Little Terns in The Irish Times

One of our regular visitors to the Kilcoole Little Tern colony, Éamon de Buitléar, sent a picture of our information blackboard, "Colony News" to Irish Times journalist Michael Viney which inspired him to write a very nice piece that appeared in last Saturday's Weekend Review section of the Irish Times.

The article can be read on the following link:  

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/0723/1224301153798.html

Many thanks to Michael for his excellent write-up (the best I've ever read on the project) & the wonderful illustration.

I still stand by my ability to find rarities however... ;)

See ya,

Niall

Little Tern adult & chick © Michael Viney

Little Terns on The Morning Show

A segment on the Kilcoole Little Tern colony was featured yesterday on TV3's "The Morning Show" & can be watched online at http://www.tv3.ie/shows.php?request=themorningshow&tv3_preview=&video=38116 (skip to 15 minutes & 55 seconds in)

Thanks to TV3 for the much appreciated coverage & also to Brian Daly (TV3) & Niall Hatch (BirdWatch Ireland's Development Officer) for conducting the interview.

A recently hatched tern chick © Niall Keogh

All the terns...99!

Well it's getting to that time of the year again. The first batch of early nesting pairs & their young have already left the colony, taking the first step on their journey back to Africa for the winter!


This has become evident over the past couple of weeks as fledgling counts (which we conduct along the foreshore in early morning or late evening) have been going up & down, corresponding with similar fluctuations in the numbers of adult birds on site. This morning for instance, it was notable that the majority of fledglings along the foreshore are those at the young end of the scale (20+ days old) & can be identified by having blunt wings, sandy coloured upperparts & remnants of downy chick fluff on their head. The proportion of 'fully' juvenile Little Terns (30+ days old) with long wings, dark caps, dark bills and scaly black & grey upperparts, has decreased quite a bit. So I reckon somewhere in the region of c.45 juveniles & c.80 adults have now left the colony!

Juvenile Little Tern getting fed © Jamie Durrant

At the complete opposite end of the scale however, we're still finding new nests & yesterday I marked out our latest one (K120) which contained a single egg! As I suggested before, these are more than likely arrivals from another colony altogether which abandoned for whatever reason & moved to Kilcoole to try again. It's getting a bit silly now though as any nests that hatch out after the weekend won't be fledged by the time we finish up here for the season! 

One of the latest nests, with an interesting egg pattern © Niall Keogh

It would seem a bit harsh but I suspect & hope that many of these later nests will abandon over the coming weeks. This would actually be better off for the birds as they will be putting a lot of strain on themselves by raising chicks right up until the point when they will have to begin their return migration which could lead to the parents not being in as good condition to do so as they should be. Any late fledglings will also be at a disadvantage as they will not have had as much time to strengthen & learn to fend for themselves as the first lot have, again putting them at a disadvantage when migrating. Anyway, we'll see how the nest situation pans out over the next 3 weeks but my prediction is a run of abandonment to come.

A well grown chick on the foreshore doing it's best to hide from me! © Niall Keogh

The local predators & tides have been behaving themselves lately and we've had no recent chick losses to report. Three long dead chicks have been found however in the tideline & were most likely killed during the storm on 17th June. I have yet to find anymore on subsequent searches so it seems that we got away lightly (relatively speaking)! Since corvid attacks have stopped, egg loss has centred mostly around infertility & abandonment. A total of 7 nests have been abandoned this season (due to various reasons such as bad weather & Peregrine predation of adults). Furthermore, the entire clutch from 5 nests have failed to hatch along with single eggs from a couple of nests containing 2 or 3 eggs. This is just par for the course with some pairs, perhaps involving very young or very old pairs.

So the figures at present are: 130 nesting attempts have been made by 99 pairs with 132 young (c.88 fledglings & c.44 chicks) so far & a further 36 eggs left to hatch from a total of 21 nests.

Eggs which fail to hatch often contain dead chicks like this one © Niall Keogh

Hedgehog looking rather guilty after being caught by Cole trying to sneak in! © Niall Keogh

Wildlife sightings 28th June-14th July

Sorry about the lack of updates lately folks, I've been slipping behind a bit! Just thought I'd post some recent notes on wildlife sightings from the area over the past 2 weeks with some pics to keep you tied over until I do a colony update (which will be up tomorrow), so anyways, here you go:

Birding in the general area hasn't been too bad of late to be honest (July can sometimes be dead quiet). A flock of 175+ moulting Mallard on the marsh have drawn in 5 Teal, 4 Tufted Duck, 4 fledged juvenile Shoveler (from this years successful breeding pair) & a male Wigeon. Other species of note include up to 25 Little Egrets (incl. several juveniles), a Kingfisher and a escapee/feral Bar-headed Goose along with a Barnacle Goose in The Breaches on 4th July. Cole & Jason flushed a Quail from the Marram Grass along the railway embankment near our caravans on 7th July but the less said about that the better because I've never seen one!!! :(

