New life at Kilcoole

This week was a busy one at Kilcoole. Early in the week there was a large influx of adult terns into the colony, with max counts of over 250 individuals. This lead to great excitement amongst the wardens over this fresh potential for a large number of new nests. The large number of adults is also an advantage for the terns because they are better able to mob avian predators.

A substantial number of terns started to lay eggs and build scraps to the south of the protective predator fence. On Wednesday morning wardens were busy at work extending the fence future south as far as the breaches outlet to incorporate these new nests which would otherwise have been exposed to a number of mammalian predators.

By weeks end, the number of nests was up to 84, and included just over 200 eggs! Wardens continue to find new nests daily and this number is estimated to continue to grow well into next week.

Thursday afternoon saw the first cracks beginning to appear in the first nest that was discovered 21 days ago. Much to the warden’s delight, early Friday morning, there were two fluffy tern chicks freshly hatched in the nest. This nest was a very early layer and it is expected that no more eggs will hatch for another 3 or 4 days, and with a large bulk of the first batch of eggs hatching on the 19^th and 20^th of June.

The first two little Fluffies of the 2015 season

Little Tern chicks asleep in the nest

Two nests of Ringed Plover also hatched on Friday morning, with 4 chicks each. Unlike the terns these Ringed Plover chicks run off the nest on their very long legs to hide in the shingle mere hours after hatching! As a species, Ringed Plovers are very promiscuous, and chicks learn to feed and take care of themselves very quickly. All that was seen of these little chicks was the broken bits of shell which they had escaped from earlier in the morning. The Little Terns, however, require a lot of parental care and rely on their parents for food right up until fledging. We will be seeing a lot of this around the colony soon as all our eggs begin to hatch!

Ringed Plover up and ready to run before his brother even hatches!

Susan and Paddy

Sunny Side Up in Kilcoole

The Terns are doing a fierce job making nests and laying eggs. This week has been a brilliant one for new nest discoveries! Tonight, we have a tally of 75 active Tern nests and 189 eggs on the beach, which we are, of course, delighted about. The expected arrival date for the first little ternlet is coming ever closer – I hope to meet my first chick of the 2015 season within two weeks.

A Little Tern carefully checks how her eggs are doing © Chris Dobson (taken under NPWS licence)

Our remaining Ringed Plovers are very close to hatching. Several nests have slowly cracking eggs. Likewise, our first Oystercatcher eggs are cracking (ever so slowly), keeping us in great suspense! I regularly come across three of the four Ringed Plover chicks that hatched this week as they have stayed in the vicinity of their nesting area in front of the hide. The parents spend all day long searching for them among the stones, whistling and darting back and forth towards the chick’s calls. They find one, only to loose the other two and set off again. They try to sit and brood another, just to hear the call of the third and jump straight back up to find it, while the first scarpers into the grass again!

The good weather and sunshine looks set to continue for the time being. Hopefully the high pressure will keep the tide at bay and prevent a repeat of last week’s wash out. If the sunshine stays in Kilcoole, we may have another great rise in nest numbers by next week.

Susan and Paddy

Ringed Ringed Plovers

We had a lovely evening when one of our Ringed Plover nests hatched four adorably fluffy little chicks. These four chicks were ringed with metal rings so that we can monitor their progress in the colony and perhaps see where they head off to as adults.

Ringed Plover hatchlings © Susan Doyle (picture taken under NPWS licence)

Fluffy Ringed Plover chick on the move! © Chris Dobson (picture taken under NPWS licence)

Tough Plover parenting © Chris Dobson (picture taken under NPWS licence)

For you know I'd even try to turn the tide

Alas, after such a positive start to the season, our fortunes did not last.

The Terns and I survived the unruly wind and rain all day Monday (see how the wind took half of our Warden Flag - raised 24/7, because we are here 24/7!). The weather eased and calmed by sunset, but there were indicators that something was coming – Manx Shearwater were visible from the shore and a large pod of Common Dolphin passed very close, both telling of storms far out to sea. 

The wind took half our flag off!

 That night, the tide came in… and kept coming in further… and further … and further. The unusually high tide surge, probably pushed by a sea storm, obliterated our seaward fence and claimed many nests in the colony.When I rolled into bed on Monday night, we had a colony-count of 51 active nests and 136 eggs. On rolling back out Tuesday morning, we had 41 active nests and 108 eggs. Altogether, 10 nests were lost. It was a sad old morning surveying the damage from the bird-hide: many Little Terns were sitting on top of the fencing and seaweed that had buried their eggs.

