Thursday 25 July 2019

Ringing Chicks & Catching Kittiwakes



Ringing Blitz

Boy have we been busy here on Rockabill. Lots of our chicks have become big so quickly. Most chicks that were the first to hatch have started flying around the island and some have even fledged right in front of us. During the provisional feeding studies, we saw the Roseate chicks come out of their nest boxes and test out their wings. Both Common and Roseate chicks could be seen hopping up onto rocks or nest boxes and flapping their wings to get a bit of lift. Of course, this means a lot more running around for the wardens. It has become a bit more difficult to collect our biometrics data when the birds can now fly away from us.

Common Tern fledgling stretching his wings. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)

Roseate Tern fledgling testing its wings with its parent watching on. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)

We have spotted fledglings flying around the island and practicing their plunge dives in the waters between the Rock and the Bill. It has been a treat to watch them take off, although we wardens are beginning to feel the onset of (literal) empty nest syndrome.


Now that they are getting big enough to fledge, we had to step up our ringing game. On the 1st of July we were joined by Dr Stephen Newton and Brian Burke of BirdWatch and previous Rockabill wardens Caroline McKeon, Shane Somers and Irene Ní Shúilleabhán to help us carry out the 2019 Rockabill Ringing Blitz!

All hands on deck! Previous wardens Caroline and Shane join 2019’s wardens Lorna, Emma and Andrew to help find any tern chicks that need to be ringed. (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke)

Andrew and Lorna ring two Roseate chicks from the same nest while Emma records the ring numbers. (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke)

Roseate Tern chicks waiting to be ringed. (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke)
Emma tries to concentrate on recording the rings used without getting distracted (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke)

Roseate Tern 'BABE' (photo taken under NPWS license; L. Gill)
Every tern chick is ringed before it leaves Rockabill so we had a lot of work to do! Whilst we have been ringing all the chicks that have hatched in our study areas, this was a tiny portion of the rest of the population by comparison. We spent four days going around the island and catching as many birds as we could that were big enough to be ringed. Common and Arctic Tern chicks are ringed with the standard BTO rings while Roseate Terns are ringed with a specialised 4-digit code. In previous years this code has been made up of letters and numbers but this year our roseate rings do not have numbers. This has led to a lot of fun with naming certain chicks. To date we have gotten BABE, BABY, BALE, BAKE, BAND, BANK, BART, BARB, BEAN, BEAT, BETH, BERT and so much more.



In the coming weeks we will be carrying out follow up ringing sessions to ring any more chicks have yet to hatch.

After the ringing blitz we welcomed a new warden, Aude Boutet. Aude is a very skilled seabird ecologist from Clermont-Ferrand, France. Aude has spent the past few years working on various research projects around the world. She joins us after completing a stint researching the ecology of Common and Brunnich’s Guillemots with the British Antarctic Survey. We are very lucky to have her with us (more importantly we’re happy to have another person to talk to).

Aude enjoying watching the birds of Rockabill on the pier during low tide. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)

Geo locator attached to Kittiwake ring.
(Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)



Alongside monitoring our tern babies, we have also been keeping an eye on the breeding Kittiwakes and Black Guillemots. Earlier this month we recaptured and attached geo-locators to some of the adult Kittiwakes. These geo-locators will be removed next year when adults return to Rockabill and will provide valuable information on the movements of Kittiwakes between the breeding seasons. Twelve adults that were ringed on Rockabill as chicks were recaptured for this study. Of the twelve, most were between 4 and 10 years old and the oldest two were 14 and 17 years old.







Dr Stephen Newton, Aude and Andrew sailing to The Bill.
(Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)




After these geo locators were attached, it was time to start ringing the Kittiwake and Black Guillemot chicks. This took us another 4 days! The Kittiwakes and the Black Guillemots nest on both The Rock and The Bill, so that meant a couple of short boat trips.









As well as several nest boxes around the island, Black Guillemots have been nesting in small gaps in the walls, under boulders and in old, disused pipes and drains. Any small spaces they can find really!




Photo (left) Aude checks for Black Guillemot chicks in all sorts of spaces including under boulders and in the shed. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)









Photo (left): Emma holding a Black Guillemot chick that has just been ringed, and (right) Andrew measuring the wing of a Black Guillemot chick - note the black feathers on the white wing patch, compared to the all-white wing patch of the breeding adults. (ringing and photos under NPWS license)









The Kittiwake colonies on the other hand required some rock climbing.



 Kittiwake colonies on (top) The Rock and (bottom) The Bill 
(Photos taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)






The climb was worth it in the end. The Kittiwake chicks may be the fluffiest chicks we have on the island.


Photo: Clutch of two Kittiwake chicks in nest. The older chick is just starting to develop its primary flight feathers (Photos taken under NPWS license; top - LA McManus; left - Gill)











Photo: Kittiwake adult and chick on a nesting ledge (Photo taken under NPWS license; L Gill)







With all that has been happening, it is hard to believe that out time on Rockabill will be coming to an end soon. As more and more nests start emptying, we now have some time to enjoy some of Rockabill’s other nature. In the recent sunny weather, we have spotted Buff-tailed bumblebees, Painted Lady and Green-veined White butterflies in the gardens.  We have also been joined by Rockabill’s resident Grey Seal family when the tide is out.


Seal family basking in the sunshine on the rocks of the Bill at low tide (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)


That’s all the news from The Rock for now.
Emma


Common Tern flying through sunset (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan)


Friday 5 July 2019

Blog 5 - Arctic Terns & Black Guillemots


Since our last update, we have now completed the second nest check! During this we found Arctic Tern chicks, which have hatched over the previous weeks. Some of these have a more grey-coloured down compared to Common Tern chicks. We also found hatched Black Guillemot chicks inside their nests.


Adult Arctic Tern. (Photo taken under NPWS license; A McManus)

Grey-morph Arctic Tern chick. (Photo taken under NPWS license; A. McManus)

Can you spot the Black Guillemot chick sitting in its nest hole? (photo taken under NPWS license)

 Day to day, we have been busy conducting nest checks, ringing and taking biometric data on the chicks. We take measurements of the wing length and body weight of the chicks every day to obtain growth rates, which can be compared with previous years.


Common Tern chick being weighed for our chick biometrics study. (photo taken under NPWS license; A. McManus)