Tomorrow we start a major part of the It's Your Tern Project and it's very exciting. The timber is ordered (Thanks to Travis Perkins, Millom) the barrels are on their way and volunteers are raring to go (I hope!).
As part of the project we have been looking into ways of providing top notch habitat for Little terns to use during the breeding season. As some have commented on in the past the numbers of Terns have reduced dramatically at Hodbarrow. We hope that with some of the work we are doing we can provide as much viable habitat as possible to give little terns in South Cumbria the best possible options for breeding.
Having monitored the main breeding island we have found that land based predators such as fox have been one of the main reasons for their decline. In order to help prevent this we have a few plans up our sleeves. Firstly the island shape and size will change dramatically in the next few months with machinery shaping two more islands out of the two spits you see coming from the main island. This will have a deep channel dug and a fence (Donated by Tornade Wire, Millom) to provide a barrier.
The second part which starts tomorrow is the building of floating tern islands. These will be built (with the help of Volunteers) out of timber, floated with barrels and covered with gravel. We hope to have two islands in the lagoon providing a stable platform for terns to nest on. The building of these islands starts tomorrow and because of this there may not be too much to see from the hide but do feel free to come and see what we are up to.
Finally to the birds! I came back from my holiday to find a note on the board.... Slavonaian Grebe had been seen near the island on 30th of August. Brilliant sighting though it did have to be whilst I was away! I went down today to give the hide a sweep out aswell. Redshank and lapwing were about making a bit of a racket particularly when a heron came by. Teal and wigeon are back on the reserve again around the main island. Apart from that there were a few other bits and bobs. I also noticed on the forum page someone had seen a ruff recently, also a great sighting but I haven't managed to catch up with it. If you have any sightings of your own let me know on here. I'm going to start a thread on the Hodbarrow forum for sightings so if you see anything common or rare pop it down there for other people to see. Cheers