Colour flagging adult Arctic Terns on the Skerries

For the last three years I've been invited to help ring Arctic tern chicks on the Skerries but this year  I joined the team catching and colour flagging adults as part of a long term RAS (re-trapping adults for survival) project.  Common Terns have also been colour flagged in this colony and one of my jobs was to try and record as many as  I could so I duly sat myself on a rock with a telescope and scanned the colony. I managed to pick out 8 colour flagged birds and a colour ringed bird which is one from the Dublin Bay colony. Information below from Tara Adcock , one of the conservation team working on Common Terns:

PKE was ringed as a chick in Dublin Port in June 2015, on a structure which has been specifically set aside for breeding Common and Arctic Terns by the Irish Electricity Supply Board. If you're interested see this blog post (link below) about the Dublin Port Tern colony and our work in it; 

https://dublinbaybirds.blogspot.com/2019/04/terning-our-attention-to-summer.html

PKE has been spotted 11 times previous to your report, making it one of our most regularly sighted Terns, (I wish they were all so amenable!).  Last year it was seen once in Merseyside, Liverpool, once in Seaforth Nature Reserve, Liverpool and 8 times out your way in Skerries, where we had a report of it nesting on a helipad

Arctic Terns are truly beautiful birds even though they have the mentally of an enraged Rottweiler when you encroach too close to their territory. They will attack with machine gun calls and a razor sharp stiletto bill - a hat is a necessary piece of protection when working in the colony.

Below: colour flagged Arctic Tern. A re-trap from a previous year.

 Below: Rock Pipit carrying food.

All to soon it was time to leave the island and head back to Holyhead.

I was also lucky enough to see two pairs of Roseate Terns and its now been announced they've fledged 4 young.