Spanish Black-head and record Cormorant numbers

Mullion Island Cormorants are already well into their breeding season now, with some chicks almost ready to fledge. Our regular count from photos found a reciord 75 nests across the front of the island, beating the 73 nests in 2021 and 72 in 1999.

Annoyingly, photographs also showed an interloper in the colony. This white- (or blue-) ringed bird is likely to be from Wales or Ireland, but without being able to read the ring we'll never know. We're currently investigating the options for remote pan-tilt-zoom cameras, so watch this space.

The highlight from this weekend was a great sighting by Shaun Grose at Hayle. This Black-headed Gull (black ring N016) is actually the first Spanish-ringed bird to be seen in Cornwall, so quite special. In fact only 30 have ever been seen in the UK, so even at a national level this is notable.

It was ringed as an adult on the north coast of Spain in January 2022 and was regular there until 11th March 2022, then seen again in March 2023. It returned in January 2024 and was last seen there on 26th February, before being seen at Hayle. Presumably it's breeding somewhere in the UK, so one to look out for in future years.

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.

More Mullion Cormorants

We've never had the chance to make two Cormorat ringing trips over to Mullion Island, but the spacing of the colony this summer allowed us to get over safely again at the weekend. Thanks again to Lizard Adventure we took a few kayaks over and landed both side of the island so that we could corral the young birds in the Sea Mallow.

Some of the larger birds we let waddle off onto the top of the island so we could concentrate on the medium-sized chicks. With an efficient team, we were able to ring 25 chicks, 23 of which we also gave a coded orange ring which can be read at distance. We strictly limit our time on the island (to no more than an hour), so had to leave another dozen chicks unringed. But with a record number of nests this year (at least 73) this was always going to be a productive year. We sadly also didn't have time to count the Great Black-backed Gull nests on the island either, but with plenty of birds sat on eggs (and even a left-over Manx Shearwater meal) we hope they too will have a good year.

Across the two visits we colour-ringed 44 chicks this year which is by far the most we've ever ringed, so it'll be fascinating to see how these birds get on and where they end up. Thanks again to Lizard Adventure for the loan of their kayaks (and guide) and wehope to be working with them again soon when it's time to ring gull chicks.

First Mullion Island trip of 2021

With the easing of restrictions coming at the perfect time, we took the chance of some flat clam seas this morning to make our first trip over to Mullion Island as part of our annual seabird monitoring. Earlier in the season we'd photographed the island from the clifftop and estimated 63 occupied nests, which is the most we've seen on the island since we started monitoring nests in 2013.

With enough big chicks to make a ringing trip worthwhile, with the help of Lizard Adventure we kayaked over and realised that we'd underestimated the number of nests, with the colony spreading deep into the Mallow, hence not visible from the mainland. We need to review the revised estimate, but at over 70 nests this is quite significant.

With three small ringing teams, we managed to ring 21 chicks, with 20 also large enough to take an orange colour ring to allow us to better track movements.

Many thanks to the ringing team and we were on and off the island in under 45 minutes, so minimising disturbance as much as possible. It'll be fascinating to see how this cohort of chicks fare and there may be more to ring yet as many nests still had unhatched eggs!

2020 seabird update

It's been a while now since we've updated the blog, but to be honest lockdown has meant that we've not really been up to much anyway! We've been out reading gull rings locally and that's about it. But now lockdown has eased slightly we've been able to get out and start to look at Barn Owls and some of our seabirds. More on the owls later, but it was great to get out to Trewavas Head and Mullion Island recently and see how our birds are getting on.

A quick kayak out past Trewavas Head last week found very healthy numbers of Kittiwakes back on the ledges, including lots of 'new' birds at Trequean which has only recently been used. This new site appears to have been taken on by younger birds, with several birds we've ringed as chicks now sat on the ledges there. A quick paddle found 23 of our colour-ringed birds and four French birds which is a great start.

We then had our first trip over to Mullion Island today to check on the numbers of Great Black-backed Gulls nesting there. We weren't able to get over to ring any Cormorants this year due to lockdown, which was unfortunate as they were in a very accessible part of the island! But we were able to photograph and count nests earlier in the year and the count of at least 53 (and probably 57) is the highest we've seen in recent years.

