Volunteers aid recovery of island seabird colony

Ynys Seiriol/Puffin Island (Julian Hughes)

Razorbill (Julian Hughes)

Watching a thriving seabird colony is a special thing: the sight of thousands of whirring wings as birds move from cliff to open water, a cacophony that conveys meaning to the parents and chicks for whom this is birthplace and nursery, and the smell… The aroma of high-density droppings, decaying fish, vegetation and seaweed is an olfactory assault, I’ll agree, but without it there would be no life. Watching seabirds around Ynys Seiriol, off Anglesey’s east coast, is even more special this year in the knowledge that we almost lost it.

The North Wales Wildlife Trust, in its latest members’ magazine, reports how 90 volunteers spent over 1700 hours over two winters helping Trust staff eradicate Brown Rats from the island. I was one of those volunteers, working through the elder woodland and tussocky grass to lay bait and monitoring blocks across an island-wide grid; rope-access teams were called in to help with the sheer cliffs on which auks and Kittiwakes nest. Bad weather sometimes prevented the boat from dropping us off or made the trudge across the island feel much farther than its 1-km length. But the prospects of saving a special place for seabirds, and the privilege of watching dozens of Choughs on the soft cliffs and Purple Sandpipers scurry around the splash-zone, were more than compensation. We were in a privileged place that you can not usually visit; Ynys Seiriol is privately-owned and there is strictly no landing.

More than a year of monthly monitoring visits have passed without evidence of rats on the island. After two years, in March 2027, it could be declared rat-free. Volunteers are ready to provide a rapid response should future incursions occur, but let’s hope we won’t be needed. Preventing rats from reaching the island is a much better option, and that needs measures by the owners, tenants and visitors at Penmon Point, especially waste management to discourage rats.

The immediate beneficiaries are the Razorbills, Guillemots and Kittiwakes that line the ledges, the Cormorant colony for which the island is designated a Special Protection Area, and the Puffins after which the island takes its English name. Also benefiting is Beaumaris, from where thousands of people each year take a boat tour around the island, principally to experience the seabirds. The recovery project was undertaken by NWWT under contract to Natural Resources Wales, funded by the Welsh Government through NRW’s Biodiversity Ecosystem Resilience Fund.

The rarest visitors to the region in the last week were brief: a Crane over Bardsey was only the third island record, a Black Kite flew up Llyn Tegid, a Bee-eater called as it passed over RSPB South Stack, a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was at Cemlyn and a Golden Oriole at RSPB Ynys-hir. Elsewhere, a Quail sang from a wheat field near Saltney Ferry, a Wood Sandpiper was at RSPB Conwy and the first Spotted Flycatchers arrived, with half a dozen on Bardsey.

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