Welcome to the first of an occasional series of blog posts looking back at the 2014 seabird monitoring programme at Bempton Cliffs.
It’s hard to believe, but the 2014 seabird monitoring season at Bempton Cliffs is winding down. Most of our auk chicks have fledged, with only late chicks still on the cliffs. Kittiwake chicks are moulting into their first year plumage and are busy stretching their wings. Gannet chicks are huge and brown juvenile feathers are starting to come through their fluffy white chick plumage. These Gannet chicks won’t be fledging until into September and they are giving great views. Fulmar chicks are dotted around the cliffs – Fulmar breed later than most of our seabirds. There are still plenty of Puffins around – one of our volunteers counted over 200 from the New Roll-up viewpoint on 23 July - but they will be leaving soon so come now if you haven’t seen a Puffin yet this year.
Gannet with a large chick - they're even bigger now. Photo Mike Babcock
Fulmar chick - viewable now. Photo Mike Babcock
The seabird monitoring team at Bempton cliffs - consisting of the Warden, the Seabird Research Assistant, a full time residential volunteer and a big team of volunteers - does two main types of monitoring - productivity monitoring and population monitoring. Productivity monitoring means repeat visits to observe nesting sites and record how eggs and later chicks are getting on. This lets us calculate how successful the breeding season has been. Population monitoring means counting birds or nest sites on study plots and helps us see trends in the seabird populations at Bempton Cliffs. It’s simple to write, but during the height of the season in May/June the team puts in hundreds of hours of effort to collect valuable data.
Preliminary results from our Guillemot and Razorbill productivity monitoring suggest that it’s been a good breeding season. For our other species, it’s still too early to tell, although the wind and rain on 9-11 July hit some of our Kittiwake plots pretty hard. Kittiwakes could do with a good year since last summer productivity was low after hard winter storms in 2013.
Kittiwake with chick - keep your fingers crossed for our breeding Kittiwakes. Photo Mike Babcock
This summer we have done some additional work alongside our core monitoring. From 9 to 23 July we spent an extra two hours a day (often starting before 5am) staring intently at small groups of Guillemot chick to record what fish were being brought in to feed them. Seeing what the birds bring in helps us understand what is going on in the North Sea - the availability of the right sort of fish on their feeding grounds at the right time of year is vital to all of our breeding seabirds. Guillemot diet is relatively simple to monitor since they bring in single fish, which they hold lengthways in their bill. Puffins and Razorbills carry multiple prey items across their bill.
Guillemot feeding its chick. iPhone scope video Ruth Jeavons.
After getting our eyes in, we recorded 126 prey items. Of these, the majority were Sprats, with most of the rest being Sandeels plus a few Gadids (members of the family that includes Cod). Despite our best efforts, a little over 20% of the prey items had to go down as unidentified – but we’re hoping to improve that next year.
Something else we’ve done this season is participate in a national survey of Bridled Guillemots, the first one for 30 years. We surveyed over a thousand easily visible Guillemots and about 2.5% were of the bridled form – it will be fascinating to see how this figure compares with other colonies and whether there has been any change since the last survey.
Mike Babcock - Seabird Research Assistant