Cornish Kittiwakes coming back home

It's that time of year again where we start to turn our attention to seabirds, with Kittiwakes starting to settle on cliffs always a lure. An afternoon cliff-top trip to Parc Trammel cove, near Porthleven, today was surprisingly productive, especially as this is normally a site we cover from the sea after a short kayak paddle. The distance from the clifftop really stretched the Nikon Coolpix P1000, but we managed to read seven of our own rings and two French-ringed birds.

RWM-YON was ringed as a chick in France in 2013, and was seen at Trewavas variously in 2018-2020, then at Parc Trammel since. It's now paired with J7, ringed as a chick locally in 2018

 We managed to steal back two of our birds as well, as KJ bred (unsuccessfully) in Co Kerry (see pics here) in 2023, and VT bred in France in 2021 and 2022. Many of the other birds we saw hadn't been seen for a few years, so these records really do help build our picture of how these enigmatic birds are faring.

EV was ringed as an adult locally in 2015

KJ returning home!

PK was ringed as a chick locally in 2015

Herring Gull and Kittiwake wanderings

We've not blogged anything for a while, but with a quiet winter devoid of Siberian Chiffchaffs there's not much to report! But this week we've had a couple of exciting colour ring sightings, so thought we'd share.

On 4th May we heard from the assistant warden at the newly-accredited Lundy Bird Observatory, with news of one of our blue-ringed Herring Gulls; W:377, which was ringed as a chick on a roof at Tregoniggie Industrial Estate, Falmouth in June 2020. It is a bit of an explorer though, having been seen locally until August 2021, before being report on the French coast in February 2022. The next winter (January 2023), it was reported from a French landfill site, before returning to the coast in March. It was last reported there on 6th April before swapping France for Lundy.

W377 at Stithians in August 2021

W377 at Marais de Suscinio in February 2022 (Catherine and Michel Marcaul)

Newly-moulted W377 back at Marais de Suscinio in March 2023 (Anne-Sophie Hochet)

W377 on Lundy in May 2023 (Luke Marriner)

Then on 15th May, we had a report of one of our Trewavas Head Kittiwakes, seen pair bonding and attending the beginnings of a nest maintenance on Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry, Ireland. KJ was ringed as an adult at Trewavas Head in 2017 and bred there (when the site was doing well) until 2020. As the main site started to fail, it then moved a short distance along the coast to Trequean Zawn in 2021, but then wasn't seen in 2022.

KJ on its travels (Brian Power)

We rarely see movements between our sites and Wales/Ireland as it's far more likely for us to share birds with the French colonies. In fact, this is our first Kittiwake to be found in Ireland and only the second Cornish-ringed bird to make the trip.

Portreath Kittiwakes

With spring migrants back in earnest and everything singing and nest-buiilding, it was a good time to have another look at the Portreath Kittiwakes.

Probably only 75% of the birds were back on ledges, with plenty of space left to fill, so hopefully birds just aren't settled yet. Despite the sun, a bit of hazy sea fret made life a bit difficult ring-reading but we still managed to pick up three of our regular French-ringed birds.

OBM-WLN was ringed as a chick at Pointe du Raz in 2011
and has been seen regularly at Portreath ever since

RYM-ROO is a 2014 chick, first seen at Porthmissen (near Padstow)
in June 2018, then at Portreath in July 2018 and regularly since

The third bird avoided being photographed, but NRL-ROM was a 2015 chick and has been at Portreath since 2018. All useful information of course on how our birds roam around the Channel between breeding sites, so fingers crossed this will be the start of a productive season.

Busy seabird weekend

This long weekend has been a busy one, with various group members (and even a visitor from up-country) heading out to all parts of West Cornwall in search of (mostly) seabirds.

We started off with our annual gull-ringing trip over to Mullion Island, which was always going to be an unknown as we were too busy colour-ringing Cormorant chicks on our last visit to count the Great Black-backed Gull nests. We headed over in two kayaks and a dinghy, landing in a quiet cove and heading onto the top of the island. Working our way round we ringed just 10 chicks, but at least another 10 were too big to try to catch. Whilst there, we were also able to photgraph a couple of ringed adults, both of which had been ringed as chicks in 2016 but are now breeding on the island. Interestingly, one (L:CN5) had been ringed as a chick on Looe Island, but has been seen a few times around Lizard and Coverack since.

Next stop was a tour of Barn Owl sites around the Lizard, ringing chicks at 10 sites in total. Several of these later broods had just two chicks, in contrast to those earlier in the season that had three or even four chicks.

