I arrived on Scilly exhilarated and sleep-deprived, excited and nervous. I’d slept poorly in a shared hostel room, and my new colleague Jay and I had spent the whole trip over on the ferry birdwatching and ramping up each other’s anticipation for the summer ahead of us.

“Can you believe we’re getting paid for this?” I asked as we watched our second pod of dolphins dart, dip and disappear off to leeward.

“Right?!” laughed Jay, watching a fulmar glide past, stiff-winged and glowing white in the sunlight. This incredulous exchange was to be repeated regularly over the summer, neither of us ever quite getting over the almost guilty sense that we’d been absurdly lucky to be employed by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust to look at seabirds over a summer on the archipelago.

By the time we arrived at the quay in Hugh Town, I’d seen most of the bird species that would become familiar friends over the next three months - my first ever guillemot had been bobbing incongruously around the harbour in Penzance, while my first glimpse of a shearwater – wingtip to wave and face to the wind - came midway through the voyage. I’d actually had pretty limited experience with UK seabirds prior to getting the Seabird Survey Assistant job, and although I’d been studying hard over the intervening two weeks, books and videos are no substitute for seeing living birds in their natural environment. All this to say, I was nervous that as soon as my new bosses (who had seemed nice in the interview but who were no doubt intimidatingly serious ornithologists with binoculars the size of a blunderbuss) realised what a hopeless amateur I was, they would scoff, ceremonially strip me of my binoculars and put me back on the boat to the mainland.

About five seconds after meeting Will (our Survey Manager) and Vickie (the Seabird Ecologist and guru) I realised my mistake; the most powerful imposter syndrome in the world could not have stood up to the combined power of Will’s chaotic and enthusiastic friendliness and Vickie’s warm and reassuring kindness. I have genuinely felt less welcome and appreciated by my nearest and dearest at my own birthday party than I did arriving on that St. Mary’s Quay for the first time. They escorted us over to the boat that would take us to our new island home on St Agnes (beautiful), helped us set up our tents (frustratingly difficult), checked again whether we needed anything, and left us to get settled in and/or hit the local pub.

That first day was in some ways a microcosm of the whole survey experience; outrageously knowledgeable and positive people, stunning views of enchanting birds, windy boat trips over choppy seas, the rustling of tent canvas, and the constant low-level chaos that comes with trying to organise a large group of people while taking into account tide, weather, wildlife breeding seasons and boats!

There were of course challenges - camping becomes significantly less enjoyable after the seventh day in a row of high winds and rain- and I definitely do not envy our managers the job of trying to manage the labyrinthine logistics of the survey, but what a summer job! When I think over the survey as a whole, here is what comes to mind first:

• The stark black and white of a great black backed gull swooping at us out of a burning blue sky over an unbroken carpet of luminously pink thrift.
• Plunging into crystal clear water and gliding over seaweed-covered rocks, watching the flamboyantly patterned wrasse going about their business.
• Wandering along the St Agnes coastline, dazed by the improbable beauty of the sunset over the ocean, pink light catching on the fantastic granite outcroppings.
• Jay and I performing at a local open mic night, cheered on by  a bar-full of tipsy locals and visitors.
• The whole team scrambling over remote specks of rocks in the ocean, trying frantically to count the birds spilling out from every crack and crevice in in the rock, all of us decked out in full body white coveralls (to minimize risk of bird flu contamination) like something from a ‘60s sci-fi show, the acrid smell of guano in our nostrils and the croaking of guillemots and shags in our ears.
• Gazing sleepily out at the ocean over the side of the boat taking us back to camp at the end of another long day, lulled by the motion of the waves and cooled by the breeze on my face.
• The whole team from the Wildlife Trust coming over to St Agnes for Jay and I’s leaving meal, the senior management table immediately and blatantly taking far more than their fair share of the tapas.

It was hard to leave Scilly after that summer. Very hard. But I must console myself with the fact that it will live on in my memories as a once-in-a-lifetime summer… and also with the fact that I immediately managed to inveigle my way into another role with the Wildlife Trust, helping to run an island restoration project. I am, in fact, back on Scilly and due to remain so until at least next spring. I’m sure that the experience of Scilly in January will be pretty similar to Scilly in July… right?