Morning everybody!
For those of you that don't know, the Mousetrap buttress is the huge rock sticking out at a 90 degree angle from our cliffs, inbetween Ellins Tower and the lighthouse island. A lot happens on this precambrian relic; it's where our puffins burrow, our webcam Chough nest and where our thousands of Razorbills and Guillemots pair up and lay their eggs.
The auks (Puffins/Razorbills/Guillemots) have been back since mid-march. At this early stage they would frequently go back out to sea feeding and some days the mousetrap would be deadly silent. Now, however, we have a constant (and very loud!) population as they are now sitting on eggs. Our assistant warden, Denise, did an auk count last week. From this preliminary count she found that we have about 5,500 Guillemots and just shy of 950 Razorbills! Denise will have to repeat these counts six times to obtain an average for the season.
The Puffins have been showing everyday in the past few weeks - dependant on whether you could withstand the winds in May! They have, as ever, been very popular with all our visitors and hopefully we're well on the way to having some little ones hatch.
The Mousetrap Chough, shown on the Chough webcam, have progressed a long way. If you haven't had chance to watch for yourself then we are currently down to two chicks in the nest. Last Friday we had four healthy-looking birds competing for space, but when we arrived on Saturday morning we were down to three. We weren't sure whether this bird had fledged the nest or had fallen out (it's a pretty long way down with rocks jutting out and sea below). The same happened over Saturday night and on Sunday morning we were greeted by just two chicks in the nest. The parents were still coming in fairly regularly and I was hopefull that the other two chicks had just fledged and were somewhere in the vicinity of the cave. Later on Sunday afternoon a familiar face appeared at the bottom of the screen - it was the third chick! He/she later rejoined the group in the nest and I went home happy. For the past couple of days we've seen nothing of the two fledgling chicks and have watched as the two remaining chicks continue to be fed by their parents. There are two possibilities now: the first two chicks have fledged and are being fed from inside the cave, but away from the nest; or the chicks have perished and we just have the two in the nest remaining. Although I am the eternal optimist and hope that we have four surviving little ones, to have just two survivors would be an awesome step in the conservation of this majestic species.
I will keep you updated as we find out more....
Keep smiling,
Kathy x