Bird ringing, East path

 19 Apr day 2

Up at 8am refreshed after 11 hours of sleep. Porridge all round except John who prefers muesli, quite a production. L & I went to the shop and got most things on the list, then made our sandwiches. The others went ahead, up the Eastern side because theres a strong WNW wind. We found an ant on the kitchen table so deep-cleaned all surfaces (after squishing it).

The path to the east side starts below Millcombe House, and there we saw two volunteers doing bird ringing. Huge nets are strung up which the birds fly into and get trapped in pockets. They disentangle them, "within 20 mins" they said, put them on cloth bags and at a table they measure, inspect, weigh and ring them in a couple of minutes then off they go. We watched three willow warblers being processed. Fascinating. Recently they had a bird that had been ringed the previous day in the Channel Islands and flown all this way in 24 hours.

The lower east path was quite hard going, narrow, vertiginous and up and down. At the Quarry we met a lady who looks after the 20 wild horses, coming over four times a year. She showed us the path up to the main track along the island's spine. Wide and level, a nice change. We walked almost to Halfway Wall, had some second lunch, and enjoyed the easy walk back to the house. Saw a Wheatear and some other unidentified passerines. Looked in the Museum which is ... small. Admired the rusty detritus from ships ancient. Home for tea and cake with the others.

L & I cooked a large chilli con carne for all; the powder we bought at the shop turned put to be v strong. I'm sweating now as I think about it. The hob malfunctioning meant it was either on or off, which meant constant switching to avoid burning - L & I had hands on for 2 hours, but we did end up with a superior sauce.

We went to the 8pm daily sightings meeting where the wardens record the data. A surreal affair. The pub's function room was packed, and as Lucy read out each bird name people shouted put numbers and locations - there was competitive intensity in the air, but I don't believe anyone can count 176 kittiwakes and be sure the numbers are not duplicates. But I suppose as they do this every day it is an indictator of trends perhaps. We trooped home (all of 15m) and chilled.