Qualla: Skomer https://qualla.com/skomer en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Skomer https://qualla.com/skomer Skomer: Introduction https://qualla.com/skomer/ Wait for dusk on a still summer night near Martin's Haven, and the sea begins to chatter. The sound rises from Skomer Island a kilometre offshore, where hundreds of thousands of Manx shearwaters are coming home in the dark. They have been at sea since first light, fishing thirty miles north in the Irish Sea, and they will only land under cover of darkness because the great black-backed gulls will tear them apart in daylight. The cackling, crooning racket they make as they search for their burrows has been heard here for at least five thousand years.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Skomer: The Cleft Island https://qualla.com/skomer/ Vikings named it Skalmey, the cleft island, after the way two bays nearly slice its eastern end clean off the main body. That eastern bulb, called the Neck, is connected to the rest of Skomer only by a thin isthmus of land, and visitors are forbidden to cross it. The whole island...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-the-cleft-island.mp3 0:06 2 full Skomer: Stone Walls in the Bracken https://qualla.com/skomer/ Walk Skomer in the right light and the ground reveals what the bracken usually hides: faint rectangles of stacked stone, the outlines of fields a Bronze Age farmer once worked. Airborne laser scanning combined with excavation by archaeologists from Sheffield, Cardiff, and the Roy...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-stone-walls-in-the-bracken.mp3 0:06 3 full Skomer: Half the World's Shearwaters https://qualla.com/skomer/ The shearwater number is the one that stops people. Around half of the entire global population of Manx shearwaters breeds on Skomer and its near neighbour Skokholm, with surveys estimating hundreds of thousands of pairs across the two islands. The birds are extraordinary navigat...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-half-the-worlds-shearwaters.mp3 0:06 4 full Skomer: One Mammal and Many Lichens https://qualla.com/skomer/ Skomer has its own mammal: the Skomer vole, Myodes glareolus skomerensis, a subspecies of bank vole that exists nowhere else. Without ground predators, the vole population swells to around 20,000 in the summer bracken, which is enough to feed an entire breeding colony of short-ea...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-one-mammal-and-many-lichens.mp3 0:06 5 full Skomer: Fifteen Minutes Across the Sound https://qualla.com/skomer/ Getting to Skomer is rationed. The Dale Princess crosses from Martin's Haven in about fifteen sheltered minutes, but the boat runs only April through September, only when the weather agrees, and never on Mondays. Visitor numbers are capped at 250 a day, with advance booking stron...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/n/skomer-wp/gchn-skomer-fifteen-minutes-across-the-sound.mp3 0:06 6 full