Lots of feeding terns

Julie on the left, Graeme the skipper on the right on "Moby" the RIB
Crack survey team

Today we set out in near-calm conditions and set out to do lots of tracking of terns out from the colony.

The first bird we picked was a common tern and we followed it a short distance - no more than 2km where it completed a couple of dives before fishing out a nice sandeel that it promptly took straight back to the colony. How easy and satisfying was that!

The next bird we followed was nowhere near as efficient. It took a grand tour of all the feeding flocks on the east side of the island, some quite far offshore, before we finally lost it in a flock. We saw it plunge several times however.

The next bird did the same thing. Not so easy and not so satisfying, although while at the north of the island, it visited some flocks which contained feeding roseate terns - useful to know where they are going.

We decided we needed some Sandwich tern data - most of them now have chicks on the island, but only the minority of common and Arctics have hatched their eggs. So we managed to follow one down to Druridge Bay, almost as far as the power station. We watched it fishing successfully - catching a couple for itself, before getting a large sandeel, and setting off for Coquet Island. It did a couple of swoops low to the water when it appeared to juggle the fish into a more secure position in its beak, then set off north. It motored, eventually climbing high and fast - too fast for us to keep up with, and we had to leave it to complete its journey unaccompanied. Great bit of data.

We took a short break in the lee of the island, where we could watch a few roseate terns bathing next to the island. Apparently they haven't hatched their eggs yet.

There are a lot of puffins nesting on the island, along with a few kittiwakes and probably a few guillemots and razorbills too. We saw someone wandering around in the tern colony (Laura the PhD student, as it turned out) wearing a rubber coat that was plastered in shite. Nice.

Puffins are so cute!

After the break, with the wind increased slightly, we decided to do a couple more legs of line transecting. We encountered a lot of feeding Sandwich terns in Druridge Bay - not far away from where we tracked the bird earlier in the day.

We finished the day by trying to track a Sandwich tern on the west side of the island - where we knew the wind would be calmer. We followed the bird right into Amble harbour and watched in make some plunge dives in the Coquet river. It then casually flew over the harbour wall to feed on the other side of the breakwater. Graeme declined to take the RIB over the harbour wall - I guess he'd need to get a bit of speed up. That was more than enough for one day.