Discovering the magic of Mingulay
Transcript
Three speakers: Cal Major (Trust ambassador), Tegan Newman (ranger) and James Crymble (seabird ecologist)
Cal
We're just arriving onto Mingulay and already it's absolutely incredible.
There are white sandy beaches with hundreds of grey seals on the beach and in the water.
This feels like a really remote place, and it feels like it's just us and the wildlife.
What a privilege.
Mingulay, one of the Bishop Isles, is the penultimate island at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides.
After an estimated 4,500 years of occupation, it was abandoned in 1912.
It's great, however, to see one population of mammals still thriving.
The beach next to us has a massive colony of grey seals on it.
So, we're here just to count the seals – this is something that Tegan will do throughout the season.
And then, above us, there are white-tailed sea eagles.
There are four of them right now, just circling overhead.
I was like ... I don't know how this can be real!
A lot of these seals on the beach are female, and at this time of year, many of them will be pregnant, won't they?
So, do we have to be super careful not to disturb them, not to stress them out while they're carrying a pup?
Tegan
Absolutely. But from a personal opinion, I want everyone to come and experience the seals here on Mingulay.
I think they're so wonderful; they're brilliant to see.
We've just got to be a bit careful to minimise the disturbance.
They're incredibly faithful to this bay and they will keep coming back here.
Cal
Love that. So, come and enjoy them, but just give them a bit of space. Amazing.
Our main work whilst here on Mingulay is to continue the monitoring of the effects of the recent avian influenza outbreak on seabirds.
We were doing this work last year on St Kilda as well and now we're back on Mingulay doing it again.
Did we actually learn anything from the samples that were taken last year on St Kilda?
James
We got a little bit of feedback from Edinburgh University who are coordinating the ECOFLU project, and all the samples that we took on St Kilda from great skuas came back as positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (or HPAI) and that was really interesting.
It means that these birds have been exposed to the virus.
They've developed antibodies and immunity to it, and are back breeding on St Kilda, which is really, really interesting.
All of it is just a big puzzle basically; we're trying to work out exactly what happened when HPAI swept through the British Isles.
Cal
So, this is really important work because Scotland has most of the world's population of great skua, and a lot of them nest on islands like this.
What we want to do here is try and understand that disease process a bit more, so that we can try and protect them and look after them a bit better and hopefully get their numbers back up to what they were before.
Good sample size there.
1.4 ...
1.385
That's bang on a mill and a half.
Cal
I have absolutely loved my time here on Mingulay. It's felt really special.
And once again it's felt like a huge privilege to be able to spend this time with the amazing National Trust for Scotland team.
They work so hard.
They're out in all weathers, up the hills, on the cliffs, looking after this incredible place.
The ecosystem here is so special to be around and to see it all interacting and functioning together, it's just been a phenomenal experience.
I really recommend a trip to Mingulay if you get the chance.
And if you've been inspired by this video, then please support the work that the National Trust for Scotland do to protect incredible, beautiful, wild places like this.
Mingulay is located just south of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. Continuously inhabited for 2,000 years, Mingulay is now a wild and remote place, home to hundreds of seabirds and grey seals. Its abandoned dwellings are all that remain of the communities who lived there – the last of Mingulay’s residents left in 1912. The island, along with neighbouring Pabbay and Berneray, has been in the care of the Trust since 2000.
I was excited to make my first trip to this special place and see how it compared to many of the other Hebridean islands I’ve visited. I was going to assist the Trust’s seabird team in collecting blood and saliva samples from great skuas and puffins, which supports their continued research into the devastating effects of avian influenza, or ‘bird flu,’ on Scotland’s seabird populations.
The initial results have shown that most of the great skuas we sampled had antibodies for highly pathogenic avian influenza, suggesting a degree of immunity among those who survived. The puffins mostly tested positive for a low pathogenic strain, insinuating cross-protection for the more dangerous version.
The last assignment I went on for this project was to another Trust place, St Kilda. As a veterinarian, I care about and respect all my patients, but working with these birds has been a massive highlight for me and an enormous privilege.
Arriving on Mingulay
Getting to Mingulay was an adventure in itself as my partner James and I took a local tour boat from Barra. Watching Mingulay come into view was the first magical part of the experience – emerging taller and greener than I’d expected.
We landed near a tropical-looking white sandy beach, overlaid with crystal clear turquoise water ... and hundreds and hundreds of seals in the water and hauled out on the beach! These are grey or Atlantic seals, the biggest seal species in the UK, and this was a particularly large colony. I had never seen so many in one place before.
Along with the seals, we were greeted by two of the Trust’s seabird team – and the four of us were the only human inhabitants during our stay. The space and quiet definitely suited me and I immediately felt at home. I slept better that first night on Mingulay than I had for weeks at home.
Getting to work
We spent several long days on the hillsides catching adult skuas with specially designed and carefully placed traps, taking the samples under strict licence conditions. We were extremely careful to limit our time in their territories so we didn’t upset or disturb them more than necessary.
Great skuas are my favourite seabird. They’re big, kleptoparasitic predators and are highly adapted to living among seabird colonies. They pester other birds for their food and hassle ones as big as gannets until they drop the food they’ve just fished for, taking it to feed to their own young.
I regularly found myself wondering how to inspire more people to love these incredible birds. They might be bullies, but I find their caring instinct towards their chicks so inspiring and it only makes me love them more. Great skua fit an ecological niche; to me, that makes them an awesome animal.
While on Mingulay, they would regularly ‘dive bomb’ us – swooping rapidly out of the sky, vocalising as a warning to stay away from their eggs.
The puffins on Mingulay were incredibly feisty. We caught them on a cliffside on a different part of the island, sitting in the middle of a colony where we watched tens of thousands of puffins wheel around in the sky.
The more samples that the avian influenza study has, the more accurate the conclusions, so we worked hard on Mingulay to safely catch as many birds as we could to help increase our knowledge of the disease and, hopefully, protect more seabirds in the future.
Exploring the island
One beautiful morning we put on our wetsuits, masks and snorkels and jumped into the sea, far along the beach from the seals so we didn’t startle them. The seaweed was glorious, and I gently took some sea lettuce for my dinner.
We also took in Mingulay’s dramatic cliffs, with the Atlantic swell crashing at their bases. They were lined floor to ceiling with nesting seabirds, including guillemots, razorbills, fulmars and kittiwakes. I could have sat on those cliff tops all day, amongst the soft, pink meadows of sea thrift.
I would have loved to stay on Mingulay longer because there was so much more to see and hear. If you love an adventure, nature, wildlife and are craving a sense of wilderness, I cannot recommend a trip to Mingulay highly enough. However, I also highly recommend doing a couple of easy things to limit disturbance to the animals who rely on this island staying wild and remote:
- First, get in touch with the Trust’s ranger team who are working there. They can help ensure visits have limited impact, whether arriving by kayak, sailing yourself or getting a boat from Barra.
- When climbing, please be aware of the seabird nesting season from May to August – it’s essential that the cliffs remain a seabird haven. Seabirds are facing many pressures, so we need to give them the best chance of reproducing.
- And finally, please give ground-nesting birds, such as the puffins and skuas, and the seals the space they need. It might be more than you think! Even sensing the presence of humans can raise stress hormones, so please give them a wide berth.
I hope it won’t be long before I’m back on Mingulay. I returned home with topped-up batteries and a passion for our natural world as strong as it’s ever been.
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Mingulay, Pabbay & Berneray
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