Compost Gull and Seawatching

It's often a subject around the dinner table between the summer residents of the Isle of May on whether it is always the same Lesser Black-backed Gull that visits the compost heap that is just outside the Lighthouse Keepers cottage.

The compost heap mainly consists of a few rotting citrus fruits and spent ground coffee, but the odd bit of left over pasta or dead bird keeps the gulls returning daily.

About a week ago Mark successfully trapped a gull in the heap and Carrie got to ring her first Lesser which was seen returning to the garden within a couple of days.

It became quite obvious there was more then one gull using the compost heap as unringed birds were noted daily, so while I was having a post dinner seawatch from the veranda I decided to try and catch an unringed bird that was using heap.

 

I hid in the mothtrap shed and waited for the signal from Mark and Lowlighters, Steve and Ian who had come out to join us looking out to sea. After about 15 minutes the bird dropped into the wooden frame so I decided to go for it.

 

The bird panicked on my appearance and got stuck, it's path blocked by my considerable bulk flying over the side. I landed ankle deep in some pretty rotten horrid filth of the heap, but the bird was secured.

 

 We took the bird to the ringing hut where it was ringed by Ian and released.

Close up the bird was quite stunning. Close up you can see the details of the eye and the wings. The bird was not too pleased about being caught and really gave as good as it got.This bird is marked with a green colouring with the letter M on it. We shall keep an eye on the compost heap to see which birds return the compost heap.

The fun did not stop there either. While we were watching the sea, we noted Arctic Skua, Manx Shearwaters, a probable island record count of Common Scoter, Harbour Porpoise and a Minke Whale.

Minke Whales are noted off the island regularly throughout the season with an increase of sightings from mid July onwards. Tonight's sighting was quite special as the Minke was jumping right out of the water! It leeped out near a fishing boat. Even though the animal was over a mile away you could see the tidal wave splash with the naked eye! It almost made me jump out of my skin as it came right up in my field of view in my telescope.

We don't watch the TV out here but with that kind of nightly entertainment who needs to?

I'd like to thank Ian and Mark for contributing photographs for this blog entry.

What's going on this week then?

The seabird counting has finished for the season for now so with less fieldwork, but we are keeping busy with more visitor related things on the Isle of May NNR.

The May Princess crowd disembark and get a cold welcome from the Terns

A small sailboat stops at The Alterstanes for a spot of Lunch

It was a very busy weekend for boats coming out with lots of tourists visiting the island. At least eight boats were in the harbour at high tide on Sunday safely moored behind the May Princess.

Calum an I have been very busy tidying up the paths after all the rain that has fallen. Holyman's Road is almost passable again. The path edging is now finished along Three Tarn Nick .As well as watching the Terns Paula and Lucie are getting on well with scraping the doors ready for a fresh coat of paint.

The Swallows built this nest in the Bath House but unfortunately left soon after.

But hopefully this bird will fair better as it's sitting on 4 eggs in the freezer room. This is the first breeding attempt for twelve years on the island. The last pair raised two chicks.

A weekend in pictures

Here are a few picture form the weekend of pottering about on the Isle of May NNR

 One of five landings on Saturday

 The Northern Lighthouse Board were on the Island to replace an Alternator in the Mainlight.

 This Icterine Warbler left the safety of the bushes and acted like a Wheatear

The ringers had trapped,ringed and released the Icterine Warbler the day before

Our first Lesser Black-backed Gulls hatched on Friday.

Woodpidgeons are scarce on the island. This one was made rather unwelcome by the local Rock Pipit.

This young Shore Crab gave me a surprise as I pulled up the rope before the May Princess came in.

Many Puffins are coming in with beaks full of fish.

