Day 6 and 7

Dag 6 (16 April)

Back at the West Lighthouse Bird Centre today. Less wind, some rain, the odd spot of sunshine now and again. No puffins, some razorbills and guillemots out at sea. Gannets too, some flying past, some sitting on the sea surface. I spotted a Manx shearwater today, gliding; Rick saw another two. The raven came along with a little rodent and we could see it feed on it and then bring bits to the young in the nest. The Peregrine was back too.

The friendly busdriver who brings visitors to the centre from the harbour brought us lovely things for lunch: apples, cheese, biscuits and yoghurt!

Meanwhile, the blue plant I saw on the 15th has been checked on the internet and definitely is the Purple Gromwell. I do not know the Dutch name, as I do not have a book here that has the Dutch names.

When we got back to the cottage, we found that the easter bunny brought us some wonderful eggs for supper.

The evening is quite cold, so I go out for a short run and do a bit of kata practice to warm up. After that, a nice warm shower and off to bed.

Dag 7 (17 April)

A brilliant Easter Monday! Lots of birds singing round the cottage: robin, blackbird, chaffinch, wren are the most common. We have another volunteer arriving, James, who comes over to Rathlin every fortnight for a few days. And tonight we will have Penny coming to stay too and the cottage will be quite full. Therefore, we change the bedrooms: the women go upstairs where there is more space and the men come down.

When we start out for the birdcentre, it rains. But that clears up very soon. The weather really is very changeable out here. Most of the day is very sunny, but in the afternoon the wind shifts to the north and picks up and it gets very cold on the platform. As we are now 4 volunteers, we have a rota system and each of us gets a shift on the reception, the platform and down at the lantern, and also specific times for lunch. That works quite well.

Most of the visitors are lucky to see a puffin or two. They keep popping in and out of burrows, but in the afternoon they are practically all gone back to sea. And it is busy with razorbills and guillemots too, some on the rocks and some on the sea below the lighthouse. One of the visitors spots a harbour porpoise and Matt sees it too, but it is hard to point out, there is such a wide stretch of sea! The Scottish islands can be seen very clearly today: Islay and Jura, and some other ones that might be Rhum and Eigg. I haven’t discovered a map of Scotland here, so it’s just a guess. We see both ravens on the nest several times and can also see the chicks reaching up with their beaks and flapping their wings.

At four, we see off our last visitors, close off the lighthouse and go back up. The final count of visitors shows that we had a record number here today, due to the beautiful weather: 274!

We all walk back to the cottage taking our time to enjoy the beautiful weather and looking at the birds. We see a redpoll, a reed bunting, two swallows (also called barn swallows), two little grebes on the lough as well as the great skua swimming about. Quite a few willow warblers around, lots of goldfinches, a few meadow pipits, a redwing, skylarks. And many hares running about.

At the cottage we meet Penny who has just arrived on the ferry. The kitchen gets quite busy now with 4 people cooking their meals and sitting round the table. Matt stays out to take photographs and only comes in by sunset. He has seen and photographed the golden hare (which is a genetic variant of the Irish hare, very light and with blue eyes)!