‘I’d like to think we’ve all got a common goal’

Matt Scragg has spent the last three years as the site’s assistant warden and will now be stepping up to take on the main role. He is currently on holiday and will pick up his binoculars and bird ringing tools in earnest when he returns to Alderney in March.

‘I’m really looking forward to getting back in time for the spring migration and enjoying the great wildlife that Alderney has to offer,’ he said.

‘As well as stepping back into what is a great community.’

The observatory was set up in 2016 and monitors thousands of birds that stop off at the island as they migrate through the area, as well as supporting populations of sea-birds.

Mr Scragg said that, going forward, it would be business as usual.

‘On a day-to-day basis there is not a lot that can change as we need to carry on with the vital fixed point long-term monitoring of our bird populations,’ he said.

‘But there might be a few side projects we begin, involving storm petrels and the lesser black back gull.’

His predecessor, John Horton, left the role at the end of January to take up the position as warden at the prodigious Cape Clear Bird Observatory in Ireland. He had been quite critical of the management and set up islands Ramsar site by the Alderney Wildlife Trust, but Mr Scragg took a more conciliatory tone.

‘I would like to think that we’ve all got a common goal,’ he said.

‘Moving forward, that is something we can build a relationship on.’

Mr Scragg has worked at bird observatories for the last eight years and before that had worked at the theme park and zoo, Flamingo Land in Yorkshire.

‘It was there that I started having a more focused effort on bird ringing and conservation,’ he said.

And he is no stranger to living on remote islands, having worked for two years on the island of Landsort in Sweden.

‘There were only 16 full-time residents, it would be busy in the summer but in the winter it was like a ghost town,’ he said.

‘Compared to that Alderney is quite the metropolis.’