RSPB Scotland’s Northern Isles manager, Pete Ellis, praises a local Shetland volunteer for four decades of service and other dedicated volunteers.
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to present a good friend of mine with a prestigious accolade – a golden eagle long-service award to mark his astonishing commitment to helping save nature.
Dave Okill has been an RSPB member and volunteer for over 40 years, since before he moved to Shetland in 1975. Since then, Dave’s enthusiastic ringing activities have given him an unrivalled knowledge of the breeding biology of a large range of Shetland’s breeding birds. He has happily shared this insight with RSPB Scotland staff and other volunteers as well as helping RSPB Scotland with reserve management, open days and many other aspects of our work.
Pete (left) presenting Dave Okill (right) with his golden eagle long-service award. Photo by: Jim Nicolson.
Over the years, Dave’s work has included two particularly important discoveries: In 1984, he found a shocking scene on one of his routine visits to ring Arctic tern chicks on Papa Stour. At the time, this small island off the west coast of mainland Shetland was home to Shetland’s largest colony of breeding Arctic terns. In the previous summer, over 1,800 chicks were ringed, but in 1984, Dave found just a handful of live chicks, together with many starved, dead ones. This was the first occurrence in the UK of the catastrophic seabird breeding failures that have become a feature of many areas in the last 30 years and the first indication of how climate change affects the UK’s marine environment.
Arctic terns have the longest migration known to man – they travel a staggering 43,000 miles each year from northern breeding grounds to wintering off of Antarctica. Photo by: OddurBen.
Dave also pioneered the use of data loggers on red-throated divers in Shetland and in 2012, his expertise allowed RSPB Scotland in partnership with the Shetland Ringing Group and British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to fit data loggers to red-necked phalaropes breeding in Shetland. It was Dave’s long experience in ringing that allowed him to obtain the licences that were needed to do this with such a rare breeding bird.
Female red-necked phalarope. Phalaropes are famous for their reversed roles - the females take the initiative in courtship and then leave the males to incubate and care for the young, while they go searching for new mates. Primarily an Arctic breeding wader, they occur in small numbers in the UK, particularly Shetland. Photo by: Malcie Smith.
The aim of this work was to test whether the phalaropes that breed in Shetland spend the winter in the Arabian Sea like those that breed in Scandinavia. In 2013, one male phalarope returned to Shetland carrying its data logger and we made a startling discovery! This bird had made a round trip of 16,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean and spent the winter in the eastern Pacific off Ecuador and Peru. This journey had never before been recorded for a European breeding bird.
Map of the phenomenal phalarope migration.
Dave, George and Malcie Smith (RSPB Scotland) with the bird and its tiny tag.
Dave’s commitment to the RSPB and nature conservation continues. In recognition of Dave’s 40 years of volunteering, he was presented with the RSPB’s Golden Eagle Award at the Shetland Bird Club meeting on 19 September. Helen Moncrieff, RSPB Scotland’s Shetland Manager was at the event and saw Dave receive his award. She said “I have never seen him lost for words and he was surprised and touched by the recognition”.
You’d think that 40 years volunteering was a rare achievement and it is, but back in February this year another amazing volunteer, Heather Sykes, received her golden eagle award of recognition. Heather is a member of the RSPB Helensburgh Local Group which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. In the early days of the group Heather was an active Committee member involved in the coffee mornings and bric-a-brac sales they had to raise money for nature conservation. Heather continues to be a key group member supporting the work of RSPB Scotland locally and preparing the group’s newsletter.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say a HUGE thank you to Dave, Heather and to everyone else who volunteers with us to help save nature whether you’ve been doing it 40 minutes or 40 years.