Fair Isle Bird Observatory

Ranger's Blog 2026

May

May has been a busy month with plenty to keep me occupied, with steadily increasing numbers of guests, cruise ships, a visit from my parents, and all sorts else!

One of my first jobs at the start of each month is going round the isle and checking on all of our biosecurity boxes. With this month’s check closely following news of a rat on Mousa, I was keeping my fingers crossed that we would not suffer the same fate, but luckily, we were all clear. The biosecurity monitoring is done using chocolate-flavoured wax blocks, and any sign of rodents is recorded. Here, our resident mice like to have a nibble at the blocks, but they aren’t cause for any concern.

I’ve packed in a good number of guided walks in the past few weeks, covering all of the routes I offer and with a few evening Puffin walks. The Puffin walks have varied from no birds on land to lots coming in as soon as we sit down to wait, with the latter leading to lots of happy guests! A few of my longer walks have been particularly memorable for falling on days when we’ve had good birds turn up, including one where a Bluethroat and a Western Subalpine Warbler at Barkland were located either side of a wall, both visible at the same time from where we stood, and at one point were both in the same ditch! Another particularly notable walk day was the day the Northern Parula turned up. I had been about to leave with a guest for a guided walk to North Light when Tom put out the news, so the walk quickly turned into a twitch followed by a walk around the south-west coast instead, with plenty more nice birds to see, including a Cuckoo that then spent the latter part of the afternoon (after I’d gone back for seconds of the Parula) teasing me by landing close in front of me but never giving me a chance to photograph it!


An impressive turnout for a Puffin walk, luckily coinciding with an impressive Puffin turnout!

We’ve also now had the first few cruise ships of the season, though of the six that have been so far, only three have actually managed to land passengers – not a great success rate this early on! I always enjoy cruise ship days, so it’s good to have them back again – they’re a great opportunity to chat to people from all over the world and to really test your Fair Isle knowledge when passengers ask you questions such as how many vehicles are on the isle! The Puffins have turned out in varying numbers each time to delight the cruise ship passengers, many of whom were seeing them for the first time. Each time a ship comes in the Hall and Museum open, with the Hall set up for knitwear and artwork sales, and with a delicious array of cake available (always my first stop after a cruise ship puffin walk!) alongside hot drinks. There’s always a lively buzz about the Hall when its full of cruise passengers, and this year has been particularly nice as the Observatory now holds a stall selling merch, where I will go and help Ruth with questions and sales once I have finished with Puffin walks and nabbed a slice of cake.


This ewe had a lot to say about the arrival of the first cruise ship of the year...

I have completed three sessions with Fair Isle Primary School so far this season, and all three have been a big success with the three kids in the school. Our first session included a walk around the south of the island during which I had set the children the challenge of finding something beginning with every letter of the alphabet, whether it be birds, plants or other parts of nature. They put in a very good effort, finding things for all but six letters of the alphabet, and even managing some of the trickier ones! Our second session focused on bird ringing, with the kids and their teacher Jonathan joining myself and our Head of Ornithology Alex for a trap round. The school’s headteacher was visiting at the time so she also joined us, and it was great to be able to introduce her to some of the work done by the Observatory. After pushing the traps we returned to the Obs where AWs Tom and Luke had opened the nets in the garden, leaving us with five birds (two Chiffchaffs, two Blackcaps and a Sedge Warbler) to show the children being ringed and for them to get to release afterwards! Our most recent session was a beach clean of the school’s adopted beach at Muckle Uri Geo in collaboration with FIMRO, with data collected for the Marine Conservation Society. 4kg of litter was collected, made up of 103 pieces, by a very efficient team of 20 volunteers!

This month has also seen me take up a new role on the island, learning the ropes to be able to open the Museum. Fair Isle has an impressive history for such a tiny place, and there’s a lot to learn! I now have a regular Friday slot opening the Museum for an hour and a half. I’ve only done it a couple of times so far but I’m already starting to learn a little more each time and become more confident in what I do know.


Choppy seas by my Gannet plots!

Seabirds are slowly starting to occupy more of our time as the first species have begun in this past month to settle down and start to lay eggs. Each of us on the Ornithology team has a species we carry out breeding productivity monitoring on with regular checks. My productivity species is Gannets, of which I have 5 plots totalling around 300 nests that I check every 7-10 days. I’ve completed three visits to my plots so far this year, and it’s a little early to be able to say how they are doing, but I have seen a good few birds on eggs.

Something else that has also begun for the season is our regular talk schedule. Our first talk was on 19th May, and the plan is to continue with talks either by members of the Ornithology team or by guest speakers occurring every Tuesday and Friday evening after Log. So far, we’ve had three talks, the first week starting with Alex giving what will be his regular talk on the Seabirds of Fair Isle, and a guest talk by artist Kat Owens about her project Entangled and Ingested. Kat’s talk focused on the effects of plastic on marine life, and her artwork uses single-use soft plastic to create life-size works of marine species that have been found entangled in or having ingested plastic, including several whale species making for some very large pieces of work! The talk was followed by a workshop in which those who attended the talk were able to contribute to Kat’s biggest piece of work yet, sewing plastic to the fabric backing of a 10x6ft portion of what will be an 80ft long Blue Whale! I have also delivered my first talk of the year, one on the history of FIBO that I’ll be giving on a regular basis. I usually enjoy giving talks, and once I’m in the flow I tend to get quite into them, and this one was no exception!


An example of one of Kat's pieces, a Fulmar made out of single-use plastic.

