Geebs top 200 on Mullion Island

Bank holiday Monday seemed to be the perfect day for a spot of kayaking, so three of us headed out to Mullion Island to have our first count of Great Black-backed Gull nests.

Great Black-backed Gulls are spread across the island, here looking back to Mullion Cove

At first there didn't seem to be many birds on the island, but as we swept the island there were plenty of nests. Most were still with unhatched eggs, though some did have small chicks. In total we recorded some 83 nests containing 204 eggs/chicks, which is by far the highest number in recent years.

	2013	2014	2015	2016
GBB Gull nests	-	62	37	83
GBB Gull eggs/chicks	98	174	90	204
GBB Gull chicks ringed	4	17	12	-

The high nest count is great news and almost rivals the key Cornwall site at Looe Island, where 86 nests were counted last week. We've always seen very low survival rates to fledging though, so it'll be interesting to see how many of these 204 eggs and chicks survive the coming weeks.

Many nests were just hatching