Puffins

Puffin at Oiseval St.Kilda

The Arctic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) is a member of the Alcidae or Auk family. In Gaellic they are called Buthaid. Apart from their unmistakable colourfull bill, their bright orange feet are equally striking. They are really amusing to look at. They are not real good flyers, and they have difficulties to fly off from the surface of the water as well as to land.

On St. Kilda the colony of Puffins is the largest breeding concentration of Puffins in Britain. The majority breeds on Boreray and Soay, but on Dún are also large numbers, and Dún is more accessible for investigation. Puffins breed on the slopes in burrows they dig out themselves. They usually lay only one egg. After about 40 days from hatching, the pufflins fledge. The parents don't abandon  the chicks, but they are feeding them less food. Especially in darker and mistier nights, these young pufflins are attracted to the sounds and the lights in the street on Hirtha.
Since 1973 until 1996 these stranded young Puffins were collected, counted, ringed and weighted in order to studie the breeding success and fledging conditions of Puffins (Harris, Murray & Wanless, Bird Study, 1998).

The results show a decline in breeding success and condition of the young Puffins in the period between 1973 - 1998. Successfull breeding and good condition of chicks depend on the time the breeding season for the Puffins start and the amount of Sprat in the diet of young Puffins.
Puffins on St. Kilda start breeding later when the temperature of the sea is warmer. The later the Puffins start to breed, the smaller the breeding success. More Sprat in the diet of Puffin makes the young Puffins heavier.
Whether there is also an influence of predation by the increasing amount of Bonxies in the period, is not considered in the study.

In the "Seabird and Marine Ranger Annual Report St. Kilda 2013" Gina Prior describes a research on breeding success of Puffins she conducted in 2013 on Dùn.
The conclusion of this research is the same; a decline in breeding success and lighter fledglings. This trend is not just seen on St. Kilda, but also on Skomer, Isle of May and Fair Isle, although the breeding success there is better than on St. Kilda.
She doesn't consider the start of the breeding season in her research.

In the pub someone told me he found a pufflin once, but didn't recognise it. Young Puffins are entirely black, and they don't have the distinct white/black head and colourfull bill yet.

Day 12; June the 15th

As planned, we get up early to do yoga in a flat enclosure behind the street. We borrow some sheets,  Flo brings her yoga-app, and Martin lends us his speaker. Cath, Flo, Mike, Liz and me make our way to the enclosure. It must have been an awkward sight on St.Kilda!
Back on our bare feet trhrough the soft wet peaty ground.

It is Sunday, and we don't work today. Together with Mike I make a walk to Oiseval to see the puffins, and hopefully take a good picture of one. The puffins are very amusing to look at. They fly around with those bright orange feet attempting to land, but they don't seem to dare to. I think we are sitting on their burrow. Finally one does, and we stand up to have a better look. A pocket with lens starts tumbling down and falls into the water. When we go down, we see it still floats in the kelp. Mike gets into the water to get it out. We rinse it with fresh water and hope the best of it.

We decide to go find the remnants of the beaked whale. According to Paul the skull is hidden somewhere in one of the cleits. He doesn't know which one. We already found some backbones in another cleit, so we inspect the cleits nearby.

Vertebrae of the beaked whale

When we find the skull, there is still soft material on, and it smells awful!

The skull of the stranded beaked whale

We make another short walk along the beach and chat a little.
Tonight, after dinner we will make an excursion with Gina to Carn Mór and hopefully see the Leach Petrels.

Day 11; the rest of the Saturday

Officially it is a working day, but we don't really do anything anymore. Mike is having cleaning duties. He pretends to be mad with me for beating him in the race, and Flo isn't very subtle remembering him in and out of season that he is beaten by a "tiny Dutch lady".  For the rest of the days on St. Kilda this remains a teasing joke between us.

I take the opportunity to wash a few items and in the afternoon Liz, Helen, Rachel and me make a walk to Conachair. On or way back we meet Flo and Stephen and together we return to the street. We make plans for a yoga session tomorrow. Flo has got a yoga app on her IPad.

Me, Steven and Flo

After dinner I can't resist a visit to the pub, and neither do the others.
It might seem I've become a pretty heavy drinker, but that is not the case. The consumption of alcohol is restricted on the island. You are allowed only one consumption at the time, so you can't really stand drinks. I drink a glass of wine with Mike and we chat over the race this morning. I tease him a bit, but he is a very sportive, and I know I just won because I am so much lighter in weight than he is.