Other birdy highlights not mentioned include Fair Isle’s first record of Spoonbill, two individuals found by Tom as they landed, and which stayed on Da Water only just long enough for us to make it with a few guests from the Obs! The past week and a half have been exceptional, with several Bluethroat, a Red-throated Pipit found by Luke at Field just as I was passing on the way back to the Obs after a cruise ship, a Thrush Nightingale found by Tom at Setter, and of course the Northern Parula deserves another mention, bird of the season so far, and what a run of good finds Tom is having!

I’ve not fitted in many Shorewatches recently, and those I have managed have been pretty quiet, though one afternoon immediately upon my return to the Obs after completing a couple of watches, Luke, who was just heading out, picked up a large pod of Risso’s Dolphins heading for Buness. The timing was slightly frustrating, but I couldn’t be annoyed for long when I realised how slow they were moving and that I could catch them off of Buness! This led to a pretty incredible and unusually long encounter with a nursery pod complete with several calves! The best views of Risso’s I’ve had yet and a big highlight of the month for me. A visit from my parents and getting to spend a few days showing them around the island I’ve told them so much about was also welcome – they found Fair Isle a little cold and hilly being used to very flat Norfolk but loved it! They also helped me test-run the Fair Isle Monopoly I spent my free time working on last year, which is now playable in the Obs bar! Since the last update, we have also carried out both our BBS surveys for the year and got the Oysterplant fence up by South Light with the help of housekeeper Maebh to protect the Oysterplant from the sheep, plus I’ve had my first T-shirt weather days of the season! The next few weeks should bring a bit more seabird work, more cruise ships, and the first evening talks for the Assistant Wardens, rounding off the first of each of our four regular talks!

See you next month!

April

Hi everyone! I’m Carla, I was Ranger last year and loved it so much I’m back again for the 2026 season! It’s great to be back on Fair Isle, and within a day of being back it felt like I’d never left. We have the whole staff team from last year back which means we’ve all settled back into a routine very quickly, running like a well-oiled machine even after a few months apart.

After being stuck on Shetland for two days (staying with Karen, one of the FIBO directors who generously fed and housed AW Tom and I for the time we were stuck while her new puppy kept us entertained!) and fearing not making it over due to a lot of snow in the morning, it was a relief to make it back and to reacquaint ourselves with the lay of the land with a walk around the south road loop. A Greenland White-fronted Goose by Skerryholm was a nice start to the season.

So far, it’s been a busy few weeks of mostly indoor jobs for me, following on from some display board content I put together at the end of last season, so I’ve spent several hours guillotining and laminating and guillotining again before sticking Velcro to the back of each piece of text or photo. My next job was arranging these Velcro-ed parts on the boards then walking away quickly before I can scrutinise how straight (or not as the case may be) each element is. I’ve also been working on some talk slides for the coming season as we work on getting a regular talk schedule up and running, in between other odd jobs.

It’s been a windy start to the season, making for a slow start bird-wise, but also limiting opportunities for outside jobs. On the few calm afternoons we’ve had, it’s been nice to get out and help our Assistant Wardens, Luke and Tom, with some jobs around the isle, including translocating some irises to the Obs Scrape that had been dug up from the Walli Burn to prevent it clogging up, and fixing the catching box on the Double Dyke trap after a disastrous escape by a Black Redstart a day earlier. We’ve also partially rebuilt the Gully trap, a big job that took several afternoons, and spent a couple of afternoons spreading seaweed on the Skadan crop in the hope that it will fertilise the soil and help the crop to grow with more success than last year. Some calm mornings offered an excellent opportunity for Tystie surveys, the east coast one morning and west coast the following morning – two very early starts in a row for the Ornithology team! Tystie surveys are slightly unconventional in that they are carried out by shouting down cliffs. This encourages the birds out of their deep and inaccessible nesting cavities down the cliffs and onto the water, where they sit patiently to be counted, the large white patches on their wings standing out against the sea surface. In terms of birds, the highlights so far have been a White-billed Diver and a Woodlark, and I was also very happy to get to ring my first Snow Bunting!


A view well worth the 5am alarm during the west coast Tystie survey!


Snow Bunting in the hand, one of my favourite birds and one I was very pleased to get to ring!

In terms of more Ranger-y outdoor jobs, I’ve done my first biosecurity box check and my first Shorewatches of the year. I’m pleased to report that we remain rat-free, and my first venture to the South Light shorewatch site (somehow I only did Buness shorewatches all season last year) resulted in a Porpoise sighting! I have also completed my first few guided walks of the year, including testing a new walk route up Vaasetter. This is a part of the island I don’t venture to often enough, and I forget how good the view from up there is, besides it’s also pretty cool to see Sheep Rock up close! I’m excited to get up there a bit more this year, if I can work out a route around the Bonxies in the summer!


One of the best views over Fair Isle, from the top of Vaasetter

We’re having a bit of a competition between the obs staff this year – who can see the most bird species this season? Our whiteboard in the staff corridor is covered in some very long tick lists, one for each member of staff, and when something new is spotted a queue often forms as everyone heads to update their list. As expected, the wardening team have begun leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, their mornings spent on census giving them a distinct advantage. Though my list is slowly growing, I’ve still got some catching up to do – bring on more guests and more guided walks!

Puffins have been returning in dribs and drabs, with the first on land of the year spotted on 9th April, and numbers of other birds such as Wheatear and Bonxies are climbing. I’m eagerly awaiting the first Arctic Skuas of the year, my favourite Fair Isle species, and due any time! It also won’t be long before the first cruise ship arrives in early May – here’s hoping I keep up my puffin success rate of last season where I managed at least a couple of puffins for every ship that came in!

See you all soon for another update!