Some of this year's fledged Cormorants enjoying the sun

Back to the gulls, there was one section of the island we couldn't cover due to nesting Shags and Cormorants, but we covered a majority of the island and counted 59 nests, mostly still with eggs. This is slightly down on previous years, as was the 146 eggs/chicks counted.

Great Black-backed Gull nest with a view

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
GBB Gull nests	-	62	37	83	70	60	71	(59)
GBB Gull eggs/chicks	98	174	90	204	166	-	195	(146)
GBB Gull chicks ringed	4	17	12	13	5	3	16	?
Cormorant nests	24	52	50	39	47	38	47	53-57
Cormorant chicks ringed	11	19	7	16	0	0	14	0

We'll be back over in a few weeks to see how those 146 have got on, so more on that later.

Newly-hatched Great Black-backed Gull chick

Cormorant ringing on Mullion Island

With the swell finally dropping off, this morning gave us the opportunity to get over to Mullion Island to ring some Cormorant chicks. With a ragtag fleet of a kayak, a dingy and a paddleboard we made it over and in pretty perfect conditions. We thought we were pushing it with timing, but remarkably a lot of birds on the island were still on eggs!

But there were enough birds to keep us occupied and in less than 45 minutes we colour-ringed 13 chicks, with one smaller bird just metal-ringed. With birds from the island moving as far south as Spain (see a map of Mullion Cormorant movements here) it'll be fascinating to see where this year's birds go.

In previous years, the ringing totals have varied rather depending on where the birds nest and how accessible they are: 2013 (11 chicks ringed), 2014 (19), 2015 (7), 2016 (16) and none in 2017 or 2018 when the nests were all too close to the edge of the island to access them safely.

Welsh Cormorant on the boating lake

The good thing about Cormorants is that they're big, so have big rings that with patience can be read on confiding birds. In the last couple of years we've had reports of two birds from Little Saltee Island, Co Wexford: a chick from 2106 seen at Helston Boating Lake in July 2017 and a chick from 2010 seen at Swanpool in December 2018.

The latest though was a bird ringed as a chick on Puffin Island, Anglesey last year that was photographed on Friday at Helston Boating Lake.

Thanks to Terry Thirlaway for the photo and for passing the info on.

Hola TBZ and a Chough update

After a day out ringing Chough chicks in the far west of the county (more on that later) it was a pleasant surprise to find an email reporting one of our Mullion Island Cormorants in Spain! We've had a bird seen in France before, but Spain is a great record. It's not unprecedented though, and two chicks ringed in Cornwall in the 1960s were later found dead on the north coast of Spain. But this is the first live sighting.

TBZ was ringed in 2016 and was seen near Castropol on the northwest coast of Spain, so thanks to Gilberto Sánchez Jardón for the photo and for reporting it back to us.

As for Choughs, it was mixed news sadly... We visited three sites in West Penwith: the first produced two male and two female chicks, the second just a single chick and the last nest site was empty! This was rather surprising as the pair had been showing all the usual behaviours seen when feeding young, but the nest (below) was very clean and obviously hadn't held any chicks.

Thanks to Alan and Christian who came along to ensure that we safely got into these sites, so do check out their Rope Geeks page on Facebook. Also thanks to Robbie Phillips for the photos.

Mullion Cormorant in France

With so much time taken up recently putting up Barn Owl boxes it seems like an age since we blogged. But news today of one of our Mullion Island Cormorants gave cause to put pen to paper.

TBP was ringed as a chick on the island in April 2016 and hadn't been seen since before being found dead with a neck injury in France on 3rd March. This is the second of our birds to be found in France and the furthest movement to date. Perhaps not surprisingly, birds do tend to stick to the English Channel area but it's surprising they don't stray further north.

The only other recent sightings have been a bird roosting on Helston Loe Pool (along with up to 16 Cattle Egrets!) and a bird that has spent the winter at Chard Reservoir in Somerset.

Adults are already sitting on nests on the island so it won't be too long until we're back out starting our 2017 monitoring.

We don't have a photo of TBP when ringed,
but it probably looked very like TBR

Cormorant coincidence

This afternoon we received a report of one of our Mullion-ringed Cormorants, seen at Chard Reservoir, Somerset in early November. But the bizarre coincidence was that it had been photographed stood next to a second colour-ringed bird, ringed as a chick on Kreupel Island in The Netherlands earlier this year.

