Rosy cheeks

We leave Amble with Graeme in 'Moby' in a bit of a hurry. We misjudged the tide, and it's going out fast - we don't want to get trapped in the marina!

It's perfect weather with a beautiful mirror-calm sea.

We manage to follow three common terns on complete foraging trips and a couple of Arctics. One of the latter travelled fast to an area about 20km east of the island. Once there, it gorged itself on 0-group sandeels, plunging and dipping into the surface close to the boat. We could see the sandeel still wriggling in its beak, then it would toss the fish into the air, catch it, and the fish disappear. It's fantastic to witness this amazing feeding trip, but slightly disappointing with this bird was that it gave us the slip; I'd have loved to have watched it complete the journey, ideally with a fish.

We return to the inshore and have our sandwiches close to the island. The seabirds breeding in the colony are being rather confiding, and a group of puffins swim close to take a look at us. That makes for a good photo-opportunity with my camera.

Puffins are certainly not dying here!

We decide to have another go at trying to follow a Roseate tern. Almost immediately we see an adult stroll out from the colony past us, almost begging to be tracked. Well, it would be rude not to. Graeme's son Thomas is driving, and we set off in hot pursuit. This bird is quick, very quick! We have to speed at 36 - 38 knots to keep up. And no, this bird is not trying to get away from us. We have seen very few signs that any of the terns we follow are in any way bothered by our presence. We have occasionally seen signs of avoidance when a bird stops to try and feed, if we have been too close, but we have kept back from the birds and tried to skirt around feeding concentrations.

This roseate is a bird on a mission and joins a big multi-species feeding concentration by Boulmer. It spends about 45 minutes there, stuffing its face on small sprats or herring. We see it swallow 35 fish, and it probably ate more than this. It did this all around the boat, often plunging within 20 metres of the boat, completely oblivious to us. There are other roseates in the flock, up to three others at one point. Julie is calling out its behaviours, I am writing these down, with times, distance and bearing furiously, filling page after page of the notebook. I would have loved to have spent time enjoying the privileged moment, but it is essential to collect the data. We are probably the first people ever to have obtained this detailed information for a roseate tern.

Eventually, the bird had clearly had its fill, and set off back to the colony. Flying at a mere 23 knots. I'm not surprised, the greedy b**tard stuffed so many fish into its gob. And it doesn't even take a fish back to its chick. No wonder the species is endangered - the adults are eating all the fish and leaving the chicks to starve! We follow the bird back to the colony and see it land in front of some of the numbered nest boxes looking content with itself. We note these details down and its high fives all round.

Adult roseate tern returning to its colony with a belly full of clupeids

We watch a few terns bathing close around the west side of the island. This is something we have seen them do in small flocks when they can find some sheltered water. We spot a roseate tern in one of the groups. It gets up and flies out to sea. "Follow that bird".

Common and Arctic terns bathing close inshore around Coquet

This roseate tern is no slouch either, and it heads at about 36 knots straight up to Boulmer. It by-passes a number of huge multi-species feeding assemblages. It spends over an hour patrolling close inshore between Boulmer and Alnmouth, plunging repeatedly. It's Julie's turn to note down the behaviours, and she fills six pages up during this time. Eventually, it lands on a mooring buoy and starts to preen for about 20 minutes. This doesn't seem to be a bird in a hurry to feed its chick. We notice that it is ringed, but can't read any numbers on the colour ring. It seems to be white with a green stripe.

It flies off, and we soon lose the bird - getting muddled with another roseate tern (we can see a difference, because the bird we pick up has some flight feathers missing. So we return to Amble, exhilarated by the fantastic data we've collected.


We get an update when we return. There are no chicks yet in any of the roseate nest boxes where the first bird landed, which perhaps explains why it didn't take a fish back. Apparently there are still plenty of birds that haven't hatched their eggs yet.