Back on the seabird theme, the next day found us Kittiwake ringing at Trewavas Head. Half of the team paddled round from Porthleven while the other half walked in with a ladder from Rinsey. We all reconvened at the cliffs to scramble down and kayak round to the main Kittiwake site. With very few birds successfully breeding, we only colour-ringed eight chicks, but at least this is better than the zero of the last two years. We also took the opportunity to read various colour rings at Trequean zawn and also managed to get photographs of two metal-ringed birds. One of these (ET44236) was ringed on the Isles of Scilly in 1999 and had been seen by us at the engine houses colony in 2018 as well, so is a healthy 22 years old now. The other rewmains a mystery at the moment, with the BTO team looking at the possible options for us of what might be a very old bird!

After an extra couple of owl boxes, we then headed down to Porthgwarra for dusk to set nets for Storm Petrels. This is often the busiest month for Stormies and true to form the first net round before midnight saw 45 birds in the nets, so it was a busy session for everyone. In total we ringed 95 birds, with recaptures of a French-ringed bird and others ringed on the Calf of Man (in August 2020), St David's, Pembrokeshire (in July 2020) and one of our own from Lizard (ringed in July 2020). Talking of Stormies, we also heard from the BTO that a bird we ringed at Lizard in August 2020 was recaught on Alderney, Channel Islands on 10th July.

So al in all a very productiove weekend of seabird ringing, contributing to our ongoing colour-ringing projects for some of these species.

A mediocre Kittiwake season

At the weekend we had an evening paddle out to the Kittiwake colony at Trewavas Head to continue our Retrapping (or resighting in our case) Adults for Survival project. It was the perfcet sea conditions for a kayak, and two of us managed to cover most of the colony in under three hours.

Sadly, as in the past two years, the main site was earily quiet with a lot of birds sat by empty nests or just loafing. Just five nests had chicks, with just four other sitting adults, which is a shadow of the 70 pairs of just a few years ago. We did manage to reread colour rings on 10 birds, all ringed as adults at the same site in 2013, 2015 (2 birds), 2016 (2 birds) and 2018 (4 birds). We also took the opportunity to ring a couple more adults to contribute to the project.

There was slightly better news at Trequean Zawn, where there were at least six nests with chicks and 10 adults sitting tight. Part of this site can only be seen from the sea, so there are no doubt more nesting birds than this. There were more colour-ringed birds here, many with much more interesting histories. Most of these were ringed as chicks, obviously recruiting to a new site away from their natal site. Birds were recorded that had been ringed as chicks at the main colony in 2015 (3 birds), 2016 (3 birds) and 2018 (3 birds), and there was also a chick ringed at the engine houses area of the cliffs in 2017. Interestingly there were also four adults at Trequean that had been ringed as adults at the main site in 2016 and 2017, and still recorded there in 2020.

PP was ringed as a chick in 2015 and has successfully
bred the last three years at Trequean

 Additional to these local birds were three French-ringed birds, ringed as chicks in 2007, 2011 and 2015. These also have interesting histories, with one of them seen previously at Rinsey in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and another (OWM-RNN) that was at the main Trewavas site in 2012-19 before moving to Western Cove, Portreath in 2020.

OWM-RNN

It'll be interesting to see how the birds get on at the main site and whether or not more move along to Trequean in the future.

Trewavas Kittiwake in Wales

We were recently contacted by Josie Hewitt, who's spending the summer monitoring seabirds on Skomer Island in south Wales. As part of their regular monitoring, Josie photographed a colour-ringed Kittiwake in the week which wasn't local, so got in touch as she thought it might be one of our Cornish birds.

It turns out that Black N5 was indeed one of our Trewavas Head birds, ringed as an adult in June 2018 and interestingly not seen since. In our experience, adults present in the colony early in the season are often wanderers, but the fact this bird was ringed in June (as a breeding bird) is a bit confusing! But considering the main Trewavas colony has failed in the last two years, maybe this adult has moved on, so it'll be interesting to see if it remains over the summer.

This also isn't as unprecedented as it might seem, as our other monitored colony at Portreath has a regular breeding bird that was ringed as a breeding season adult in the breeding season north Wales!

Celtic connection

Lots of Cornwall's seabirds are very connected to our Celtic neighbours, with our gulls, Kittiwakes and Storm Petrels regularly commuting across the Celtic Sea and English Channel. We share a lot of colour-ringed Kittiwakes with the two important breeding sites at Pointe du Raz and Pointe du Van on the Brittany peninsula (a few French birds shown below) and several of our supposedly-urban gulls have been seen on French estuaries and ports.

We had news from BTO British Trust for Ornithology this morning that two of our Storm Petrels ringed in July 2020 at Gwennap Head, Porthgwarra were recaught at Banneg in the Molène archipelago the next night. Banneq is the largest Storm Petrel colony in France, with as many as 1,000 breeding pairs. At 187km, this is probably only a short trip for a Stormie, but it still always amazes me what these tiny birds get up to!

