So the breeding season starts

With the run of fine weather this week, it's the perfect chance to have a first look at some of our breeding seabirds. First stop yesterday was Mullion Island, where a few photographs from the cliffs revealed that the Cormorants were well into the breeding season, with some nests even having half-grown chicks exercising their wings. A scan of the photos revealed at least 69 nests, which is on a par with last year's record 73 nests.

We then sat on the cliffs overlooking Rinsey zawn and waited patiently for sitting Shags to shuffle and show us what they're up to. In total there were 11 occupied nests, but of these just one had laid, with three eggs present. This compares to well to previous years, with first eggs noted (from 2013-19) on 8th March, 22nd April, 13th March, 1st April, 22nd March, 9th April and 25th March.

Storm Eunice delivers a lost swan

Storm Eunice brought a fair amount of destruction to the southwest, but there was one arrival that was a rather unexpected. When going out onto their farm near Lelant, one family were surprised to find an exhausted young swan in one of their fields. They picked it up and found that it was ringed, with both a metal ring and a yellow colour ring: CDBH.

CDBH recovering on a Cornish farm (Selena Richards)

With a bit of detective work, it was found to be a bird ringed as a cygnet in a park in Dublin in September 2021. It was quite happily seen in the park over the winter, last seen on 4th January, but then perhaps got caught up in the storm and ended up in a Cornish field on 24th February. The Dublin project has ringed 800 Mute Swans since 2015 but have never before had a sightings in England. The 353km this bird travelled (wind-asssited) is also a record for the project.

This is the first record of an Irish Mute Swan in Cornwall and in fact there have been very few ringing records of Irish Mute Swans making the Irish Sea crossing at all. There have previously been eight records in England (strangely mostly in and around the West Midlands), five in wales and two in Scotland.

Many thanks to Selena Richards and family for finding and reporting CDBH, Mark Whittaker for tracking it down and Graham Prole from the Irish Midland Ringing Group for the quick reply with the details.