You’ll remember that a local fishing boat ran aground between the main island and the Mew Stone on the night of 7 December. Skomer Warden Leighton and I spent the following 6 days on the island carrying out our first ever rapid incursion response, an essential reaction to any shipwreck or probable rat sighting on Skomer or any other seabird Special Protection Area in the UK. It was a huge amount of work, but we have a plan for this very situation and we followed it to the best of our ability. There were brief moments when I considered ‘would we get away with it?’ by not intervening. But looking back now, despite the effort, the financial cost and the missed Christmas parties, I’m so glad we put the plan into practice. Our seabird populations are too important to leave things to chance, even if the likelihood of a rat coming ashore from this boat was slim.

In the weeks and months after an incident of this kind, routine surveillance is stepped up, just to be sure that nothing has been missed. Leighton and I left plastic bait boxes in the area of the wreck containing wax chew blocks, flavoured with cocoa. This is a non-lethal way of checking for the presence of rodents. They leave their droppings in the box and their teeth marks on the wax blocks so that we can check who’s been inside.

I was joined by our RSPB Ramsey neighbours, Greg (Site Manager), his conservation detection dog Jinx, and Alys (the new Assistant Warden – congratulations Alys!), Dave from West Coast Birdwatching and Anna Sutcliffe, island friend and my actual next door neighbour.

The island in January is eerily quiet, without the constant rebuke of the gull colony, although it was fantastic to be welcomed by the sound of excited Guillemots, back on their ledges for a few hours in the early morning.

After carrying the customary boxes and parcels up from the boat to the house in North Haven, we put Greg and Jinx straight to work, checking for rats around the building and garage. Jinx is trained only to detect rats and of course an invasion by these non-native invasive species (INNS) is always of major concern. Jinx was happy that there was nothing to report so we moved onto the farm, where the dog checked the garden, wood piles and compost bins whilst I checked the surveillance stations. The wax had been chewed by the resident bank voles and field mice, but nothing larger.

We then headed out to south plateau, the nearest land to the site of the ship grounding. Alys and I checked the surveillance stations and replenished the wax, whilst Jinx nimbly bounded over the burrows searching holes and crevices in the rocks. Only assistance and working dogs are allowed on Skomer, so it’s an unusual sight to see a spaniel bounding about the island, but he’s always under close control and he’s light enough not to collapse any burrows.

We were late back to the waiting Dale Sailing boat but I don’t think the crew minded too much. It was such a beautiful day and we made the most of the slow walk back through south stream and along Welsh way. Some teal, mallard, and wigeon came off the pond at Morrey Mere and the hardy robins, wrens, and blackbirds followed us along the trail, but otherwise the island was quiet and we left it again in peace.

So I’m pleased to report all is well although we will continue our routine surveillance for INNS as soon as the warden and his team are back on site in March.

Thanks again to the Biosecurity for LIFE team and to Jinx who definitely worked the hardest last Friday.

- Lisa Morgan, Head of Islands and Marine