The northward passage from the Lady's Island Lake gull & tern colony in Co. Wexford continues with family parties of Sandwich Terns, quite a few juvenile Black-headed Gulls, small numbers of adult Common & Arctic Terns, 3 more adult Roseate Terns & a total of 15 Mediterranean Gulls (incl. 9 juveniles) all moving north since my last post. A juvenile Common Gull has even made an appearance but I'm not so sure where it may have originated from. A couple of 1st-summer Little Gulls have dropped into The Breaches during periods of inclement weather, with a fine adult summer bird making an appearance there too on 5th July. A Peregrine which passed over the colony this morning was not only being mobbed by a large group of terns but also by an adult dark phase Arctic Skua which was an awesome sight to say the least! After the 'Pere' had gone  the terns then switched their attention to the skua who was promptly seen off. The thanks you get eh?


Wader passage is tipping along nicely with max. counts in brackets for the following species; Curlew (75+), Turnstone (20+), stunning adult summer Black-tailed Godwits (55), Redshank (21), Dunlin (20), Common Sandpiper (6), Golden Plover (2), Knot (2), Whimbrel (2) and singles of Greenshank & Sanderling. A Green Sandpiper that dropped into The Breaches this morning was most welcome & hopefully is a sign of good things to come!

Green Sandpiper © Niall Keogh

Some recent spells of calm & sunny weather have brought local Lepidoptera out in force. Meadow Brown, Small Tortoiseshell, Common Blue, Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Small White & Speckled Wood have all been noted along with a nice Hummingbird Hawk-moth on 3rd July. Cetacean sightings have also picked up with several sightings of a mother & calf Harbour Porpoise (feeding 20m off the beach yesterday evening!) plus another single adult over the past few days. The now infamous trio of Bottlenose Dolphins were also seen on Monday & Wednesday, breaching 50m offshore at times! At least 2 Otters are still knocking about in The Breaches & Webb's field most nights too.

Harbour Porpoise © Niall Keogh 

Small Tortoiseshell © Niall Keogh 

Meadow Brown © Niall Keogh

Common Blue Damselfly © Niall Keogh

Pyramidal Orchid © Niall Keogh

Roseate Tern Outings & News

The South Dublin Branch of BirdWatch Ireland will be hosting a series of 'Tern Watch' events at Coliemore Harbour, Dalkey, Co. Dublin every Tuesday evening throughout July (5th, 12th, 19th & 26th) between 18:30 & 20:00. Branch members will be present with telescopes, allowing participants to view the terns on Maiden's Rock where 24 pairs of Common & Arctic Terns as well a pair of Roseate Terns bred this year. All are welcome to the event so why not pop down some evening next month for a look?

More info on the Dalkey Tern Project can be found on the following link:

http://www.dlrcoco.ie/parks/Bio/DalkeyTernLeaflet.pdf

The Roseate Tern colony on Rockabill, located off Skerries in north Co. Dublin, has had another bumper year with 1,109 AON's (Apparently Occupied Nests) recorded during the 2011 breeding season. Common Terns are doing extremely well on 'The Rock' too with 2,149 AON's this summer (another new record) whilst a smaller population of Arctic Tern's is also present (160 AON's). BirdWatch Ireland staff are present on site each summer to warden the terns & monitor their breeding success. They also provide large numbers of tern nest boxes which has played a significant role in the increase in the Roseate Tern population there over the past few years.

Roseate Terns © Billy Clarke

No. of breeding pairs of Roseate, Common & Arctic Terns on Rockabill, Co. Dublin 2006-2011 © BirdWatch Ireland

A grand day for flying

On Friday I saw a chunky chick (c.18 days old) make a short, low flight for a few meters along the foreshore which is to be expected from birds of that age, but yesterday there was a good dozen or so proper fledged juvenile Little Terns flying around the colony & one was even seen indulging in some practise fishing! We were absolutely thrilled to bits with this as the oldest chicks are just 23 days old, meaning they've fledged at a similar age as last year but a week earlier by date. I thought it might have taken a few more days for them to do it but no doubt the warm & windy weather over the weekend beckoned them into the air.

One such 'chunky chick' wing stretching © Jamie Durrant

Another chunker © Niall Keogh

A 'proper' Little Tern fledgling! © Niall Keogh

A good scan of the foreshore this morning revealed at least 23 fledglings resting up & preening whilst still being tended to by their parents (it'll take a while before they can start fishing for themselves). The other exciting news this week relates to the continued finding of new nests, with another 10 being located & marked since my last post! There has also been another run of hatching lately, so our total stands at 80 pairs with 104 young (incl. fledglings) & 52 eggs left to hatch!!!

