Castlemartin Scrolls

Drawing Craig Elegug

Vertical section on Elegug

I visited Castlemartin this weekend, an area of coastline used as a firing range by the MOD and closed to the public except on odd occasions. It is the site of some spectacular loomeries, mainly on flat topped sea stacks close to the cliff ledge, most notably Craig Elegug (guillemot rock) which allows close eyelevel views of the birds. I wanted to focus on these really dense groups, as a type I had not yet explored in the loomoery scroll drawings. This density resulted in some pretty intense and laborious drawing, working in detail over the whole weekend to produce a drawing of a long vertical ledge cascading down the left side of Elegug. Last night there was no night firing so I had a chance to visit Castlemartin from five until dark. As a remedy to the detailed drawing of the weekend I wanted to cut loose and did this by working in ink and brush, using minimal brush strokes to describe each bird. I was able to cover a lot of ground quickly this way and see the colony as a complete entity. As the drawing progressed from left to right as I always work on a scroll, the colony became denser and I soon lost individuals in the mass of movement. In response my mark making had to grow faster to cope with the constant movement and I soon found a new rhythm of working to describe whole formations of birds rather than individuals. I felt my drawing became more energetic the more intense the energy of the colony became deep in the densest sections. In this respect, despite losing my more illustrative approach I feel this drawing approach responds to and therefore documents the energy and cohesion of a loomery even if it is visually a more abstract expression. I finished the drawing at 22.47 in total darkness which may of helped the drawing progress as well.

Detail of very dense section on Elegug, brush and ink

This may be the last of these drawings I make form observation this season, unless I can return in time for fledging. It seems appropriate to end with a night drawing, on a still night and a near full moon rising but also with new ideas to give the project momentum.

Skomer Day 13: Last Day

Time-lapse ledge, showing imposter
being challenged.

I have had to manage my last day on Skomer carefully to make sure I collect all the information I need to help make the final scrolls for the exhibition in September.

First stop the Wick to try out a different time-lapse drawing to yesterday based on a shorter ledge. I wanted to try this because the shorter ledge meant drawing versions of the ledge in quick succession (about 20 mins each, the theory being I would be more likely to capture any changes happening over a short period, about an hour in this case. In fact I did manage to record an interesting interaction, which came as a complete surprise. In the image below, the first line in the series to be drawn being at the bottom, I recorded one bird returning to the group of four on the left making it five in the second row from the bottom. This guillemot allo-preened the nearby bird for the next forty minutes or so until, as shown in the 5th line up, another guillemot returns flying straight at the back of the first and wrestling it off the cliff before taking up this usurped birds position to make up the pair. I can only assume that the first returning bird was an imposter and the second, having made a direct line of flight to this spot was the true partner. In the last line at the top we can see it courting its mate. Only by using this time-lapse approach to observational drawing could this relationship reveal itself to me. 

After this I move further down the Wick to add another line to yesterday's long ledge time-lapse drawing. I wanted to include midday because this is supposedly a quieter period for the colonies in comparison to the morning and evening periods I already had represented in the drawing.

8pm at the Amos

Next, I move on to the Amos for the evening, where I recorded the major groups on the South side of the peninsular for a second scroll. This scroll, combined with the one from the beginning of the week will complete a panorama of the entire Amos loomery. Finally, I couldn't leave the island without another night amongst the returning Shearwater. A particularly still night and with so many breeding birds, I could stop and listen to the whole island alive with the gurgling whoops and cackles of hundreds of thousands of shearwater. This noise of the whole islands subterranian world reverberating gave me a sense of Skomer as an enormous breeding colony, dormant in the day and coming alive at night. Bleary eyed and half asleep at one in the morning surrounded by birds flopping in and out of burrows, brushing my head as they crash to the ground is a surreal experience; surely there must be folklore explaining this fantastical night time realm. For me the whole dreaming experience is epitomised by the wonderfully bizarre contrast of these sleek, hardy ocean navigators grounded amongst a fairy landscape of midnight blue bells and curling bracken furls.

