isolation in full view of the mainland

It is an interesting concept being on a small islet, where time warps, and life is guided by the weather and the tides, and yet we sit in full view of a town (the islet’s name sake) and the ‘mainland’. Often hearing dogs barking, motorbikes going passed and road lights in the evening. It might not be mainland Portugal, but to us, on a ~0.12km2 islet, Graciosa (~60.65km2) is most definitely a mainland.

So far the weather and tide thankfully hasn’t restricted the much anticipated boat trips… it is always great to catch up with the Natural Park team and hear the latest news (e.g. discovering the reason for the loud and raucous party last weekend was because of football celebrations) as well as for the exciting arrivals or sad departures of different team members, the important updates of food and water supplies (chocolate, oranges and raisins all being high up on the list!) and the occasional post that has made it out here :).

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Isolation has it’s advantages – we get to run on our own schedule, meandering between daytime bird calls to nighttime bird calls and almost airs on the ‘getting back to nature’ type research adventure… But with this isolation comes disadvantages too, and so I say almost back to nature, because we are so very reliant on the semi-regular boat trips – this becomes all too prevalent when we are down to our last oranges, only have a bit of fresh cabbage left or even run out of raisins! (I am pleased to say we haven’t (yet) run out of chocolate!).

Nevertheless, the more stormy weather seems to be blowing over leaving us with some calmer, hot, sunny days. These have given us lots of power via the solar panels (ever grateful to GB-Sol, http://www.gb-sol.co.uk) as well as dips in the clear blue sea and having the house door open (without the concern of papers being blown everywhere!) 🙂

The actual research has settled into a gentle routine of some form of daily nest checks, getting excited seeing more pairs and more eggs being laid and then adding in extra things as time and energy allows. Amongst other things, we are so very close to sorting in-nest cameras now (so grateful to fellow PhD student giving advice from afar!) so we will hopefully soon be able to start gaining insight as to what happens in the nests, both in the day and night.

Finally one of the bonuses of having team 2 overlapping with team 3 has been allowing those of us here longer some much needed time off :).

Until next time… greetings from a hot and sunny islet!

Hannah 🙂