a common sight but either the tide was wrong or it was too wet and misty for us to linger searching. We didn't see any. Nor did we see the short-eared owls which breed on Skomer and are frequently active during daylight.

We did however see lots of guillemots and razorbills close-up. Both are impressive, handsome birds, slightly larger than the puffins to whom they are related. They are rather penguin-like in appearance but able to fly. They are quite graceful in flight - far more so than the puffins. They nest on the sea ledges rather than in burrows.

I think we were very luck to visit Skomer when we did. By August all the young birds have been reared and they leave the island to fly south in search of perpetual summer. (We could do worse than emulate them in Modestine!)

The boat back left at 4pm. We'd had a magical day despite the weather - and despite not being twitchers! We were sun and wind burnt. Unfortunately the hayfever was very bad and we returned exhausted, sore-footed and so weary we fell sound asleep in Modestine as soon as we got back to the farm.

That evening the weather rapidly deteriorated. A wind rose and rain fell continuously. We slept or read in Modestine until supper, looking out across St. Bride's bay with a couple of anchored ships towards where St. David's Head and Ramsey Island would be visible except for the rain. It was still daylight at 10.45 when we settled to sleep.

Razorbills on the cliffs