Kirsty Nutt describes a visit to the gannet colony at Troup Head last week to look at the impact avian influenza is having there.
Warning: Contains images and descriptions you might find upsetting.
Last week I visited our Troup Head nature reserve to meet the site manager, Richard, and an STV reporter. Located on the northeast coast of Scotland, it is Scotland’s only mainland gannet colony. Gannets first bred here in 1988 and at last count, in 2019, this had risen to around 5000 nests. Guillemots, fulmars, kittiwakes, razorbills, herring gulls, shags and a handful of puffins also breed here.
Richard and I went for a look around before the film crew arrived. At the first bit of the cliff that we visited we spotted a few dead birds at the bottom, but the more we looked the more we saw – dead birds still on the cliffs nestled in among others.
Then we got to an area of the cliff where young birds not yet of breeding age hang out. Richard refers to this as “like teenagers at a disco” – it is where juvenile birds gather looking to make a pair bond for when they return next year or the year after to breed. It’s usually rowdy and full of garrulous youngsters. Typically, there are birds all the way up to the grass line. This year what we could see and sense was quiet emptiness with birds only on the lower parts of this area which is usually packed.
A comparison of gannets in this area between 2015 (left) and this year (right)
Walking further along the cliffs to the far end of the nature reserve the devastation becomes even more apparent. Tall cliffs usually bustling with birds are far emptier than they were even two months ago. They appear to have lost maybe 30% or possibly more individuals. It certainly seems like more than the 20% declines we have so far confirmed from the plots we monitor each year.
There are still plenty of birds around, plenty of birds flying past – both breeding age adults all white with yellow head and crisp dark pointed wing tips, and younger birds with their immature, speckled plumage. But it’s quieter than normal, and the reduction in numbers is clear.
And then at the bottom of the cliff a terrible sight. There is a ledge which prevents the birds that die and fall here from being washed out to sea. As you look along this ledge there are hundreds of dead gannets. Some fresh corpses, others looking like they have been there for a while. In some places they lie in piles arranged by date of death. These are the birds that the reserve team are counting every week, trying to get an indication of how bad things are and whether the crisis is slowing or accelerating.
A small section of the ledge at the base of the cliffs where dead fallen gannets collect.
The most recent count before our visit, from 14 July, was 413 dead adults and 93 dead chicks. This was up from 309 and 16 the week before, and just 188 two weeks before that so the number of dead on the cliffs is accelerating. These numbers only tell part of the story as they don’t include the birds that have fallen into the sea. If the reductions in the monitoring plots where birds are counted each year are replicated along the cliffs, there could be as many as 3000 birds lost.
It is hard not to feel the impact as we approach this bit of the colony for the first time; the words of shock and dismay that the site manager uttered can’t be shared here.
Then as we are back later with STV filming the cliffs, getting the shots they need to tell this important story and being interviewed, we are trying to find hope.
We’re looking for chicks.
There is one to the right of us (photo above) and then we notice another to the left a little way along from a chick that must have died a while ago – its downy body trampled into the cliffside. Then we notice just 30 or 40 centimetres from the living chick a quite freshly dead chick and the hope starts to fade. There also don’t seem to be many other gannet chicks around which is really worrying but not entirely unexpected.
Some virologists have warned that chicks, without a developed immune response, were unlikely to survive this year if exposed.
As the breeding season for gannets doesn’t finish until later, with the last birds not departing to spend the winter at sea until October, it will be a while, maybe even the start of next breeding season, before we really understand the full scale of impact.
When faced with this, what gives us hope?
There were still large numbers of adults flying around which gives us reason to believe that some birds appear to be escaping the impact of this disease; hope also comes from the knowledge that before this outbreak, gannets were one of the few seabirds that seemed to be doing OK; it comes from the feeling you get when you watch these magnificent birds flying around you and can’t help but be lifted by their presence; and it comes from the understanding that all the pressures facing seabirds originated because of activities by humans and can be resolved by action by humans.
Seabirds are under pressure from food shortages due to climate change and overfishing and being killed by fishing gear, offshore renewable development and invasive non-native species (INNS).
There are solutions including closing industrial sandeel fisheries, implementing measures and monitoring to reduce bycatch, restoring islands and instigating biosecurity measures for INNS and ensuring offshore renewable development minimises further harm to nature and only happens alongside measures to restore nature.
But the current tragedy unfolding on our coasts needs to be a wake-up call to take action.
So, what can you do to help?
As the distressing experiences, images and news continue. The most important thing people can do is pay attention. Keep caring, keep reporting the dead birds, keep telling people how this is making you feel, keep telling people that it doesn’t have to be this way. Write to your MSP about nature in Scotland, write to your MP and ask them to put pressure on the UK Government to stop saying nothing can be done. The more we talk about how worried we are about the future of nature in Scotland, the more likely it is that we will see Government action to resolve some of these issues.
Together we can make a difference.
Header Image: Gannet, landing, at Troup Head, by Ian Francis.