Shearwater Island Wild

Off the rugged coast of Wales lies a special wild sanctuary.

An island known for thousands of years as a place of pilgrimage.

Once a home to monks, Celts and Christians

but always a sanctuary for a special wild visitor...

Secret pilgrims who arrive on the summer winds

from distant southern seas.

BIRDS CACKLE

CACKLING INCREASES

Although they come here in their thousands,

they are rarely ever seen.

Though Bardsey Island lies a few miles off the northwest coast of Wales,

it is a strangely isolated place.

SEABIRDS CALL

The seas here can be so treacherous that the Welsh call it Ynys Enlli.

The Island in the Tides.

Its human pilgrim story started over 1,500 years ago

when Christian monks came here in search of solitude.

Its isolation has always made Bardsey a sanctuary for wildlife too.

The island's clan of grey seals

take advantage of the summer days to fatten up

for the autumn breeding season and the winter that follows.

SEAL HONKS

Low tide is time to haul out

and to relax.

It's a welcome break from the fish-rich but cold Irish Sea.

As night settles on the island,

surprising summer visitors gather offshore.

They have journeyed from the coast of South America,

lured by the island as a safe place to breed.

Manx Shearwaters. Though they come here in their thousands,

they can only be glimpsed in the last light of day.

After fishing far out at sea, they only dare return to the island

under the cover of darkness,

safe from predatory gulls and peregrine falcons.

BIRDS CACKLE

In the dead of night, they descend on the island.

Their mating calls fill the air.

SCREECHING AND CAWING

But by dawn, the phantoms appear to have vanished.

The Shearwaters aren't the only pilgrims to have flocked to Bardsey.

In the depths of the Dark Ages, the abbey here was revered

throughout Britain as a sacred place of pilgrimage.

The ruins of the stone walls the monks first laid,

can still be seen today.

So many pilgrims came, never to leave, that legend has it

20,000 saints are buried here.

The land is still worked by the handful of year-round residents

who make the most of the fair summer weather.

In the patchwork of fields,

thistles attract Painted Ladies,

Peacock butterflies, bees

and migrant Hummingbird Hawk-moths,

who only appear at the height of summer.

Bardsey's hardy sheep though,

stay all year round, keeping the pastures well trimmed,

attracting the island's latest brood of choughs.

While the soil provides the choughs with a hearty meal of grubs,

deeper underground

the earth hides a special Shearwater secret.

Although the adults appear to have gone

their chicks are here, hundreds of them.

They're just hidden, out of sight.

And almost out of reach from the wardens of the Bardsey Bird Observatory.

who carefully monitor the population.

CHICK SQUEALS

With their young safe in burrows away from the hungry gulls,

parents can spend all day fishing

to keep their fast-growing fluff ball well-fed.

When the chick is ready to leave the safety of its burrow,

it may not touch land again for over two years

when it too returns to Bardsey to breed.

The Shearwater parents delay their return until the darkest hours

when the night is black.

The island's lighthouse, the only light for miles around,

has for centuries been a beacon of safety for seafarers.

But on a moonless, misty night, for returning Shearwaters,

the lights can be deadly.

The birds are attracted to the beams like moths to a flame.

Most struggle through, for they must land safely.

On these dark nights, the wardens keep a watchful eye

and are rewarded with an intimate view of these unusual birds.

Safe on the ground, the Shearwaters must now find their hungry chicks

in the dark.

For a bird adapted to spend most of its life at sea,

walking on land is tricky.

No-one really knows how they find their own burrows in the darkness...

..but they do.

In its lifetime, a Manx Shearwater may travel nearly 5 million miles

returning to the same burrow, year upon year to breed.

Always in the dark, on its secret pilgrimage to this ancient island.

As the summer draws to a close, the adults will fly south.

After months of careful nurturing, they abandon their chicks

to find their own way to the distant coast of South America.

The island falls silent, until the next year

when these wild pilgrims return.

Subtitles by Maria Frate Red Bee Media Ltd

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