The 2013 North Rona field season is under way!
We arrived safely on the island on Saturday 21st September just in time to make the best of the remaining hours of dry weather before the rain came in and everything seemed normal.
The party this year has three new faces to brighten up the hut and make the old man feel even older.
Sian joins us fresh from a whirlwind tour of the West Coast, after a spell doing diet work at SMRU.
James is a known commodity as he’s just finished a Master’s at Durham, working on seal distribution in relation to topographical features – he finally gets to see in reality what has been a simple map until now.
Toby hails from Portugal, but came to us via working as a photo-ID specialist in Wales. He has just started work on a PhD with Paddy, the fourth member and team boss.
We’ve spent Sunday and today getting the hut into some sort of order then setting up the hides above the study area.
Despite the near zero visibility, we managed to see a handful of seals ashore – the real early birds.
Our next posts will update on what we hope to do this season.
best,
P, J, S, T.