We’ve been lucky to see The Wildlife of South and West Wales’ very own Skomer Island feature in the first and final episodes of Wild Isles. In last night’s Ocean episode, we saw our most numerous island resident, the Manx shearwaters showcased by Sir David.

Skomer is home to half the world’s population of Manx shearwaters. Every spring 700,000 of these seabirds return to the island, travelling a whopping 7000 miles from South America, to breed and rear their chicks. With the cutting-edge cameras used to make Wild Isles, we were able to get an incredible insight into the behaviour of these secretive seabirds.

Although 700,000 Manx shearwaters live on the island, they aren’t as easy to spot as you might think due to their nocturnal lifestyle, but the number of burrows covering the island gives an indication of the size of our shearwater population. Like puffins, they nest underground and rear their chicks in the same burrow every year.

Manx shearwaters only emerge from their burrows under the cover of night, so your best chance of seeing and hearing them is to go for a night-time walk around the island. As you walk along the paths, you may experience their unusual calls which pirates off the Welsh coast used to mistake for witches! It’s good to bear in mind that they avoid coming out of their burrow on moonlit nights as the light makes them more vulnerable to predators like Great Black-backed gulls.

The best time to see shearwaters on Skomer and Skokholm is in August and September, when the chicks are fledgling on mass. As their feet are so far back on their bodies, making them very clumsy at walking, they have to climb as high as they can to give themselves best chance of getting airborne. They will try to climb up anything - walls, rocks and sometimes island visitors! Once successfully fledged, they’ll start their 7000 mile journey to South America.

Find out more about Skomer Island.