The ebb and flow of stormies…

… and other animals…

Well it has been awhile since I last wrote!

Last time I left you with a question of how do you define home?… and this quote:

“I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm.
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar.
Up from the ashes, hope will arise.
Death is defeated, the King is alive!”
Raise a Hallelujah, Bethel Music

It is certainly becoming more stormy out here in the mid-Atlantic. But for now let me take you back to August…

August was full of cute stormie chicks, where the chicks have turned from cute fluffy pom-poms to less fluffy and eventually adult looking birds (with a bit of fluff still sticking out). It has been a privilege watching the chicks grow… and delighted in growing ‘especially fond’ of them all! They just grow up so fast! *Wipes away tear* :).

There have been lots of people coming and going this August and September (to make sure we had enough cover to keep monitoring the chicks). There are too many to name all… but amongst the many, I bid farewell to my first long-term assistant. I am very thankful for all her hard work on the islet and looking forward to hearing how she gets on with her next steps :D. We managed to fit in one final s’mores attempt before leaving :). I also returned from a brief break on the mainland with another friend from home and delighted in sharing this unique lifestyle and research with her :). Amongst others in September, saw the arrival of my parents – a privilege that they could and wanted to come over and a delight to show them around the islet, what I’ve been up to and to have a much needed holiday too (time off is important too…).

But to come back to the title of this blog… The ebb and flow of stormies… and other animals. This ebb and flow has been happening so gradually it could have almost passed unnoticed and yet after a brief time off the islet it was so obvious…

The gradual changes have been the calls of the terns in the day and the summer stormies and Cory’s shearwaters at night – slowly slowly becoming just that little be quieter and are fewer in number. Early August the nighttime soundscape was so quiet to the point of actually hearing cicadas! But, in the space of a few days that I was off the islet, the nighttime soundscape grew again, becoming a somewhat pleasant cacophony of ‘woody woodpeckers’ – later leaving summer stormies, ‘groan sticks’ (childhood toy from the 90s) – later leaving Cory’s shearwater’s and ‘in tune squeaky toys’ – arriving winter stormies.

The winter species have now very much arrived!

A few weeks on, and the ebb and flow has become even more prominent. With the summer stormie chicks fledging (including this one we managed to catch on camera…), the nests are now being very much taken over by the winter stormie species and we’ve even seen our first winter stormie eggs being laid! The terns are almost absent now with only a small group flying around the islet, and in the evenings there are very few Cory’s calling. This leaves the nighttime soundscape to the ‘in tune squeaky toys’ of the winter stormies and the occasional, haunting, whinnying-giggle of the little shearwater’s.