Kittiwakes fail AGAIN

With slightly higher hopes than last time, we paddled out to the Kittiwakes sites at Trewavas Head to check up on the c140 pairs nesting at the three sites. The first stop was Trequean Cove where there were encouragingly still good numbers of birds, but a closer look revealed just 11 nests still with chicks which was a poor return from the 40 sitting birds we found in May. There were plenty of our colour-ringed birds and so far this season we've seen 13 birds at Trequean that have previously been seen at the main colony or at the engine houses colony. This might suggest that birds are slowly moving along the coast, but why they might be doing this is unclear.

The reason for this became apparent as we paddled along to the engine shouses, where the 28 pairs we'd seen in May were down to just half a dozen forlorn birds sat on empty ledges. The main colony at Trewavas Head wasn't much better either, as despite there being plenty of birds still present (including 17 of our own colour-ringed birds and a French bird), there were just three nests with chicks, down from the 65 sitting birds in May. Why these birds have failed again so disastrously is a a mystery, but it's interesting that the nests dominated by younger pairs seem to be doing better than the established sites, so maybe change really is for the better.

To back up this move away from the main colony, we received an email from fellow Kittiwake workers in France (Professor Emmanuelle Cam from the University of West Brittany) with a report of two of our birds seen in their colonies in Brittany in recent weeks. Both of these birds are regulars at Trewavas Head:

• EC was actually a chick ringed (metal ring only) on the Isles of Scilly in 1996, but we recaught it in 2015 and added a colour ring. It's been seen every year since as a breeding bird, last seen here on 2nd June 2020.

• EN was ringed as an adult at Trewavas Head in May 2015 and was seen 2015-2018 but not seen in 2019. It was however seen back in the colony on 19th May 2020.

These are the first of our birds seen in your colonies, and it's great to have the coverage that produces these sightings. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years and whether the colonies can recover.

Visitors from up-country

We recently received details from the BTO of a nesting Barn Owl we recaught in on of our boxes at the end of May. We mostly catch our own birds, ringed as adults or chicks, but just occasionally we welcome a visitor to Cornwall. GR53474 is now breeding in a box near Fraddam, but had been ringed in 2017 as a chick at Irlam in Greater Manchester, over 420km to the north!

Since we've been monitoring Barn Owls in the county, the only other long-distance visitor we've recaugt was a bird ringed as a chick in Suffolk in 2017 that was breeding in Newbridge the next year (see here). Apart from that, a bird ringed as a chick in Cumbria in 1990 was found dead near Golant in its first winter and incredibly we have also had birds ringed in Germany an The Netherlands found here.



The same day the Irlam Barn Owl was caught we were also able to catch up with another visitor from the north (the second line on the map above). Red AXF was ringed as an adult on Puffin Island off Anglesey in summer 2016 but since then has found Cornwall to its liking, breeding ever since at Western Cove, Portreath.

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

Month-old French Kittiwake at Portreath

Following the depressing failure of the Trewavas Head Kittiwake colonies (see here), it's vaguely encouraging that the colony in Western Cove, Portreath seems to be thriving. A late evening visit to catch up on some nest recording saw a very busy colony, with some birds already fledged.

It was also good to see a nice variety of ringed birds, with a bird from Puffin Island (Anglesey), three from Pont du Raz (Brittany) and also one of our own Trewavas Head birds (VM, ringed as a chick in 2017). It was surprising to see good numbers of loafing birds away from the main colony as well, which we presumed were local birds, but in amongst them were three French-ringed birds we've not recorded before at Portreath. So we did wonder if these were dispersing birds or failed breeders. But we were then amazed to see a recently-fledged juvenile on the cliff with a nice set of French colour rings!

A quick email (and equally quick reply) to Jean Yves Monnat in France and he confirmed that this was Green/Yellow/metal - White/Black/Orange. It was ringed on 28th May at Pointe du Van and took it's first flight on 6th July, then being seen daily until 15th July. It was one of the first juveniles to leave the colony and made a pretty quick movement over to Cornwall, and just goes to show how closely linked these colonies are across the Channel.

So it's always worth casting a glance over Kittiwake flocks at this time of year as you never know what you might find.

Trewavas Kittiwake failure

A flat calm sea and a day off is the perfect opportunity for a paddle out along the coast, so might as well combine it with dropping in on the Trewavas Head Kittiwakes. It started well, with a new sub-colony (at Trequeen Zawn) holding nine nests, some with good-sized chicks. The first ever resighting of one of our birds ringed as a chick was here in the early days of the colony, as young birds prospect new areas. This held true, with the zawn holding four birds we'd ringed as chicks in 2015 and 2016, one now at a nest with chicks.

PP (ringed as a chick in 2015) with two chicks

There was also a new French bird in the colony, so it'll be interesting to see if this too is a young bird recruiting into a new area.