Tomorrow we get up early for the yoga session, so at closing time we go home and to bed.

Day 11; June the 14th. The chimney challenge!

Today is Saturday and the day of the chimney challenge!

The chimney is a very steep climb uphill. When there were still military on the island, the run was a populair workout. Now the leaders of the workparties like to organise the challenge. The times are officialy recorded by the people from Qinetiq.

The chimney

David arranged some men from Qinetiq to give the start and record the timing.

It's not just Mike and me who are running; Liz, Martin, Helen and Rachel will also participate.

The start is a bit sudden as you can see in this picture; Mike is still setting his watch, and I haven't put on my jacket yet. I like the sheer fun Martin shows, Helen, who made the effort to make herself a personal running"shirt"and Rachel who was persuaded to run just a couple of minutes before the start.

a disorderly start

The first 200 metres or so are flat, but than we have to climb uphill.

Mike is ahead of me. Halfway there is a large stone. Once you passed that stone, the steepest part of the climb starts. 

A though climb

                                     

I manage to pass Mike, because I'm much lighter in weight. Cath shows me the way to the cleit, where Steve encourages me to make a final sprint. As soon as I touch the cleit Steve announces this in his walkie talkie, and my time is recorded. I managed to do the run within a quarter of an hour, which is not a top time, but at least it is the goal I reached for.

Day 10; June the 13th

It is Friday the 13th; an very ordinary day on St. Kilda for a workparty.
Cath and I finish the church and schoolhouse. In the afternoon Cath, Steven and I help Kevin to clear down a blackhouse from rubble, stones and sods down to a layer of 1957. A lot of stuff was burned in that period, so the ground is black. We have to put back sods on that layer for later parties to do the actual archeological work.

We do find some bottles from soda from the sixties or seventies, a lot of roof covering and Steve finds an exciting looking artifact that looks like a sword of some kind, but turns out to be a hinge from a door.

Had a swim! Or rather, have been overthrown by an ice cold wave. I take a warm shower and it"s time for dinner again. After dinner Kevin, Paul, Rachel and Janice are playing music in the museum. Paul and Janice play the violin, Rachel plays a small instrument called concertina and Kevin plays flute and guitar.

The Netherlands played football today against Spain. I take a peek in the pub, but the game is over. They won 5 to 0. The guys from Qinetiq give me an update about the game. They are very enthusiastic about the Dutch  team.

On my way back I meet Flo, who is about to the pub. I accompany her and have a drink. No alcohol and not too late in bed, because tomorrow is the day of the chimney challenge!

St. Kildan wren

One of the habits I enjoyed very much was to sit on the bench outside number 1 and listen to the wren. On St. Kilda there are two endemic bird species. Just recently the snipe on St. Kilda is recognized as a subspecies from the snipe on the mainland. The other species is the wren  (Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis).

The St. Kildan wren is bigger than the Eurasian wren from the mainland. They also differ in color, and their song is said to be different too, although he sounds like a wren in my ears.
I filmed "our" wren while singing on the chimney;

There are about 115 pairs on Hirta, but they are also present on the other isles of the archipelago.
Because the wren is exclusive for the archipelago, it was almost extinct by the end of the
nineteenth century, after a rush for specimens by collectors. In 1904 the wren needed to be protected by law. Fortunately, the numbers increased quickly.

Day 9; June the 12th

It has been a while since I wrote my last post about daily life on St. Kilda. I got to day 9; it is Thursday the 12th of June. The weather is not very good; it's cloudy and rainy. But we have a workday today, so it doesn't really matter.

First, Martin and me go out to finish the door in the ammunition store. I paint the door post and the sign on the door. On the backsite of the sign we leave our signature for future workparties to discover!

In the afternoon I clean the church and the schoolhouse together with Cath. The church and the school is in fact one building. The school is a room in the church.

The school

The church

In the lectern in the school is a copy of a book with the names of the children and some information
about them. Some children deceased at a very young age, others left the island for Harris or Skye. The classes were very small, but the ages differ between five and ten or eleven. There are no children older than twelve.

We clean the windows, the floors and we polish all the copper we can find. The work is not very hard because the school and the church aren't really dirty.

Cath is a very friendly woman. She comes from Liverpool and I love her accent. Along with Steve she almost forms a comical duo, and a real challenge for me to understand their conversation!

After dinner we visit the pub again. I'm starting to feel very much at home on the island. I love the company of my fellow workparty members, and some habits become very trusted like eating together and the regular visits to the pub.