Written by Dani Moore
RSPB South Stack is one of the RSPB’s most well known reserves, and I have been lucky enough to get a place as a residential volunteer here for a whole three months!
Residential volunteers stay on site at the reserve in a fantastically quaint cottage, completely free of charge, and with views of the cliffs, the coastal paths, the ocean and mountains, who can complain?!
The work starts from day one, which is fantastic, especially if you are here for a short stay. My typical day can have me doing a variety of different tasks and activities so I have listed what a possible day for a residential volunteer may look like:
8am – Up and ready! No crazy 6am starts for me!
9am – Out of the house to take a gentle stroll towards the mountain or around the coastal path to get an idea of what wildlife is about for the visitors.
9:30am – Into the office. Where I get a warm (and sometimes sleepy) welcome from the rest of the staff who are getting ready for the day ahead. This is usually where I find out what the day has in store for me.
10am – Litter Pick. It may sound like a dull job but it is an excellent opportunity to get out and about on the reserve and chatting to some of the wonderful visitors we have!
11am – Ellin’s Tower. This is our very own observation tower, filled with scopes, binoculars, information and a fantastic view of South Stack lighthouse and the amazing sea bird colony; it really is a feast for the eyes! This is where we chat to our visitors, do our best to answer any questions they have, and of course if anyone would like to become a member of the RSPB, they can do so here!
12pm – Lunch time. A marvellous chance to sample the food in the cafe at the visitor centre, freshly made, with locally sourced products, it’s hard to say no to really?!
1pm – Visitor centre. A chance to greet the visitors and let them know what fantastic events we have coming up on the reserve; such as Guided Walks, Optics events, Sheep sheering, Treasure hunting; all in which volunteers get an opportunity to get involved with!
2pm – Video editing. Editing the footage from our bird cameras; very exciting stuff, you get to be the first person to witness very moving events, from Razorbills laying an egg to chough chicks gaping for food for the first time!
3pm – Events organising. An excellent chance to get those creative juices flowing!
5pm – Home time. The day has flown by so quickly but now, with a little free time I may go for a wander over to the Range and the rest of the reserve to spy out some weird and wonderful creatures, occasionally catching glimpses of seals, and the very popular Spathulate Fleawort plant, which grows endemically here on Anglesey!
I have now been here for about six weeks, making me half way through my stint as a residential volunteer, and I have to say that my experience here has been second to none; the work can be hard at times but the rewards are well worth it and I cannot wait to see what the next six weeks has to hold!
Spathulate Fleawort is bracing itself against the strong May winds and can now be seen flowering on several places on the reserve! It is one of the rarest flowers in the world and can only be seen here on Anglesey. Flowering on the steepest cliff faces and thriving on the sea spray, it can be seen near Ellin's tower, just by the benches. Several more plants are flowering along the coastal path from Ellin's tower and down on the range as well. If you have never seen one of these special plants then now is the time to come along and experience it for yourself ! A lovely yellow cluster of daisy heads on a single short stem, quite distinctive and easy to spot.
Many of the spring flowers are now at their best and its a lovely time of year to come and explore the reserve and enjoy the abundance and variety of flowers and their vibrant colours . Blue carpets of spring squill can be seen contrasting with the vivid pink of thrift. From the tiny yellow tormentil and birds foot trefoil, to the sea campion with its large white petals and bulbous seed pods. Scabious is now flowering with its darker shade of blue and the large ox eye daisys are popping up all around the reserve. Kidney Vetch is putting on a great display along the cliff edges trying to out shine the other plants! The famously rare spotted rock rose should be flowering soon.
Along with the flowers many different types of catterpillar have been seen munching away on the heathland plants. So, anytime now there will be an explosion of moths and butterflies! Why not come along this Saturday 19th May to our ' save our butterflies' event. See the website for more details.
Theres so much to see at the moment, the reserve is litterally brimming with life. The chough chicks are doing very well. There are four chicks who are growing in leaps and bounds! There's a hive of activity down on the cliffs as the seabirds are in full swing laying their eggs. So, come along and see it for yourself and have a birdseye view of nature at its best!
May 5th and 6th was a busy weekend for South stack, people just seemed to come out of the woodwork. I have never seen the car park so full since last summer, from now on for the next several months it will be like this, good,we like to be busy.
PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL MISTAKES ARE FULLY INTENTIONAL (that is my excuse) and there are no prizes for any that are found.
In the morning we had two coaches in from a cruise ship berthed at Holyhead.
Mark our retail manager decided that It was such a nice day that he would
Put the marquee up and hold an impromptu binocular and scope demonstration.
Children playing behind the tent
I was initially posted to Ellin’s tower, this is the best place on the reserve to observe the sea birds. We have at the moment several thousand Guillemots and hundreds of Razorbills. The Puffins are also preparing nesting sites. We have live camera footage showing a nesting Razorbill, also live pictures of a chough on her nest. On Saturday we had the hatching of her first chick. When the female chough leaves the nest (briefly) we try to see if we can spot how many eggs that she has laid. This is proving difficult as the nest is quite deep.