RWM-WGW

But as we paddled round to the main part of the colony it was eerily quiet with a dozen or so birds on the cliffs, but these soon left. Early on in the season we were worried that the return rate of ringed adults was low, then we were unable to ring any adults as they hadn't laid, but we weren't expecting a complete failure. So not a single egg or chick at a site that should be holding over 70 pairs!

Thimgs were no better 'around the corner' as well, with the site by the engine houses also deserted, with not a single bird to be seen. This site should hold over 65 pairs.

So with the recent complete failure of the colony at Newquay, that leaves just two Cornish sites holding any number of birds this summer! The site at Western Cove, Portreath is thankfully thriving (250+ pairs) and there are good numbers at Porthmissen, but other than that we have nine at Trewavas and two at Rinsey!

The rare sight of a brood of three Kittiwake chicks (far left), at Western Cove, Portreath

Cracking Stormie night and more French Kittiwakes

Same old, same old it seems at this time of year, but when the 'same old' is ringing Barn Owls, Kittiwakes and Storm Petrels then it's not so bad! With over half of our second visits to owl boxes now completed, it looks like the good start to the year hasn't quite come to fruition. Out of the clutches of five or six eggs we were seeing, we seem to be down to broods of just two or three chicks now, which perhaps isn't surprising considering the weather. It might be glorious out there, but the lack of rain means a lack of grass growth and a lack of rodents, so not good for demanding owlets! It's not all been bad news though and we have still seen a few broods of four or five chicks.

Sometimes the adults are just all very relaxed at nest visits,
watching from a handy perch!

Aside from owls, we had our first big Storm Petrel catch of the year at Gwennap Head, Porthgwarra at the weekend. A long busy night saw us ringing 159 birds, also catching six BTO-ringed birds from sites as diverse as Calf of Man, Cape Clear and Hartland Point, Devon. We also caught one French-ringed bird which I have a feeling is an old one, so it'll be interesting to see when that was ringed.

Last but not least, we caught up on some Kittiwake ringing and resighting recently and managed to ring 24 chicks at Trewavas Head. It's a real pity here that most nests are out of reach of a double ladder, but I guess they need to be safe from the Cornish swell! A quick look at Cornish resightings so far in 2018 shows that we've now seen 26 different French-ringed birds this year; eight at Trewavas Head, eight 'loafers' at Lizard, six at Ralph's Cupboard, Portreath and three at Rinsey. This is even more impressive when you consider that to the end of 2016 there had only been 92 reports of French-ringed Kittiwakes in the UK outside of Cornwall! We're sure there are many more out there, so we'll be out again in the week to check...

Seabird Saturday

Our annual gull-ringing trip over to Mullion Island is never the most productive affair, with the Great Black-backs there having very low productivity indeed. But kayaking over this morning we were met with a bit of an eerie silence, with very few alarming adults overhead. It looked like the hot weather had wilted off most of the vegetation on the island, most of which was laying flat, making it hard to check for chicks. But despite our best efforts we could only find a single gull chick on the whole island! We estimated over 60 nests for the island earlier in the year, so if they've only produced one chick then something is very wrong...

Perhaps linked to the poor breeding season of gulls on Mullion Island, there has also been a large gathering of non-breeding Kittiwakes off Lizard Head. We've seen at least on of our Rinsey/Trewavas birds there (but too distant to read the ring), but this morning three French-ringed birds were present, photographed by Terry Thirlaway.

Two of these were birds ringed as chicks in Brittany in 2016 and 2017 (hence definitely not of breeding age yet), but the other refused to show off it's full ring combination so remains a mystery for now.

Our first ever KITTI chick returns!

Oh we love a high pressure! The weather has been just perfect the last few days to catch up on a few seabird chores, so a small group of us ventured out to our Kittiwake sites at Trewavas Head on Friday. While two of us paddled round from Porthleven, two scrambled round to meet us at the bottom of the cliffs for a lift around the last section only normally accessible on a low spring tide.

Having already caught many of the 'low-hanging fruit' in the colonies, it's becoming harder to target new birds, but perhaps that's a good sign that our catching has been going well. So between the two sites we only ringed a further nine adults, but did also manage to read a good number of rings on adults ringed in previous years. We also resighted a new French-ringed bird to us, originally ringed as a chick at Pointe du Raz, Brittany, in 2013.

But the highlight was spotted as we paddled back along the coast. A small face we've had our eye on had three Kittiwake nests on it with a few adults hanging round, one of which looked to be ringed. So with some dubious kayak-landing and a bit of a sketchy climb in shorts and wetsuit boots, we managed to confirm that this was PP (below); the first ever resighting of a bird we'd previously ringed as a chick (in 2015).