Orange TB6 and red BR together at Chard Reservoir

Kreupel Island has a fascinating history, being created as a bird refuge between 2002 an 2004 when 3 million cubic metres of dredged material was dumped on an existing sandbar. It is now home to Europe's largest Common Tern colony.

Many thanks to Kevin Harris for reporting this bird, with the photo above coming from the Chard Reservoir sightings page.

Ringing demo and the first chicks to ring

This weekend saw the annual Cornwall Wildlife Trust wildlife celebration at Trebah Gardens, where the ringing demonstration is one of the highlights (allegedly). Over 2,500 people came along last year so it's a great event to get the word out about what amazing wildlife we have in the county. This year was a bit quiet bird-wise, but we did still manage to show people a range of birds, including Nuthatch, Chiffchaff and Coal Tits.

We also run a couple of walks checking what's happening in the nestboxes, but with the event being much earlier than previous years that was a bit quiet as well! Instead we taught people how to find open-nesting species and even show them Robin and Song Thrush feeding chicks and the Robin nest below on five eggs. Everyone seemed keen to get home and look in their own nestboxes, so hopefully there will be a rush of Nestbox Challenge registrations soon...

Away from Trebah, the weekend saw us ringing the first chicks of the year, but in quite different places! Saturday saw us ringing the first of our Dipper broods in Idless Woods, with five chicks being a pretty good start!

Sunday was an all-together more adventurous evening, as we paddled over to Mullion Island to ring a few Cormorant chicks. We timed it perfectly, with the biggest birds not so big that they were all running around, with seven broods with chicks big enough to ring. Cormorants are very asynchronous and some birds were still incubating eggs, and there were also many chicks that were still too small to ring. But we did manage to ring and colour-ring 15 birds, which compares pretty well to previous years (11, 19 and 7 in 2013-15).

The timing of the trips over is also variable, with this visit being earlier than the last couple of years: previous ringing trips were on 6th April 2013, 17th May 2014 and 7th May 2015. It did mean that we weren't able to count the Great Black-backed Gull nests, as most were just at the building stage. In fact, we only found two nests with eggs in, with two in each, so may have to plan another trip over to count these.

Sibe Chiffs meet nesting Dippers

Well apparently yesterday was the last day of winter, so it was fitting that we had a day out that saw us cooing over the remnants of winter along with looking forward to the summer.

Whilst failing to put up a couple of Dipper nestboxes, we peered over the fence at one of our local sewage works (Constantine) to find the bushes there heaving with small stuff. At any one time there were at least 25 Chiffchaffs buzzing round fly-catching, and in amongst them were at least five Firecrest and two Siberian 'tristis' Chiffchaffs.

So that was the last gasp of winter, and the first signs of spring came in the form of a nest-building Dipper (where we were trying to put a box!) and also 39 Cormorants sat on nests on Mullion Island. Once again they've moved location, this time preferring the landward side of the island. There were also some signs of spring at Rinsey, with several Shags starting to nest-build and the first Kittiwakes also back on ledges, including CA (below), ringed as an adult in 2013.

Mullion Island Cormorants

To continue the theme of early nestling ringing, yesterday saw three of us head over to Mullion Island on our annual Cormorant ringing trip. With 47 of the 50 pairs now nesting on an inaccessible cliff edge, we were expecting to ring just a handful of chicks, so the seven we found of perfect size were a bonus.

All were duly ringed and colour-ringed, so keep an eye out for our distinctive, coded orange rings on your birding travels.

This trip also gives us the opportunity to count the number of active Great Black-backed Gull nests on the island, and a quick sweep gave us at least 37 nests, currently with 90 eggs. There were also over 20 'nests' that my yet to be laid in, but we don't know how many of these will be used. Of the 37 most already had three eggs laid, so birds are well on the way here. This count is well down on 2014 though, when a visit on 17th May found 62 nests, containing 174 eggs, so here's hoping that some of the empty nests are yet to be filled!

