Mosspig: I ran

Lady Isle from the boat

Today I joined Nina (who is doing her PhD on sea bird ecology) as a volunteer on a trip to Lady Isle, a small island with breeding colonies of herring gull and shag in the Firth of Clyde. Up and ready at 7.30am a glorious day awaited us via a smooth boat trip and quick outboard to the shore. I was posted on 3-hour Nest-Watch with Maureen (a masters student studying tagging related to stress). I had a comfy camping chair with self-contained hide that pulled over the top, and set to work trying to identify nests on the rocky shore. It's harder than it seems as the grey speckled chicks blend into the rocks and often disappear behind them! During the watch I logged the number of adults at chicks at each nest at the beginning and then at 5 minute intervals how many adults were present and any provisioning (feeding) or disturbance events. It's very tricky trying to work out which chicks belong to what parents but I used my best judgement so hopefully the data will be useful.

Spot the chick!

I did see a few provisioning events but working out what kind of food was being offered is another matter altogether - orange stuff could have been crab. Mmm crab :P

Making our way the relatively short distance between the lighthouse and the shore was complicated by there being hidden gulls nests in the long grass, forcing us to pick our way slowly through. On the way there were a fair few dead chicks, the coastal survival rate is less than that of urban gulls, generally about 0.82 (data from Skomer in South Wales).

The view from the hide


Shag Pile

There are also Shags breeding on Lady Isle but this time we didn't collect any data for them, only listen to their throaty calls. After a quick lunch we spent some time searching for gulls that were ringed last year. I had photographed a couple on my watch but we found about 3 more in the afternoon. Some of them have GPS loggers attached to them to track where they are foraging for food. I think there have been some problems with with the antennae picking up the data and possible with the scapular feathers covering the solar panel that is used to charge the device. Lessons learned!

Ringed Herring Gull

Taking measurements

While I was watching the nests Dave and Nina were catching, measuring, weighing and ringing 25 chicks! I got to get my grabby hands on one as well :)

Gull chick freshly tagged!

Ullo!

There's not much love for gulls generally but when you spend some time observing them they can be quite charismatic.

The noise and the smell of the gulls is literally intoxicating, but you do get used to it fairly quickly. I was surprised I wasn't covered in shit by the end of the day with the amount that was getting sprayed around, guess I'm lucky this time. I did have shower when I got home though :)