Monday 14 April 2014

It's all happening at the obs

Even though spring migration is in full swing and mornings are filled doing census work and ringing...

... there is still lots of practical work to be done at the Observatory. 

Over the past few weeks staff and volunteers have been getting the building is ready for this seasons guests who are due to arrive next week. 

As you will have seen, Todd, Bevan and Mike have been here for two weeks and left yesterday stop they have made great inroads into a rather large workload we had. Mark and Steffan have been busy getting the Observatory ready, painting and preparing rooms, cleaning and tidying.

 Todd and his team have been fitting new skylights.

Before...
After...

Todd constructed a replacement hide on for Solfach at home in the West Midlands and transported it in kit form to the island where he Bevan and Mike assembled it on the beach. 

During winter months heavy rain penetrated the roof at Christine bringing down a portion of the upstairs ceiling on the landing. 
Steve spent his morning fixing the problem...

We now just need the filler to dry and the new ceiling to be painted. 

Todd, being a professional roofer, spent some time trying to find the source of the problem and fix the leak on the chimneys. 
Steve has spent a lot of his time, between working on the report, ordering seo plies of cleaning products and loo rolls for the season. 
Also thanks to a generous donation specifically for improvements to the obs. he has been sourcing and ordering mountains of duvets, pillows, suggest, pillow cases, duvet covers and curtains from Dunelm. 

Mike and Bevan painted all the gutter brackets in the courtyard. 
And Todd followed fixing in the new guttering. 
 
Connor's new school room is nearing completion...

Todd and the gang left yesterday after two weeks hard work. 

They were replaced by our next volunteers, Fiona and Rob Bithell who got straight on with sorting out the from garden. 
And Steve finished off boxing in the skylights. 
Before...
After...
These now need a lick of paint and are then ready to go!

Mark and Steffam spent part of today monitoring chough nests. 

And Steve has been putting the finishing touches to the 2013 report ...

Then at 3pm all the residents and volunteers gathers on the narrows to do a clean up of the beach and surrounding areas. During the winter lots of sea-born rubbish is washed up on the beaches. The strong winds blow it ashore and all over the fields. However a couple of hours and we had three large bags full of rubbish which will leave the island to be processed on the mainland. 
And everyone was treated to tea, coffee and some fantastic cakes (thanks Ben, not just good at taking bird pics eh!) at the farm. 
We have also been collecting the accumulation of scrap metal that has built up at the obs over the past decade, this will also be leaving the island soon for recycling. 
And the Rayburn has been cleaned out and de-coaked, but is still in need of a full service!
So that is a brief round up of getting things ready for the start of the season.

1 comment:

  1. Marvellous! Brilliant jobs done! It all adds up to a great start to the year.

    ReplyDelete