Monday 22 June 2009

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.

More little terns on a glorious day

After a day off on the Saturday, we return north to look for little tern feeding areas on the north side of the Long Nanny colony. It is a glorious day, the sea is mirror calm as I look toward the Farne Islands from Seahouses. I wish I could be out there. I see Moby (Graeme Harrison's boat) out by the islands 7km away, presumably with a dive party.

Although the beach at Seahouses looks suitable, I don't see a single little tern, nor does Julie at her watch point a bit closer to the colony. We move a bit closer, and see very little activity (one bird passing (perhaps the same bird) and me seeing lots of courtship behaviour in Beadnell Bay. That's great, because we're seeing a clear pattern of this species concentrating in a narrow strip within 6km of the colony in one direction, and less than that in the other. This is entirely consistent with findings at other colonies.

When we finish, Graeme returns his dive party to Beadnell and we offer him some help with taking his boat back down to Amble (we've chartered him for an extra five days for the rest of the week). He lets me drive all the way down and take the Moby into the Marina. It's fantastic to glide effortlessly across the smooth seas at 30kn in beautiful weather. This is great for me to keep my Powerboat certificate current. I get the RHIB into the berth reasonably well - a bit more Reginald Molehusband than a smooth elegant entry. Oh well, not too bad for an unfamiliar boat.


Graeme brings 'Moby' and the North Norfolk Diving Club back into Beadnell Bay

Little terns at Embleton

On Friday, the wind is still pretty strong from the north-west. We go out anyway, but get completely pasted by the spray and return to harbour after two hours.

We decide that, although we are both pretty tired and looking forward to a bit of time off, we will use the afternoon to do some watches on little tern feeding rates at selected points around their colony at Long Nanny. We watch them feeding up to about 6km south of the colony, and felt pretty confident that they were going no further than this. They seem to spend all their time feeding over the surf in sandy bays, plunging from very high above the sea into water that can be only a few tens of centimetres deep. We see plenty of fish being carried back to the colony.

The southern limit of their foraging trips appears to be the spectacular Dunstanburgh Castle.

Rough weather

We have spent three days trying to get the best out of some pretty dire weather conditions. A low pressure system has brought some strong, mainly westerly winds through most of the UK. With the wind in this sector, the Northumberland coast is quite sheltered, and we find that the sea has flattened out.

On Wednesday we managed to follow a few birds, including a complete fishing trip for a common and an Arctic tern. This is pretty amazing given that the wind is blowing about force 4.

On Thursday, with the wind more firmly in the west, affording maximum shelter, we go out for about six hours. We try to follow birds with little success. We manage reasonably well for a while, then the bird turns across the wind, and the strong gusts whip spray across the boat, in our faces and obscure our view at critical times when we need to keep track of the bird. We try to follow a couple of roseate terns, but lose them each time. We do at least follow one as far as a feeding aggregation, less than 1km from the island.

We give up on this and try to spend a bit of time trying to track radio-tagged birds. This shouldn't be affected too much by the wind. Researchers from Newcastle University have tagged six more Arctic terns at the colony. We cannot detect three of those newly tagged birds, but #12 is still present from the previous tagging, and has chicks. We resolve to try and follow this bird to its feeding area. Somehow or other we cannot detect the difference between a bird at the colony and when it is flying away, and we miss #12's departure. Two hours later, and the bird has not returned to the nest.

We give up and return to harbour a couple of hours early. Somewhat discouraging, but we can't help the weather.

New boat

Two boat owners tendered for the contract to follow terns, which is no small deal given that the process is somewhat off-putting. We gave both of them a piece of the cake. Now it was Paul's turn of Farne Island Divers. His boat is a Humber and about 10m long with two 225 HP engines at the back. That's a lot of grunt!

A bigger RHIB and a new antenna

We also received a new antenna to make it much easier to try and radio-track terns. We managed to detect one of the birds in the colony, but still aren't having any success detecting them at sea.

We found the boat to be very smooth at speed, especially given the calm weather, and found it very easy to follow Sandwich terns, but managed some complete runs for common and Arctics as well (i.e. watch it leave the colony, feed and take a fish back to the nest site). We noticed something - if we spend a bit of time trying to only follow birds that we see leaving the nesting areas, we seem to get more complete runs.

Sandwich tern with large sandeel. Note that it has started to moult out its crown feathers

Getting better

I don't have much to report in this bit of the blog, other than that the weather is improving and so are our fortunes.

By the end of Sunday, we have managed to follow a number of birds out from the island (44 to be precise), watch them feed and bring a sandeel back to their chicks, even watching them land at their nest site.Arctic tern looking a bit like a common tern. But it's an Arctic!

Parts of Sunday, the sea went flat calm. On a day like this, lots of boats leave the local harbours and people sit and try to catch fish from them. I suspect we confused a lot of people when we charged about among them at 25 - 30 knots, with an idiot at the front pointing the way to a tern ahead of the boat. I suspect also, with our wash, we shouldn't expect to get Christmas cards from any of them.

Good news from the island, the first Roseate terns have hatched, and they counted 71 nests. Also get a text from Long Nanny wardens to say that the first little terns have also hatched.

