Therese Alampo has a lot of neighbours to say goodbye to when she moves on to pastures new.
For the last six years, the Scottish Natural Heritage reserve manager has lived for several months a year on the Isle of May, home to over 200,000 seabirds.
Therese leaves the Firth of Forth island this week, as the 2010 season comes to a close, to take up a new job as reserve manager of St Cyrus National Nature Reserve.
Therese joined SNH in 2001 as a Natura 2000 officer on the River Tweed. She started managing the May Island reserve in 2004, living on the island from April to October each year to cover the seabird breeding and tourist seasons and the start of the seal breeding seasons.
In addition, she has maintained the island accommodation, housing up to 17 researchers in the summer, and greeted the 8000 visitors a year who sail to the island.
On any day she could be telling visitors about puffins, mending toilets, tying up boats and liaising with bird researchers.
Her monitoring work has even included spray-painting thousands of gull nests during the biannual gull count, to signal the nest has been checked.
She said, “My years on the May have been fascinating and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I want to thank everyone who I have worked with and met over the years on the island, so many of whom have helped make it a magical experience.
“From my first day in the East Neuk, and the years on the island, the community has made me feel so welcome and at home.
“Thanks to the lifeboat crew for helping us deal with our wee emergencies over the years! I’ll miss all the friendly visits from locals on their boats, often with news of the mainland and chocolate.”
At St Cyrus running out of milk will be less of a problem the nearest shop is a mile away by road, rather than several miles away by boat.