Jenny and I took a half hour walk around the reserve at lunch time. A couple of nice surprises was a party of three snow buntings, thirty off fieldfares and a peregrine. What stood out for me though, was the smell of fulmar petrels, or maalies as we call them.
Maalies have been absent from our cliffs for a few weeks, but have returned to their breeding sites in small numbers in the last couple of days. Some can be seen surfing on the (ever present!) wind, others seem to just sit and take in the view. They are a pleasure to watch.
They are long-lived birds like their cousins - the albatrosses. As with their southern hemisphere cousins, they suffer some of the same problems here in the northern hemisphere, that is marine pollution. I think I have said it before in a previous blog, but there's no harm in stating it again. With thanks to the efforts of people like Martin Heubeck co-ordinating the beach bird surveys in the North Atlantic, we know that our fulmars have plastic in their stomach. They swallow small pieces of man-made rubbish whilst foraging. It has been estimated that Shetland's fulmar population alone has TWO TONNES of plastic inside them. Two tonnes - that is almost incomprehensible and most shameful.
I guess the sources of the plastic is wide ranging, from folk dropping litter on purpose (on land or at sea) and the odd accident, to windblown rubbish from landfill sites. What can we as individuals do? Well, lots actually. Dunna chuck bruck as we say in Shetland (don't drop litter!), help with community beach cleans, pressure councils, governments, industries and anyone who will listen to manage waste better. It's another step we can all take towards saving nature.
Of course, a simple free thing we can do is encourage our friends and families to get out to connect with and enjoy nature. It's good for us!
See you on a windswept day at Sumburgh Head maybe :)