The seabirds we're well 'papped' along Three Tarn Nick

Listening in - the sounds of the May

The Isle of May is a remarkably quiet peaceful place and visitors and inhabitants are recognise this frequently. So with the thick fog early this morning making it difficult to see you hand in front of your face the sounds of the island came to the fore, disconnected from their source. So I headed out from Fluke Street in a thick grey blanket with ears flapping. Of course with 200,000 birds on a small island it is never quiet, and at Fluke Street we are surrounded by eiders and gulls. The gentle seductive woohoo of the male eider has now been replaced by the more earthy and practical mwuk, mwuk, mwuk of the females talking to each other across the gully or softly to a raft of ducklings on the loch. The gull colony is never silent at this time of year, even in the dark and their loud and varied calls echo from plateau to braes. Heading up Palpitation Brae I enter nervous breakdown territory where 2 of the islands's community go through their daily manic discourse. Oystercatchers are just in a complete state, almost continuously piping at the slightest presence around them. Arctic terns are also in a constant state of over excitement and could start and argument if on their own in a cardboard box. They have such a array of sounds that even when you can't see them you have a good idea of what they are doing. A machine gun burst is aimed at gulls they have taken a dislike to (usually with good reason). Heading out on a fishing mission needs a different set of calls to when they come back into the colony saying "hi look at the size of fish I've caught."
The noise of the cliff nesters only reaches you when you get to the cliff edge but once there the kittiwakes and guillemots have a lot to say and loudly. It is thought that guillemots can recognise their partners call even amongst 8000 seemingly identical individuals all yelling their heads off. I keep a ear open for 2 of the smallest island residents the rockets (rock pipits) and waggies (pied wagtails) as they are the islands intruder alarms. A breakout of twittering from them usually means a bird of prey entering island airspace.
But with all these noisy neighbours it is amazing that you do actually still do much of your bird watching with your ears. once tuned into the island you can pick out something different passing through like the burble of a skylark, the chay of a siskin or the rasping keehaw of a black-headed gull. All of these stand out like a a pink shag on a cliff once you have been on the island for a while.
And then there is the wind of course. 
So for an island that wears a cacophony all the time how come it is so peaceful and calm ? How does that work ?

Why count all the birds?

To be counted.

Spotted and counted

Fulmers at the top of the cliff.

We are just entering the counting season on the island when we try to put a number on what birds we have here. This is when things go a bit mad. Visitors often ask us "how do we count all the mass of birds on the island?" as they watch thousands of puffins wheel over the island and cliff faces full of auks, and I then have to admit to them that we cheat a bit. It is not just a mater of counting birds as they whizz over head but we have a more systematic approach. Firstly from today onwards we start counting eiders and gulls. This we do by counting nests of both. We have a system where we get a group of 6-7 people over to the island for a few days and then systematically sweep every inch of the island counting nests and clutch sizes as we go. As soon as this finishes Jeremy starts counting all 5 species of cliff nesting birds, (guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmers and shags) over the whole island and I count all the guillemots and razorbills in 20 plots five times on different parts of the cliffs.
It is hard work, it means long days involving some planning, organisation, concentration and a lot of scrambling over rough terrain  but what a fantastic way to experience the island. For a few hours your whole focus is on the birds and the island and the rest of the world disappears until you emerge blinking and sated with data sheets full of numbers. And that is the real purpose, it isn't done because it is a nice thing to do (which it is) but because at the end of it there is a total for each species which because the same method is used each year can be compared to each other. With a number of years data trends can appear and we get an idea of how the different bird types are doing. It is vital when saying that a certain bird species is declining or increasing that you have rock solid data to back you up. In the past in other jobs I have been to farms where farmers have told me that they don't know what all of the fuss is about farmland birds declining as they have always seen skylarks everyday. But just seeing them everyday isn't enough, a farmer that sees 10 pairs of skylarks on his farm when there used to be 20 might not notice the difference even though he has lost half of them. And the same applies to sea birds, you can still see huge numbers of puffins and kittiwakes on the Isle of May but only close monitoring has shown that between 2003 and 2008 the puffin population dropped from 68,000 pairs to 45,000 and the kittiwakes, between 1991 and 2011, have dropped from 8,000 to 2,000 pairs. The value of this long term monitoring data is that it can be used to highlight the problem, raise awareness of the issues and then it can be used to lobby for better protection for the seabird population and marine environments so that the next generation will be able to enjoy thousands of puffins wheeling above them just as we have.

A kittiwakes view looking down a cliff.

Guillemots don't have to have much of a ledge to lay an egg on.

Rabbit proofing - The proof

One of the tasks John and the other volunteers had to do was to get the rabbit proof fencing fixed in the garden. I was stood on the veranda and took this sequence of picture that show how well it's working

The potatoes are now in and we'll hopefully have a lot of fresh produce come summertime! Let's keep the lagomorphs out!