Seeking sanctuary among terns and puffins, our writer volunteers for two weeks of manual work on a remote island run by the RSPB

At lunchtime on the second Sunday, the terns came to dance. A dozen sandwich terns – with long yellow-tipped beaks and punky black crests – among the hundreds of noisy, manic black-headed gulls on the beach. Their pre-mating bop involved a slow strut, legs bent and raised, and the hooking of wings in order to set off a lovely little pirouette.

I’d never have seen them but for Wesley, the assistant warden. “They came at exactly this time last year,” he said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

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They were, as was everything about tiny Coquet Island, off the wild, wind-ruffled coast of Northumberland, 30 miles north of Newcastle. I had come there neither to dance nor to mate, but as a volunteer with the RSPB on a two-week stint in late March to help prepare the delicate environment for the main summer breeding season.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coquet is not a large island. Photograph: Alamy

I should point out that this was not a mission for moral edification but rather because I like islands, love watching birds and fancied a break from sedentary work and the polluted, car-driving overbuilt world most of us live in.

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Coquet was ideal. Since its lighthouse went automatic in 1990, these four acres of grassland, low sandstone cliffs and rock platforms (it doubles in size at low tide) has been one of the RSPB’s most pristine sites. It has to be, because it’s a key nesting site for sandwich, common and Arctic terns and, above all, rare roseate terns. This is the only place in the UK where they breed, and just 104 nesting pairs were recorded on the island last year.

There are no roads, no power lines, no houses, and hardly any people. I was allowed on to the island only because I was there to work. As large signs remind passing kayakers and pleasure boaters, Coquet is closed to visitors. That appealed to my ascetic sensibilities, as did the fact I wouldn’t be in a fundraising role. I didn’t fancy even subtle chugging, and I certainly didn’t fancy meeting people. I was there for the birds.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A warden monitors gulls on the island. Photograph: RSPB

Still, Coquet turned out not to be quite as lonely as I expected. Once the birds have settled into their nests, much of the island becomes a no-go area, so lots of essential jobs have to be carried out in the short window between winter and late spring. Workers came to repoint outside walls, install cupboards in the kitchen, fix doors on outhouses. There was a delivery of nesting boxes made by inmates of nearby HM Prison Acklington.

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There was also the sensitive subject of a rat who had shown up on the island, possibly by swimming from a fishing boat. He’d been captured by night surveillance cameras but somehow evaded the bounty of poison and all the snack-filled cages Wesley and his boss, site manager Paul, had placed around the island. In the end, the Duke of Northumberland, who leases the island to the RSPB, sent two doghandlers with Ben and Bella, hyper-alert Patterdale terriers. The poor rat was promptly dispatched.

Meanwhile, I had menial tasks to perform. I mowed the grass to get it down to tern-friendly heights. Northumbria’s spring weather – typically lots of rain then sunshine – means it grows fast, so I had to mow it again. I spent hours “shingling” – shovelling heaps of shells and pebbles into a wheelbarrow and heaving them over to the manmade ledges where roseate terns like to nest. I tidied, cleaned, built, scrubbed, brushed, painted and drilled. I fuelled and refuelled the generator that drives the lights and, crucially, the macerator in the toilet. The house was characterful and clean, but pretty basic.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Coquet is a key nesting site for roseate terns. Photograph: RSPB

I chopped up firewood for our in-room burners. I also took turns cooking for Wesley, myself and the third island resident: Ibrahim, a Syrian ornithologist who came to the UK just before the civil war started and stayed to do a PhD at Newcastle University on the interactions between large gulls and smaller birds. In non-technical terms, he was looking for ways to stop lesser black-backed and herring gulls from feasting on tern eggs. In the evenings, we talked about the war and his family. I could see how the island was an escape from everything painful for him. I cooked hotpot. Ibrahim cooked kofte.

Wesley and I went on a litter patrol along the intertidal shelves. I met Coquet’s loafing grey seals, lots of kittiwakes and fulmars, as well as Canada geese, eider ducks, pipits, twites and oystercatchers. I’m no bird expert, but I was glad to hear of a previous volunteer who, on seeing an oystercatcher, got all excited and reported she had seen a “puffin eating a carrot”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The island’s lighthouse was made automatic in 1990. Photograph: Alamy

But it was when real puffins arrived, one bright, gusty afternoon, that I began to see the point of it all. Puffins spend the winter at sea and they had flown to Coquet all the way from the cold Atlantic, where they winter, a distance of perhaps 1,000 miles, on their stubby, fast-flapping wings, with their orange feet for rudders. We took a break to watch them bobbing about in great “rafts” on the North Sea, before flying in to rehome themselves in burrows built in previous seasons.

There were other high points. I had a chance to sleep in the mid-19th-century lighthouse. I loved seeing its beam at night, and the stars. I enjoyed not switching on my computer and watching no TV. I was glad we were alone most of the time; I had space and time to think. I got a bit stronger, and slept fantastically.

When the terns arrived, it was almost time for me to leave. The value of Coquet lies in the complete absence of intrusion. Those dozen dancing sandwich terns were the forerunners of all the others, heralding a new season, and another hopeful year in a human-free Eden. And I wouldn’t be there to see it or snap it, tweet it or brag about it. Volunteering isn’t holidaying, after all.

How to do it

Every year the RSPB produces a volunteering brochure, with new destinations added regularly. The 2018 edition lists 46 sites around the UK. Short- and long-term stays are available. Volunteers pay for their travel and food, and sometimes a night’s B&B en route to an island site. See the RSPB website for details.

More great rural volunteering opportunities

Handa, Sutherland

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The beach where the passenger ferry lands on the east coast of Handa Island, Sutherland. Photograph: Alamy

Two volunteers a week are needed in summer on Handa, north-west Scotland, to greet day trippers. Extra helpers are needed for a beach clean in April, and there are also placements from two weeks to five months. The island has white sandy beaches and 100,000 breeding seabirds; volunteers sleep in a bothy, and have the island to themselves once tourists leave at 5pm each day.

• 26 March-8 September, free, scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk

Isles of Scilly

More than 33,000 hosts in the UK and worldwide are looking for volunteers. Options on the Isles of Scilly include work at a vineyard, in a boatyard or on a herb farm.

• Year-round, free but €32 to join Work Away workaway.info

Hebrides



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iona Photograph: Alamy

Working camps with National Trust for Scotland include an archaeology and wild camping week on Mingulay, uninhabited since 1912; and beach-cleaning on Iona, staying next to the medieval abbey. More dates will be released later this year.

• £265 for a week on Iona; £360 for Mingulay, nts.org.uk

Isle of Mull

Organic farmers around the UK offer food and accommodation in exchange for work. UK island experiences include helping make cheese at a dairy farm on Mull, where you can also kayak around the coast.

• Year-round, free but £20 to join Wwoof

Brownsea/Lundy



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brownsea Island is a stronghold for the red squirrel. Photograph: Alamy

The National Trust looks after the red squirrel stronghold of Brownsea Island, Dorset, and Lundy Island, where puffins nest. Trips run in February, March, April, October and November, with tasks including waging war on rhododendrons and restoring a walled garden.

• From £160 for seven nights, nationaltrust.org.uk

Rachel Dixon

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