Ann's Adventures: Aww, crap!

What a weird start to the morning! I woke up at 4 am and decided to get up as I hadn't finished yesterday's blog post. A quick check of the wind gauge showed about 11 knots, and a look out the window showed a lightning storm in the distance, working its way northwest. About half an hour later, a glance at the gauge showed over 30 kts, meaning that the flag had to come down. We lower it when the wind is above 25 as it can take quite a beating in high wind. It was still dark, and I pondered the logic of wrapping myself around a metal pole with an electrical storm on the way, but since it was still a long way away, I went for it. The process is to bring the flag down, wrap it around the pole and then secure it by wrapping a light rope around it several times. It takes just a couple of minutes. I wasn't sure how the gulls would react to my presence in the dark. I got my wet, fishy-smelling answer before I was done. T-shirt, shorts and leg received a direct and impressive hit, but thankfully my hair was spared! I had to change and clean up before I could get back to the blog. Of course, minutes later, the wind died right down.

By the time I went to clean the solar panels, it was back up again, and I had a water check to do in 45 minutes, so I set myself on a quick pace. They weren't too bad today, and I was making good progress until on one squeegee stroke, I brushed the bird spikes meant to keep the gulls off the panels. Just one little prick into the tip of my little finger, but it was a bleeder. By the time I finished, the pole and my hand resembled a crime scene. Almost any cut you get here is going to get a little infected, so bleeding was good, and I had a pack of sanitizing wipes in my scope bag. I got the water check done and returned to clean the lower solar panels and windows on the researcher residence.

The bird spikes might not work on gulls, but they definitely work on Nightingales. The bandaid is from a previous unrelated incident.

With the main chores of the day done, I decided I wanted to do a bit of a seawatch, but the wind was howling again. I took my gear to the researcher residence as it has a fantastic view. This is how to do a seawatch! Warm, dry, no fear of overhead dive-bombings and I could even sit down! Not much movement again today, but I think I'll be spending more time over there this coming week since it isn't occupied right now. Then the fog rolled in.

Great views to the west from the researcher residence

The direction of the wind meant that working on the compost project was possible, and the fog kept things cool. I am almost done! Half of the contents of the right bin were turned into the left, and piled up to make scooping it over new material easy. About half of what was left was taken to fill various holes around the island, and the remainder was turned so that it can be used or saved to cover new compostables as needed. One of the really interesting things about the compost here is that there are no earthworms. While there are some native worms on Vancouver Island, most of what we see are introduced species. On this little patch of rock, there don't appear to be any. There are just a couple of things left to do over the weekend before it is officially finished.

Bin 1 now reloaded with turned material from bin 2

Bin 2 emptied with remaining compost turned

Nearly done!

Compost used to fill trenches and holes from previous work

The turnstones and surfbirds are back at the beach. Yesterday's low count turned out to be an anomaly. After supper, a scope of the rough waters turned up one brave whale watching boat and a Sooty Shearwater. I went back to the researcher residence for another look west just before sunset. There still wasn't much action on the water, but there was a lovely sunset--except for the contributions by the gulls. Guess I'll have my work cut out for me tomorrow!