RSPB Scotland Country Communications Manager Stephen Magee recently travelled to the Shetland Islands to film the ongoing crisis caused by bird flu. Here he reflects on the things he saw and the people he met.
The first dead bird drifted slowly past the boat as we approached the noisy gannet colony at Noss in Shetland.
Our skipper powered down the engines and as we passed underneath the cliffs the swell revealed more and more corpses floating in the water.
This is what I had come here to see, I was filming the impact of bird flu on seabirds.
Nevertheless, it was a shock to see so many dead birds straight away. But worse was to come.
Sick birds struggled to move, unable to take flight. After a few flaps they were still again, shadows of what you expect a gannet to be.
At least I had my work to distract me, I got on with capturing the images I needed to tell this sad story.
Helen Moncrieff, RSPB Scotland’s Shetland Manager had brought me here and now she was gazing up at the cliffs noisy with thousands of birds and then back down to the water where dead birds floated.
This was the latest horror in weeks of dealing with bird flu for her and her team. Her voice breaking with emotion, she looked up at the cliff saying “It’s really hard because it’s awesome seeing the gannets like this."
Then turning her attention to the sea around her she continued “but it’s really hard because it’s so awful. I can cope seeing them when they’re dead, but when they’re still alive and suffering..” and then her voice faded.
It was a confusing place to be. The colony was still alive with the sight, sound and smell of thousands of breeding gannets but the evidence of the devastation wrought by bird flu was everywhere.
And underlying it all was the fear that this might only be the beginning, that as the season unfolds more and more birds will be lost.
It might seem strange to say that I also found positives on my filming trip to Shetland, but I did.
Spending time with the staff working through the outbreak made me realise the scale of the commitment these people bring to their work.
Site Manager Kevin Kelly took me to Fetlar, taking two ferries to travel from Sumburgh northwards up the archipelago.
We were going there to see the impact of the outbreak on bonxies (great skua), which have been severely affected, and take direct action to protect other species. The Northern Isles are crucial to the global fortunes of great skua. Early indications are that some colonies elsewhere in the north have seen over an eighty percent decline in breeding birds present.
Kevin had been given special permission to remove corpses from important wetland sites that provide habitat for red-necked phalaropes.
He put on his personal protective equipment and collected the bodies of dead birds. It was scarcely believable that these limp bodies had once been the hostile, predatory bullies that are so much part of the landscape on these islands.
It was a small act in the face of an enormous disaster, but he told me it was important to feel there was something that could be done.
“We don’t know how useful what we’re doing will be but if it proves to be useful then we’ll feel great. We did something. And even if not then we’ve still been able to remove corpses from areas where people are walking,” he explained, adding that he wanted to help protect people as well as wildlife.
My trip to Shetland left me feeling genuinely scared that the huge seabird cities that are so much part of our coastline might be far poorer in the short term and even beyond. It also left me convinced that we owe it to the birds, and to people like Helen and Kevin, to do everything we can to help seabirds recover.
RSPB Scotland welcomes the Scottish Government’s decision to bring the relevant agencies and partners together to discuss how to deal with the outbreak but we need to see an urgent co-ordinated response now on detection, testing and disposal of affected birds.
We also need to act more widely to relieve the pressure on threatened seabirds. Overfishing, climate change, offshore development in the wrong places and birds being killed in fishing gear are all man-made challenges we can address.
You can see Stephen’s videos here https://youtu.be/ED7SeFRP9kg and here https://youtu.be/iYwEt816W5I