A bit out of sequence but we just finished the Puffin Island seabird ringing season with the final and highly anticipated Kittiwake ringing trip. mainly because this is often more relaxed and less physically demanding than the other trips. A theme of this seasons trips has been the delays caused by the weather, in particular the wind, which has prevented us from landing. This trip seemed to be going the same way with the proposed Saturday or Sunday trips being cancelled. Monday was also impossible and it looked as if we might not even get over on the Tuesday but Steve managed to persuade the boatman to take us from Beaumaris on a larger boat. The only issue being that we'd get picked up later in the day by the dory and dropped at Penmon Point. This meant leaving my Landrover at Penmon and Steve picking me up to take me to Beaumaris so that I could run everyone back later!
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Puffin Island viewed from Penmon point early morning |
Despite the logistical difficulties we were hopeful that we'd have a successful day as previous visits had shown that Kittiwakes were nesting on ledges we hadn't seen them on for a few years.
The trip from Beaumaris was uneventful and we arrived to Puffin Island to find a Grey Seal hauled out on the beach. Completely ignoring us it carried on resting whilst we disembarked and changed from wellies to more suitable footwear.
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Disembarking at Puffin Island. Photo @Natalie |
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Atlantic Grey Seal hauled out on the beach |
Researchers from Liverpool University had joined us ands the plan was to catch and colour ring as many adult Kittiwakes as possible and recover some of the data loggers fitted last year and to replace these with new ones. See here for details of these from last year's trip.
Working slowly around the nesting ledges one team concentrated on colour ringing adults whilst another team, including me, used ladders to ring chicks in the nest. I love this as Kittiwakes chicks are beautiful. After my dislocated shoulder incident I was a a bit wary about to much climbing but I managed it without aggravating my shoulder to much.
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Sophie footing the ladder and making sure its safe to climb |
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Me passing chicks to Holly to ring . Photo @Natalie
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In recent years Kittiwake numbers have plummeted and the number of chicks ringed has dropped accordingly. A decade ago we might have ringed 70+ chicks and the numbers steadily declined until at one point there were none to ring. A combination of bad weather, a peregrine taking the young off the nest and a general decline in the breeding population and breeding success was mirrored in the numbers of chicks ringed where we were down to single figures and the low double figures. Last year was a definite improvement with 22 chicks ringed but this year we managed 50! The number of adults caught was also up with 61 this year compared to 37 last year. Proof that our initial observations were correct.
Once we'd finished with the Kittiwakes we ringed a few more Guillemot chicks before finishing off with finding more gull chicks and anything else we could catch.
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Me with two well grown Herring Gull chicks. Photo @Holly.
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Of course no Puffin Island ringing trip would be complete without the obligatory Puffin and Steve managed to catch 4 adults which were a new species for several people on the trip.
A very successful trip ended with the boatman picking us up and dropping us off at Penmon where everyone piled in the Landrover for the lift back to Beaumaris.