Rathlin Island Wild Week Revisited

Just after 8:30am.

I'm straight off the ferry.

There are harbour seals sitting in the distance.

Eider ducks swimming past them.

There's a red-breasted merganser in among those eider ducks.

That's a fish-eating duck with quite a sharp beak on him.

Oh, look, that's a shelduck.

It has to be a shelduck right in the corner.

That's a real bonus.

Red-breasted merganser, shelduck and eiders really, really close to me.

Normally I use my spotting scope and look out to sea to see them, but they're right here!

This, for me, is the best wildlife hotspot

possibly on this entire island.

I REALLY love this place.

'The best way to see Rathlin is with a local,

'and Liam McFaul is an islander born and bred.

'He knows this place like the back of his hand.'

That's such a beautiful scene lying there in the sunshine, scratching themselves and yawning.

-These are harbour seals?

-Yes, there's commons there, and there's a grey in there as well.

-So a common seal is the same as a harbour seal?

-Yeah.

And the grey seals, there's one I can see on the edge. There's three together there.

There's one looking at us there, which is a common,

and then the one next to it

lying really lazily,

you'd think it's using the other one as a pillow!

The grey seals have this kind of long Roman nose.

That's one of the telltale signs. We were here a few minutes ago and we were watching them porpoising,

leaping clear of the water. It looked like they were just playing.

I've seen boats there

and they follow the boats at the same speed just keeping going.

You think they're looking at you saying, "I can go faster than you!"

This is always my first port of call whenever I come to the island.

I want to see the seals and then I want to have a look at the birds.

But for years now, I have been trying to see chuffs,

a beautiful crow here,

and there's the last breeding pair in Northern Ireland right here.

-Any chance that I'm going to see that today?

-Well, we can go and have look and hopefully we'll be lucky,

but they're hard to find - they're there one minute and gone the next.

But I know the area that they're actually using

so we can go there and have a look and see.

We're still on the hunt for the chuffs,

but after a really short walk, how many species of birds have we seen?

-I think that's 22 now.

-22!

-Just since we've left the harbour.

But what we weren't expecting to find is these birds,

Irish Brent geese. These birds should probably be in Iceland by now.

They're quite late. It's amazing to see those four sitting there.

-Aren't they just beautiful?

-Beautiful.

Really gorgeous birds, and for me, I can never see them,

but I have to say, savour this!

There you go, look, look! Hares.

Gingery-coloured face.

Beautiful creature.

The sun's shining on them nice.

This is like THE iconic Irish animal, you know?

Genetically pure, isolated,

come to Rathlin, see just wonderful creatures like that.

No chuffs, mind you, but we'll keep looking.

A year, two years, three years,

you could go half a lifetime and not see one

on the mainland as you call it, in the rest of Northern Ireland.

Hardly ever see one on the mainland, to be honest.

Fermanagh and some areas of County Armagh are good for them, but nothing like this.

-It'd be very unusual if you came here, walked up the length of the island and not see a hare.

-Yeah.

We've entered up to Rathlin today

to call in here where there's a fair bit of activity.

What kind of birds are these?

At the moment, we have guillemots, razorbills, some black guillemots,

kittiwake on the ledges.

They'll fly in and out for a few weeks to locate their nest sigh. They'll be laying their eggs soon.

Those eggs are very well trained,

because they know not to roll towards the water!

Yes, I was telling you before, they lay one egg,

and it's got a pointy end on it, and it's designed in such a way

that it never rolls off the edge of the cliff,

cos you can imagine here sometimes, a large storm, a big swell

blows in and the wind picks up, and the egg could have blown off,

but in the majority of cases the egg stays on the ledge

and happily hatches into a chick.

But I have to say, if I were a sea bird,

I think I would just stay here and forget about Rathlin.

Yeah, well, maybe these are the smart ones!

It's quiet here, smaller numbers, but as I say,

when we get to Rathlin, it's spectacular.

We have thousands of them out there.

So we're just underneath the west lighthouse here,

Ian, and this is what I call a colony of sea birds.

Yeah, it's the West End, OK, of the sea bird world.

They've just spent nine months out at sea, and have come in,

and this is really their first week on the rocks.

And they'll be nesting in the next few days.

There must be thousands and thousands.

Yeah, there's tens of thousands.

Last week there was very few here, but they're in in big numbers today.

What about jostling for position, though,

how difficult is it for them to pick out the wee bit that they want?

It does look a bit mad at times, but they all know their little patch.

And the amazing thing is, when they lay an egg or have a chick later on,

they can actually come back to it again,

and you wonder how they find an egg in the middle of all that.

You'll get most of the razorbills up near the top,

and the guillemots are on the ledges and the middle bits,

and the black guillemots are along the bottom

and the puffins on the grassy banks.

So they all have their own little area to breed on.

But of all the places they could choose to come to, they have got

very good taste, cos they've picked Rathlin year after year after year.

It's the sort of habitat they look for,

there's food in the sea, and as long as there's food,

the birds will keep coming here. The cliffs are an idea habitat,

there's no predators here, they're safe.

Now, they're belting backwards and forwards

and they're heading out to find food?

Yeah, these birds will all sit on the surface and dive down,

and they can almost fly under the water.

The guillemots can go down to maybe 150ft in places

to catch little sardines, little fish.

Some of the puffins and that, maybe not as deep,

but they all have their depth and feed under the water.

And this is non-stop, this is continuous,

cos they don't go to bed at 9pm or 10pm at night, do they?

It never stops. If you're out here at midnight,

the birds are still feeding and coming and going in the dark.

And how healthy is the population?

The numbers do go up and down a little bit some years,

but overall it's still a pretty healthy colony here.

As long as there's food in the sea for them,

the birds will be here for a long time.

There's something about seeing these cliffs from sea level, Ian,

and I do feel very lucky to be able to do this today with you,

because most people don't get to see it from this angle.

No, I think we are lucky.

We're looking from the sea up towards the cliffs,

where most people come to the platform above us

at the lighthouse and look down. It really is spectacular.

You have to do this before you die.

It's one of those things you have to do, yeah.

What you're looking at here is a plant called pyramidal bugle,

and this is actually the rarest plant in Ireland.

And Rathlin is one of only two places

that it occurs in the whole of Ireland.

That is fantastic. I know bugle, like most people will, from other areas.

It's very different.

It's a pyramidal shape, much tighter to the ground.

Yeah, it's very squat, as you say, and it has these lovely little

blue flowers just in the ribs, up the sides.

Very delicate. Very rare.

It really is. And, do you know what, just while we sit here, Liam,

the other stuff that I know like tormentil,

really bright yellow again.

Free-range egg yolk yellow.

And there's a beautiful blue flower there. I don't know that, though.

This little one here, it's a very lilac and star-shaped,

a long stem, and this one's spring squill.

That's a new one on me. I haven't seen that one before.

Yeah, it is quite an uncommon one as well,

but in some places you get absolute banks of it,

there's a couple of places that's absolutely amazing for this.

You come to a place like this, you see the beauty

of the wider environment.

But get down, close and personal,

get at a child's eye level, and there is just treasure underfoot.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]