Seaward fence torn down by the tide

On a happier note, 7 new nests were found after the tidal sweep. Thus, the Tern facts and figures are currently at: 48 active nests (out of a total of 62 nesting attempts) and 119 eggs. Not a bad way to be indeed! It is so early in the season that many Terns who lost their nests are likely to re-lay, and sure enough, many Terns were observed digging scrapes and sampling nest spots today.

Susan and Paddy

Colony news for May

Now that we have reached the end of May, lets see some vital Tern statistics for the first three weeks of the project.

After the four day gap between the first and second nest, numbers shot up dramatically. On the 25^th of May, 3 new Terns began nesting. The next day, 9 more were on eggs and the numbers continued to grow in this way all week. On May 31^st, we happily marked our 53^rd nest in the 2015 Little Tern colony. Altogether, that made for 146 eggs and potential chicks so far!

Naturally, there have been some losses, but we have been very fortunate. Corvids led to the direct loss of just 2 nests. A single egg was also taken from a third nest, but we have watched her closely ever since and she has continued to incubate her remaining two eggs. The third egg in a Tern nest is often an insurance policy for exactly this kind of loss, so the remaining two chicks in her nest are actually more likely to benefit by not having to share food and other parental care with a third sibling! Also, Nest No.39 was swept away by the tide the day after laying. However, on contemplating her choice of nest site, I feel that this loss was inevitable – just look at this picture of the bank where she decided to bed down. Note how it is completely covered by crashing waves at high tide everyday!!

The wave battered bank on which one Tern unwisely decided to make a nest.

It is still early in the season, so any Terns that have lost eggs are very likely to re-lay and still hatch out some chicks. Some of the Terns are still venturing towards parenthood: more new nests have already been found this morning, while the mating and courting behaviours that are a precursor to nesting are still observed in the colony, meaning more eggs can be expected.

On the Ringed Plover front, 7 nesting attempts have so far occurred in the colony. 5 Plovers are still resolutely incubating their clutches. One Plover unfortunately lost her nest, but on the brighter side, another Plover successfully hatched out four Plover chicks!

As for the Oystercatcher, 4 nesting attempts were made. One Mother Oystercatcher is still unyieldingly attached to her nest – we are hoping to find chicks there any day now – while a second abandoned her egg. A third, rather defiant, Oystercatcher lost her first nest, but has made an industrious second attempt with a daring 4 egg clutch! We wish her well!

With this very positive start to the season, we step into June with great optimism. What we meet is howling winds and pounding rain, but, as I hang onto the side of the bird-hide for dear life, I can tell you that those Terns are sitting tight on the beach, and spirits are not dampened!

Susan and Paddy

A big thank you to Seamus for volunteering to fix the driver’s window on the TernMobile – its great to finally have it shut again (and keeping this rain out!).

A costly way of thinking

Flight is a very costly activity indeed. Birds spend a great deal of energy lifting off and staying in the air. Long distance migrants, like our Terns, direct so much energy towards flying that they must reduce the energetic demands elsewhere in their bodies. One way in which birds have reduced energetic expenditure is in the brain. For many regular and day-to-day behaviours, birds operate on a “rule of thumb” basis. They essentially skip the thinking part by following the simple rule “if such-and-such a situation is happening, then… do this”. For example “if there are white speckled things in my nest, then…sit on them” soon followed by “if there are cheeping, gaping things in my nest, then…feed them”. Following this rule of thumb, birds will incubate their young as eggs and then feed them as chicks. By using this method of thinking, the brain does not need to be as big and complex and more energy can be directed to activities like flying.

But alas, although they evolved to work very well and save a great deal of brain power, sometimes a rule of thumb behaviour just ends up wasting your time. For example, see the case of the Black-headed Cardinal feeding goldfish in a garden pond. Following the rule “if I see a red coloured, gaping hole, then…feed it”, the Cardinal's brain is triggered by the shape and colour of the goldfish mouths and, thinking they are actually the gaping mouths of baby chicks, feeds the fish as if they were its own young in the nest.