In case you have not yet paid us a visit below are some pictures showing what goes on inside the tower. We provide binoculars and scopes for the public to use, many of our visitors of course bring their own. Our visitor centre shop carries a wide range of optics to suit all tastes and pockets.
We had lots of visitors to the tower all wanting to see the sea birds, I find it very interesting talking to them, as there are people with a myriad of backgrounds and expertise.
Mark (on the left of the picture) our recruitment officer explaining about the birds.
Please note on some of the pictures I have disguised the faces, especially of the children. It is RSPB policy that we do not show recognizable faces in any of our pictures. I have also blanked car number plates. It is not always easy getting pictures totally devoid of faces, but I do my best.
We have a children's corner in the tower were we provide coloring materials. This corner proves to be very popular. I particularly like to see children taking an interest in the wildlife as they are our future conservationists.
Youngsters looking at our many badges of birds, reptiles, butterflies etc.
Danni one of our resident volunteers showing these children the nesting Razorbill live on camera.
Below some general views from the tower:
One of the best views that I saw today was a couple with their pet dog. They had collected its droppings in a black plastic bag. Even more important they took it away with them, well done!
Meanwhile at the visitor centre Stuart one of our recruitment officers is explaining to someone how to observe the sea birds. Haley our people engagement officer has provided us with a picture of the area. It is great; we can now easily point out how to get to any point on the reserve.
In order to encourage young people to take an interest in wildlife we provide them with plasticized cards containing items that can be seen on the reserve. The items include, lizards, birds, flowers etc. They are usually good at spotting them. This is Stuart discussing their finds.
Last but certainly not least the cafe. I intend to devote a whole blog to them when I can get around to it. I am only usually at South Stack on a Tuesday as a volunteer and take pictures as I travel around the site.
This is Jon our catering manager and Rhian on their way to the bin. There is always a glamorous side to the job? They work extremely hard providing such superb meals for us to enjoy.
One of our Stonechats proudly displaying.
On the 8th of May Mark our recruitment officer noticed that the Spatulate Fleawort was in flower. This plant grows on our reserve and nowhere else in the world.
it will be in flower throughout May why don't you come along and see it along with all of our other treasures.
That's all for now folks, bye Mel
Huzzah! It’s Chough time!
Our lovely little corvid friends have hatched their first egg! At around 11.30am on Saturday 5th May we were watching our Chough camera in the Visitor Centre and Ellin’s Tower and saw the male removing half an egg shell from the nest. This is very exciting news as this is five days earlier than last year!
Chough are the rarest member of the crow family, with only 462 breeding pairs in the UK, 11 of which are on our reserve! This is a very important site for Chough; we do a lot of work to provide good feeding conditions close to the nest sites so the parents can take lots of food back to their young! Management includes heather burning; close shepherding with sheep grazing, cattle grazing and more recently a trial of heather mowing to get rid of old rank heather and encourage lots of diversity and new growth.
Join us at the RSPB South Stack Visitor centre to see the Chough on our live camera and witness more eggs hatching this weekend! We are open from 10am year round.
Well, spring came and went and winter returned with a vengeance to South Stack! Gale force winds and horizontal rain ruled last week causing wildlife and people to batten down the hatches. Despite the atrocious weather there were some creatures that positively enjoyed the elements! A pod of 6 dolphins spent one wild day entertaining visitors who were brave enough to venture out, putting on a brilliant show just outside Ellin’s tower. Gannets have been enjoying the rough weather too, have stayed around circling above porpoises off the lighthouse, and have thrilled us with their diving displays.
Thankfully the wind has abated the last few days and the sun has popped out again, much to the delight of all our smaller birds on the reserve. Stonechats and linnets have been singing their hearts out. Whitethroats have been spotted in the gorse outside Ellins tower, hopefully nesting! We still have quite a number of wheatears gracing us with their beauty and every day we see ever increasing numbers of swallows skimming the cliff edges in search of flies. The swallows have returned to the nests in the Plas Nico garage which is great news, so we look forward to watching their progress.
Large numbers of seabirds are back on the ledges too and looking ready to produce eggs. The numbers of Guillemots and Razorbills seem larger than ever this year and birds can be seen on Pen-Las rocks as well as the main cliffs. We will keep an eye on them to see if they breed there. We know that at least one bird has laid an egg, as unfortunately a raven flew past the tower yesterday with an egg in its beak! Ravens have been putting on a rather aggressive display towards the birds on the ledges the past few days causing them to fly off to the safety of the water. So far we haven’t seen any eggs, but we expect them any day now and once they do have them, they should be holding their positions a bit better!
Puffins have been spotted taking nesting material into the burrows, so its all happening! We will keep you posted with more puffin developments over the next few blogs.
Out on the Heathland we are beginning to see our reptiles coming out from the cold again and braving the wind to snatch some welcome rays of sunshine.
We are hoping now that we will have a period of settled weather so that our birds can get on with the task of nest building and producing the next generation! So watch this space!