      

Shearwater grounded in midnight blue bells

Shearwater movement, slow, frantic, sometimes
almost stealthy but not quite

Skomer Day 12: The Long Ledge

Wick ledge time-lapse

I returned to the Wick this morning and the long ledge I discovered yesterday. I began drawing the ledge at 08:30 and ran out of paper (3 metres) a third of the way along at Midday. The plan was to repeat the same section of ledge below but Skomer was hit by an incredible thunder storm and I had to escape the cliff. On the way back the rain was so heavy the paths ran with a foot of water, draining into the burrows, even flushing out Manx Shearwater that would never normally leave or enter their burrows outside the cover of darkness.

Manxie above ground in daylight, rare opportunity
for a close study before it shoved its head into a
hole as if in the hope that if it can't see me
I can't see it (bottom left of page).

The storm passed quickly and I managed to return late afternoon to add another two drawings of the ledge section. The aim here was to create a time-lapse drawing that showed any change in the number, density and behaviour of guillemots on the ledge throughout the day. In the evening I certainly noticed an increase in numbers as expected because around 4-8pm is a change over period when pairs swap over incubating the egg, there is also apparent heightened tension around this time with allo-preening and aggressive behaviour seeming to increase. However what really stands out when comparing the time-lapse is the way the overall composition of the groups remain unchanged, so that hour after hour it is possible to pick out the same birds by their location within the mass of activity, because of their loyalty to the same few centimetre square nesting site.  

Skomer Day 11: Exercise Lines

View on emerging from the crevice

Today I decided to explore a part of Skomer I have never seen despite it being the number one destination for most visitors to the Island. Many come to the grassy cliff top plateau known as the Wick for close encounters with its particularly amiable colony of puffins, but I am more excited about the rocky ledges below the main attraction. For the last three days I have been drawing guillemots in clumps on flat wide ledges and in the week before that more clumps on steep broad scree slopes. The Wick cliffs are different; they are sheer and flat with straight narrow ledges that underline neatly formed strings of guillemots. Amazing, that this slightly new type of loomery formation should seem so exciting to me, but after days absorbed in the detail of one site it comes as a revelation. With barely time to smile at the puffins whirring in and out of burrows around my feet as I carefully tread the path shown to me previously that leads past the boulder and into a shoulder width head high crevice. Squeezing through I feel like a pot-holer bursting into a forgotten subterranean world, the water is sapphire blue in a cavernous inlet; a hidden sanctuary away from the mingling puffins and puffin-lovers above, their hubbub replaced by the bustling of breeding kittiwake and guillemot clinging to the shear rock face, cutting the squeezed airspace with their lung bursting calls.

Brush and ink - quick and fluid, possibly good for
dense groups later.

I have often thought of the rhythm of drawing guillemot over again as being like forming characters in calligraphy. Seeing the groups of guillemot punctuating the wick cliffs in neat lines left to right makes this idea even more legible to me. So I begin to write guillemot, copying one of the ledges nearest me over in neat lines as an exercise. Each line takes between 7-8 minutes and I realise that this is a way of recording the changing structure of guillemot groups. A recurring theme throughout this project has been the way loomeries fluctuate in density at this period in the season, first during re-establishment of territory and later the sharing of incubation between pairs. I try this method in both ink and as a line drawings. Ink is fantastic, fluid and fast but less legible for what I want to do here – the line drawing works better to record the behaviours more precisely.

The same ledge drawn repeatedly to record change.

Later I explore further along the inlet out to sea and find a continuous ledge of guillemot, several hundred metres long. Evening spent painting studies at the Amos.   

Skomer (Week 2) Day 8-10: Eggs and Colour Rings

Drawing at the Amos, with a puffin onlooker.

I returned to Skomer on the 16th and with calm weather took the opportunity to work at the more exposed South West facing Amos site. At the moment I am tackling a larger composition on a 3m scroll of the entire study plot that is the main focus of the monitoring programme run here by Tim Birkhead. The majority of the Amos's Guillemot pairs have laid during the time I have been away, so there will be lots of colourful eggs in this drawing when finished. The patterning of birds across the loomery is also turning out to be different, not just because the geology of the ledges they use are not like the steep scree of the Bull Hole site I focused on last week, but because their behaviour has changed with many birds taking on a sitting incubating posture. 