A new arrival © Niall Keogh

Whilst it's great to get this many pairs on site, the large arrival of late breeders is somewhat worrying for two reasons, (1). they have more than likely come from another colony which suffered some form of heavy predation/disturbance/flooding & (2). they're running out of time to get the eggs hatched & chicks fledged successfully! The likelihood is that some of these nests may abandon whilst others will stick it out to the end but won't fledge their young until mid-late August.

With all these breeding birds about there has been great activity at the colony with up to 100 birds in the air at any given stage today. The terns are getting really aggressive too while they're at it, chasing every gull (from Little to Great Black-backed!) that passes along the foreshore whilst faecal spraying of wardens has reached a whole new level!

Our other colonial inhabitants, the Oystercatchers & Ringed Plovers, are also doing very well. The 'Oyc' chicks are coming along nicely & are starting to get some white feathering on the coverts & orange colouration at the base of their beaks. Four broods of Ringed Plover chicks have fledged & there are currently 3 pairs incubating their second clutch of eggs & 1 pair with a second brood of chicks already hatched & on the go! A real contrast to the disastrous year they had last year.

Oyc chick & adult © Niall Keogh

Predator-wise, thankfully it's been pretty quiet. The only recent loss was of an adult tern which was taken by the 'resident' Peregrine over the K-colony on the 22nd, making 3 that she has predated so far this season. The Kestrels have been well behaved this year (for now!) with only one unsuccessful attempt at taking a chick observed. A big female Sparrowhawk has been seen around The Breaches hunting waders & several Foxes are ever present in the fields inland from there but there has been no mischief out of them yet either. Cole caught a Hedgehog trying to nuzzle in under the K-colony fencing last week which was only the second one he has found this season (compared to 9 last year).

Just as the Solstice passed & Autumn began again (yes I'm a pessimist!), so too did the birding begin to pick up. There was some nice passage this morning involving what I assume are failed breeding gulls & terns from the colony at Lady's Island Lake in Co. Wexford heading for the post-breeding roost sites in south Dublin Bay. Small groups of Sandwich Terns & Black-headed Gulls were moving north with a few Common Terns, Arctic Terns, 3 adult Mediterranean Gulls & even 4 cracking adult Roseate Terns thrown in for good measure which flew right through the K-colony calling loudly. Plenty of waders over the past week also with up to 150 Curlew migrating south in a day & a few other nice bits n' bobs like Bar-tailed Godwit, Grey Plover, Common Sandpiper & summer plumaged Redshank. A Dunlin of the race 'arctica' (from Greenland) on 16th June was perhaps the most interesting bird of the lot.

A couple of juvenile Stonechats were seen down near the BirdWatch Ireland reserve at Kilcoole train station, with one eventually making it's way down to the wardens caravan site. Good to see some successful local breeding of this species whose population has crashed due to recent cold winters. The infamous Cuckoo has finally moved on, which is a blessing to both the terns & the wardens (I was getting tired of chasing it off!).

The flock of eclipse plumaged Mallard is starting to build up in Webb's field & there was even 5 Gadwall with them there today. Up to 8 Little Egrets (incl. 3 juveniles) & a Kingfisher have been seen there too. A drake Tufted Duck & a drake Teal in Stringer's channels were also noteworthy for the time of year. The 21st June brought some interesting seawatching with c.5,000 Manx Shearwaters moving north in the morning along with 4 Arctic Skuas, a Little Gull, 7-8 Storm Petrels & 6 Common Scoter later that afternoon. A stunning summer plumaged Red-throated Diver has been present close offshore in recent days & a 'winter' plumaged Great Northern Diver was even seen out there too.

The Otters are again, ever present, whilst a mother & calf Harbour Porpoise offshore & a Stoat at Webb's farmyard were the only other recent Mammalian highlights.

Juvenile Stonechat © John Fox 

Cuckoo © Jamie Durrant

Summer plumaged Red-throated Diver, a real cracker! © Jamie Durrant

Branch Trip Update

Just a quick post to say that the Carlow & Wicklow Branch outing to the colony on Sunday went really well with c.35 people in attendance which was great. It was really nice meeting you all!

As well as getting a close up look at some Little Tern chicks, we also saw some Lapwing fledglings & migrating Curlew in Webb's field, a nice colony of Pyramidal Orchids in the dunes & some Black-tailed Godwits in The Breaches.

Having a look at some rare breeding birds in Webb's field (NPWS nature reserve) © Andrew Power

We were lucky to get some nice weather for a change! © Andrew Power

Niall showing some c.2 week old terns to the group, explaining the processes of ringing, chick growth & wing development © Andrew Power

The terns have been doing well since the high tide & strong winds on Friday buried the seaward fence & washed out a few nests. There's been no indication of any major loss & we've even had quite a few new nests in the past couple of days so as far as I'm aware we currently have 70 pairs with 75 chicks & 65 eggs left to hatch! I'll bring you guys up to speed with colony news as soon as I have more time to write-up a bigger blog entry, in the meantime we're slowly tipping away at getting the seaward fence back up & running!