Breeding season hotting up!

It's been a while since we updated on the start of the breeding season, so this is a quick tour of some of what we've been up to recently. Most recently we've had our first session out ringing Storm Petrels and managed to get teams out to Lizard and Porthgwarra on the same night. PG won out, catching 52 birds, including birds originally ringed in France and on Skokholm Island, Wales (as an adult in 2016). The Lizard team caught 22 birds, but also two birds from elsewhere: birds ringed in 2018 at Portland, Dorset and on Bardsey Island in North Wales.

Aside from that, we've mostly been counting and ringing chicks recently, including Chough, Dipper, Cormorant, gulls and Kittiwakes. It's been fun as well monitoring successive Robin nesting attempts at Penventon Garden Centre, nesting in amongst some of the plant displays! The first fledged two chicks, with two dying in the nest (lack of food due to the baked-hard ground perhaps?), and the second attempt (photographed below) currently has five chicks.

We're also well into the first checks of the Barn Owl season and whilst some pairs are only just hatching chicks now, others already have chicks that are 5-6 weeks old!

One of a brood of five chicks ringed last week on the Lizard

A rather unusual barrel nestbox we found removed from an old site near Marazion.
There must be some pirate heritage in birds that nest is such an impressive barrel.

Whilst most of the owls we've been ringing have been in boxes, it's also been busy in the owl hospital at the Screech Owl Sanctuary. We've already made several visits this year to ring birds before release and our last visit saw us ringing three small chicks (including the very rusty bird below), an older chick and an adult.

Away from ringing, we've now managed to count the gull nests on Mullion and the total of 71 is on par with previous years, though the number of eggs and chicks is second highest we've seen.

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
GBB Gull nests	-	62	37	83	70	60	71
GBB Gull eggs/chicks	98	174	90	204	166	-	195
GBB Gull chicks ringed	4	17	12	13	5	3	-
Cormorant nests	24	52	50	39	47	38	47
Cormorant chicks ringed	11	19	7	16	0	0	14

We've also seen the first Kittiwake eggs of the year, at Rinsey. At the same time some of the Shag chicks are already close to fledging!

The main zawn at Rinsey, sadly now pretty much devoid of Kittiwakes
and with drastically-reduced Shag numbers

Next on the agenda is trying to up our numbers if colour-ringed adult Kittiwakes and then we'll be thinking about gulls and more owls! It never ends...