Final Mullion totals

At the end of last week, a small team of four paddled over to Mullion Island for our last visit of the year, aiming to ring Great Black-backed Gull chicks. Productivity on the island is always poor so it's with trepidation that we land, not knowing how many chicks we'll find.

After a slow start, we finally started to find chicks, although most were single birds. But as we covered the top of the island we found groups of two and three chicks and we ended the evening ringing 16 birds, which is the second highest total since we started marking chicks in 2013.

	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	16
Cormorant nests	24	52	50	39	47	38	47
Cormorant chicks ringed	11	19	7	16	0	0	14

 Having said that, finding just 18 chicks (16 ringed and two which were too big to approach safely) from 195 eggs/chicks earlier in the season is still pretty poor. We did also find four large dead chicks, but it wasn't clear how they'd died. It was also depressing to find a dead adult on top of the island with fishing line and presumably a hook in its throat, anothe victim of our polluted seas.