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.
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| Common Tern fledgling stretching his wings. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan) |
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| 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!
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| 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) |
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| Andrew and Lorna ring two Roseate chicks from the same nest while Emma records the ring numbers. (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke) |
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| Roseate Tern chicks waiting to be ringed. (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke) |
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| Emma tries to concentrate on recording the rings used without getting distracted (Photo taken under NPWS license; B Burke) |
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| 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).
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| Aude enjoying watching the birds of Rockabill on the pier during low tide. (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan) |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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
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| Common Tern flying through sunset (Photo taken under NPWS license; E Tiernan) |
Are there any particular reasons the Roseate chicks don’t get colour rings as well as their metal rings? Not just in Ireland but on the other sites in the UK. We get the odd birds showing up on Merseyside, generally always ringed. But it’s near impossible to read the ring code at the distance we see them. We would love to know where these birds originate from.
ReplyDeleteCheers and keep up the good work.
Hi, one of the main reasons is that metal rings last the lifetime of the bird whereas colour rings generally don't. In a good year we might read >1,000 Roseate rings, so it would present a significant data gap if the colour ring had fallen off. As I'm sure you know, it's quite hard to read a 7-character standard BTO ring, especially on a bird as small as a Tern, so the 'special' rings are very important in that sense.
DeleteThe other thing is that we've switched from a BTO metal ring and a special ring, to just a special ring, which is a huge time-saver when trying to ring so many chicks during the breeding season (we ring a similar amount of common chicks too), but having to put on a second colour ring would eat up time.
lastly, most colour rings of that size have 3-character codes that are read upwards, so I'm not fully sure on the practicalities of having a 4-character code on them.
We can completely understand your frustration though, and obviously when we see reports of Roseates away from the colonies we're just as eager to learn where they've come from, so it is a pity that the rings aren't always readable given the distances involved. That being said, we have had plenty of recoveries outside the colonies this year and in previous years too.
So I know its not ideal, but I hope that provides some context at least!