A handful of staff were lucky enough to volunteer and explore Handa Island reserve for a week of manual labour, new friends, and tasty meals – all while getting a premium t-shirt tan.

Following on from the April work group – three more of us from head office, normally desk bound and sedentary in our work, spent the week on Handa Island helping with upkeep and daily tasks. Peter Gilbert (Volunteer Development Officer), Camilla Blasi Foglietti (Knowledge and Evidence Manager) and Rebekah Strong (Nature-based Solutions policy adviser) had an amazing time sampling island life. With Rab Potter (Reserves Manager) and Eddie Degnan (Reserves Project Officer) to keep us right. Read on on to see what we got up to and some of the speculator wildlife were lucky enough to see…

The bothy – an original building believed to be used by shepherds up until late 1940s.

Sunday tour of the island and dip in the sea – the island is closed to visitors on Sundays, so we had it all to ourselves – luxurious!

Much of the circular route around the island consists of wooden boardwalks. Our task was to build a connecting section at Boulder Bay and replace one at the visitor shelter. Good path maintenance means people are more likely to stick to them – reducing erosion and wildlife disturbance. It took us two and a half days to finish! We definitely perfected our hammering technique.

Some of us also got to help with daily running of the island – welcoming and inducting visitors and ensuring the ferry crossings ran smoothly.

While this was happening the rest of us did odd jobs to make the ranger’s and volunteers’ lives a little easier – mainly chopping wood – a vital commodity in the colder months! We carried timber to up towards puffin bay in readiness for the next work group, returned old boardwalk all de-nailed and ready to be cut up and topped it off brashing bracken around trees planted by last group – many of which looked to be doing well. It was a busy few days!

We had a lot of wonderful wildlife encounters over the week – from crawling caterpillars to leaping dolphins. Here were some of our highlights:

We all had a magical experience and really appreciate the opportunity to directly help the management of one of the Scotland’s key wildlife havens. We would like to thank Linnea, Handa ranger, and the volunteers for being so welcoming and accommodating and dealing with our nonsense. Quite a squeeze to have 11 of us in the bothy at some points! Thanks also to Rab and Eddie for teaching us new skills.

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