Pairs take it in turns to incubate eggs in 12 hour shifts and there are change over periods at around 5-8am and 4-6pm. During these times, the loomery grows in density as birds return, from foraging perhaps and long greeting, allopreening displays and behaviour occur as guillemots commence in the process of persuading often reluctant partners to leave the egg they have been on for 12 or so hours so they can incubate it. Tension is often high at these periods as returning birds often need to reassert their dominance and claim over both nesting site and partner. Fights are common, often to deal with imposters - guillemot fidelity is not as clear cut as I previously thought. 

One of the main groups within the study plot

The main study groups are rich in ringed birds, recorded on the
drawing with a letter and number e,g R (red) 210

The other focus of this drawing are the guillemots which Tim has ringed with coloured numbered rings which enable researchers to keep track of individual movements, breeding success and even social bonds amongst the loomery. Putting the number on their rings into Tim's database will return a wealth of information about individual lives, I plan to include this information so that single birds can be identified and learnt about. Before evemn looking at the database, the rings have already proofed useful; I am pleased to include in the drawing, two birds which Julie identified as two which had laid early and lost their egg in last week's storm. Today we saw the female return hopefully to lay another egg after the usual four day average period away from the colony feeding at sea. These are the kind of stories that make the whole experience I want to convey so fascinating - only possible because of the dedicated monitoring on this site.

At the half way point by the end of day 2

Skomer Guillemots Under Threat

The work I am carrying out on Skomer covered in the previous few posts has given me an insight into the value of long term research. In this case, data from forty years of uninterrupted monitoring of guillemots on Skomer provides a massively important and rare long term study on which to soundly base research,developing knowledge and conservation decisions. It would be counter-intuitive and irresponsible to end such a long term study as this, especially when its modest annual cost far out ways the long term investment of research over forty years or the damage caused by breaking the data set. Not to mention that the current need (and promises) to understand a natural environment under increasing pressure, should make long term studies of marine life including Guillemots one of the more priceless resources available to the environmental bodies who have the responsibility of protecting such important environments. However.....

Natural Resources Wales have cut the £12,000 annual funding they provide for the ongoing Guillemot monitoring study on Skomer Island. This is a hugely important study, and gives valuable insights into seabird life and what affects their populations. Not only is it a shame to end such a long-running (and therefore valuable) data set, but the cut couldn't have come at a worse time, considering the huge impact the recent storms have had on seabird populations (current death toll 25,000 and rising).

This is a very bad decision on the part of Natural Resources Wales, and we'd like to see it amended.

Please sign the petition to reinstate funding for Skomer Islands guillemot research here:

SIGN PETITION

Skomer Day 7: Bull Hole for a Triptych

Photo of Bull hole section taken at left, 08.15 and right 18.30 

When I arrived at Bull Hole this morning the loomery was extremely sparse, illustrated by the photo on the left. By 4pm however, the number of birds was higher than I had seen all week, with many new ledges occupied and familiar ones heaving with birds. As well as guillemot returning to claimed ledges I noticed groups in flight approaching the colony in sync but landing in different areas, usually being chased off only to regroup and try again. I began a third scroll around this time, of a section stage left of the second scroll that incorporates research groups B and C. Again I used the faster method of line drawing to capture most of group C before 6pm.

One bird attacks another and 
appears to couple with its mate

This third Scroll, makes up a triptych of vertically hanging scrolls partly inspired by groups of hanging scrolls made in the Chinese tradition (e.g Wang Jian 1598-1677) but necessitated by the formation of steep cascading colony ledges at Bull Hole. Developing the drawings has been a learning curve first to establish what is achievable in this environment, secondly to work as economically as possible and thirdly to practice patient observation so that reacting to capture every movement and posture becomes more and more intuitive. The drawings I made towards the end of this week are minimal almost diagrammatic in the way they describe the essence of each individual behaviour. However the view they present is an insight of the colony on an individual, pair or small group level of detail restricted by the speed I can draw one to a few birds. Next time I visit Skomer in a few days, I will be looking at how to describe mass or synchronised behaviour over much larger groups or the entire loomery, using rapid marks or symbols that can be later deciphered into a recognisable drawing - visual ethograms. Weather permitting I hope to carry this work out at the Amos, so I can aim for a series of drawings covering a range of study sites used by Tim and at the same time follow the progress of G907.

Bull Hole

Sea Studies at Bull Hole, auks on the water, razorbill
'butterfly flight'.