One of the Great Black-backed Gull nests with one unusually pale egg

Whilst heading back to the kayaks (our new method of transport over to the island), we noticed a ragged wing sticking up out of the mallow. Assuming it might not be attached to much more, we dragged it up only to find it was attached to a some dried out remains, but remains with a metal ring and a shiny red colour ring! This is a Skokholm-ringed bird, and actually one seen in Portreath at the end of 2014, but we'll hear back with the full details soon.

Mullion Island Cormorants on the move

Never good to find that the morning you're off over to your seabird island there's frost all over your kayak! But thankfully the good old Cornish sun came out and warmed the day up pretty quickly.

So three of the group paddled out to Mullion Island (with an intrepid swimmer in tow), primarily to check how the Cormorants were doing. With our first Shag egg being a month earlier than in 2014, we'd half expected the Cormorants to be hatching by now. But what greeted us was a little bit disappointing...

The same area of the island in 2014, with numerous raised nest sites

The 'usual' (for the last two years at least) site was unoccupied, which had us worried momentarily, until we noticed where the birds had moved to for the summer! A small number of birds had moved onto the east-facing cliff edge, but most birds had moved right out onto the steepest cliff-edge along the western side of the island.

The white splats are a good indication of where the colony has now moved to

So sadly it looks like our Cormorant colour-ringing will be a bit limited this year, but at least it'll be easier to round up Great Black-backed Gull chicks later in the year.

And yes, whilst it was a nice and sunny day up top, our swimmer confirmed that the sea was still rather cold...

Another Cormorant goes east

Hot on the heels of TBB, which was recently seen in West Bexington, Dorset, another of our Cormorants has headed east. TAX was at Dawlish Warren, Devon, on 15th August, reported to use by Lee Collins, who reads a huge number of rings at the site. This was his first colour-ringed Cormorant though, so we're happy to oblige!

TAX was ringed in May 2014 on Mullion Island, one of 18 birds now sporting orange colour rings.

TAX at Dawlish Warren (Lee Collins)

First Cormorant sighting

After a couple of years ringing, and colour ringing, Cormorants on Mullion Island we've finally had our first sighting! So a big thanks to Mike Morse who saw TBB at West Bexington, Dorset, on Wednesday and sent us the following photos.

TBB was one of 18 birds ringed on the Island on 17th May (see blog post here), so made a pretty quick movement east: West Bexington is just short of 200km  from Mullion Island.

The only previous recovery we've had of one of our birds was at a fish farm in Ponsanooth in October last year. It got tangled in netting trying to steal fish, but was released OK.

Just one more photo of TBB

In other news, a few extra Barn Owls ringed yesterday brings our total to 69 for the year, so fingers crossed that our last site to visit next week will take us over the 70-mark, and who could resist adding a video of the release of some roosted Swallows from our first catch of the year at Gunwalloe...

CES rosefinch and island Cormorants

The continued high pressure gave us a great chance to do some catching up before a few of us are off cannon-netting gulls on Guernsey next week. First on the agenda was CES yesterday, with ours at Gunwalloe catching 16 birds, mostly Reed and Sedge Warbler. This compares to 19 birds last year (15 Reed Warblers), 29 in 2011 (19 Reed Warblers) and 33 in 2011 (15 Reed Warblers).

We were, however, beaten by the Nanjizal CES near Land's End, which netted 87 birds including a couple of Grasshopper Warblers, a Spotted Flycatcher and this surprisingly rather smart young male Common Rosefinch!

Today we were then able to get over to Mullion Island to ring a few Cormorants from the 51 nests we counted earlier in the season. There were a surprisingly large number of young birds (perhaps as many as 70), many quite well-grown, but we were able to corall a good number and colour-ringed 18 birds as part of our monitoring on the island.

With the outboard still dead, it was a long row out

The Cormorant colony can be seen just left of centre above the mallow

Some of the newly colour-ringed Cormorants

The three island explorers counting gull nests, as seen from the mainland

Once we'd got the Cormorant ringing out of the way, we were able to have a quick look round the island to count the number of occupied Great Black-backed Gull nests. We are bound to have missed some, but the total of 62 nests (with 174 eggs) was still pretty impressive. This is almost as many as on Looe Island, which vies with Mullion Island to hold the title of the county's largest colony!

Thanks to Emma for the Mullion photos from the mainland and Kester for the gripping rosefinch pic.