I saw a similar example of time wasting in the colony today during a rowdy encounter between the Little Terns and Ringed Plover. To explain it, I must first explain two rules that Little Terns and Ringed Plover follow.

Rule #1: “If there is a sick individual attracting attention to the colony, then…chase it away” – Little Terns.

Nesting in groups helps protect Little Tern nests from predators. When a big black crow flies into the colony (or when I go in for colony nest checks), the Terns get together and torment it until it retreats. Similarly, the Terns get together in a gang to chase away any sick individuals near their nests. Sick individuals are loud and flap about, creating a landing beacon for any hungry predators lurking nearby. If there is a sick bird flapping and crying in the colony, the Terns will mob it until it either leaves, or in grim circumstances, gives up and dies.

Rule #2: “If a predator is near my nest, then…attract its attention to me instead” – Ringed Plovers.

A strategy often used by ground nesting birds, when a predator is near the nest, the parent attract its attention and leads them away from the nest. Birds do this by pretending to be sick or injured – an easy catch and an easy meal for a hungry fox. When I approach a Ringed Plover nest to do my colony nest checks, the Plover whistles and cries out to me, then pathetically limps the opposite direction waggling a “broken” wing falling all over the place. It is effective – I do get very distracted! Predators will follow the “injured” Plover away from the nest a sufficient distance before she miraculously heals and flies off into the distance.

Maybe you can already see where I am going here. This morning in the colony, a Plover, sensing some sort of predator danger, began her broken wing exercise to protect her nest. The Terns, on seeing this sick and injured individual near their nests, began to mob and harass her. The Plover felt more threatened and upped her limping and squealing antics. The Terns became more concerned and upped the shouting and dive-bombing. The scene escalated to a tight cluster of 30 Terns furiously screaming over the head of a single Plover rolling around on the ground having an epileptic fit.

Nobody was incubating their eggs. Nobody was fishing for food. Yet there were no predators in sight and no dying birds to attract them. Following their rule of thumb, while usually quite beneficial, just didn't really do the job this morning. The Terns eventually dispersed and returned to a state of peaceful incubation with their Plover colony-mates.

There you have it, you can never be prepared for everything.

Susan and Paddy

Kilcoole hits double figures!

After the joyous occasion of finally finding the second nest, they just kept on coming! In the past three days, we have shot up from 1 to 18 nests -the season has truly taken off! Many of the nests have one egg, but are likely to add more to their clutch. Two ambitious Terns even have nests of three eggs.

Nest No.9 - a two egg clutch

With the cold wind and rain today, I made the executive decision not to enter the colony so the Terns could stay warming their eggs as much as possible. Much of the afternoon was spent in amusement watching Tern antics from the shelter of the bird-hide. For a bird so elegant in flight that they are nicknamed “swallows of the sea”, the Little Terns really lose their grace down on the shingle. They trip and fall trying to cross the stones on their short little legs, shakily holding out their wings for balance. Of course, when your bill is as long as your face it, is very difficult to look down and see how high you need to lift your little feet, so more than one Tern has ended up sprawled over the stones. Surprised, they scramble up, fold up their wings like nothing just happened, and preserver. Each time they slip and wobble, I wonder why they don’t just take to the air in graceful flight. Perhaps we can take a little something from their determination.

The hide doubles as watchtower and rain shelter

The courting behaviour observed the past week continues. Plenty of male Terns are landing with impressive and tasty fish to present as gifts to their prospective mates. This allows the female to judge whether her chicks will be well provided for: the more fish he can bring her, the more certain she can be of his hunting prowess and capabilities. Single-motherhood for a Tern would prove nearly impossible when she has to be incubating eggs on the shore and hunting sandeels at sea all at the same time. Extensive days of courtship cumulate in a little dancing ritual where the Terns turn their heads from side to side, the male still brandishing a fish, while the female crouches in her freshly dug scrape. After mating, the male waddles around his new mate in a few excited victory laps (until tripping over a pebble, as outlined above).

Young life has come to Kilcoole already…but not on the beach. A Mute Swan with one fluffy cygnet was swimming in the lagoon behind the colony yesterday afternoon, and a Mallard with ducklings last week. We are still waiting for the Ringed Plover and Oystercatcher breeding within the colony to hatch out something cute and fluffy. Some day soon.

Susan and Paddy