Friday 12 June 2009

Radio-tracking terns

We sight out early on a bright sunny day from Amble Harbour into reasonably light northerly winds. There has been a small development because the team of researchers from Newcastle University managed to get permission to attach radio-tags to some Arctic terns on Coquet Island. We passed the radio tags to them yesterday, and they managed to attach three of them to breeding Arctic terns with newly hatched eggs.

We ventured out firsth thing with our over-sized antenna to listen for these three birds. Not a sausage. We decided that it would be best to chase a few birds then have another go when we could get some confirmation from Laura, the PhD student.

Julie listening out for radio-tagged terns

We decided that we needed more data for Arctic terns, so would target them for our birds to follow. We started on the east side of the island and tried to detect and identify the birds in plenty of time, so that we could get the boat moving quickly so we wouldn't lose the birds. It has proved quite a challenge to identify the birds quickly. One of the things that is particularly helpful is to see the translucent underside of the wing, when set against blue sky. Common terns show a small translucent triangle in the crook at the trailing edge of the middle part of the wing. Arctic terns on the other hand show a long tanslucent band from the armpit to the wing tips giving a stipey appearance. Along with different shape to the birds, shorter bill and usually longer tail streamers for Arctic terns, this has proved particularly helpful for sorting out the terns early.














Common tern on the left and Arctic tern on the right. Note the shorter beak and more rounded head on the Arctic tern. It also has a thinner, more distinct black trailing edge to the outer wing. The wings look to be further forward on the body, the tail looks longer as well. Although not absolutely clear in these photos, the translucent patch on the common tern is confined to the crook in the trailing edge of the wing. While the Arctic tern also seems to show the same pattern, look at its further-away wing and notice that it is translucent in the out part of that wing too.

We managed to follow one Arctic tern around a large area, as it travelled from feeding flock to feeding flock, until it clearly had managed to feed itself enough and returned to the island, some 20km away. And boy did it shift. We had to travel at 30kn to keep up with it, but got the ultimate satisfaction of seeing it disappear into the colony. Graeme, the skipper, lost his favourite hat along the way. Once we'd seen it safely back to the island, we retraced our tracks to where we thought his hat came off. And there is was, floating happily on the surface, exactly where the GPS said it should be. Champion!

We managed to follow a common tern to its feeding area, pick up a large snadeel for its chicks and return all the way to the colony. We tracked another three Arctic terns, then returned to the island to try out the radio tags again. This time we managed to get a signal, but struggle to interpret what it could mean - the birds appeared to be in the colony, but we couldn't always here the signal. At times it seemed as if the birds were at sea, but we had no way of knowing from our position whether this was actually the case, or we were getting false readings. We tried waiting for the birds to leave the colony, but after an hour and a half, decided we needed a rethink to our tactics and strategy for tracking these birds.

We finished the day with two unsuccesful trackings of Sandwich terns (they must do about 40 - 45kn when flying downwind - too fast for us), then a single Arctic tern, followed only as far as a couple of feeding plunges. It's still proving easy to lose birds. On the one hand you don't want to get too close as to disturb them while trying to feed, but if you sit off to feeding area too far, it's very easy to find yourself too far away if they move to another feeding area (which they do if unsuccessful in any area.

We have noticed that all tern species are cueing in on feeding puffins (and other auks). We watched one Arctic spend about 10 minutes in the company of a feeding puffin, often swooping or plunging every time the puffin returned to the surface with its mouthful of sandeels. While this behaviour was quite extreme, we often see terns searching for prey homing in on puffins during their foraging trips.

Thursday 11 June 2009

Monster Sandwich Trip

We set out again this morning in good conditions and resolved to get more Sandwich tern tracks. Laura on the island gave us an update on the state of the tern hatchings - just about all the Sandwich tern clutches have hatched and the majority of common and Arctic terns have now hatched. Sitting waiting for our first bird of the morning, we could see streams of these three species flying into the colony with sandeels. It looks as if they are having no trouble finding these fish this year, which is great news given the difficulties they have faced in some recent years.

Coquet island - the old lighthouse buildings

At last, we got ourselves on the right line to pick up some Sandwich terns leaving the island, and we picked up the first bird as soon as we were prepared (everyone has to be safely holding on, the boat pointing in the right direction and all ready and raring to go). We then set off after the bird. If flew over shallow rocks south to Druridge Bay, but Graeme was able to maintain good speed and the crack survey team was able to maintain visual contact with it. It did a few half-hearted swoops at the sea, but seemd to be on a mission. At times, we had to travel at 35 knots to keep up with it. We passed Druridge Power Station, and still no let-up. Then Newbiggin, complete with a giant man and woman looking out to sea carved onto the harbour gantry. A couple of plunges, but this wasn't the place it wanted to be. It continued to fly strongly past Blyth harbour, complete with wind turbines on the harbour wall, and two larger turbines a short distance offshore. The bird made it to Seaton Sluice, where it seemed to have found its preferred feeding location. And boy, did it start feeding. We saw it plunge into the sea and pick up at least eight sandeels, and it scoffed every one for itself. No consideration for its chicks. It switched to feeding in the surf off Seaton Sluice, and agonisingly, we lost it when it appeared to fly into the small harbour there. It was annoying that we couldn't see it pick up a fish for its chick. I sensed when it switched to feeding in the surf that it was looking for a larger sandeel for its chicks (the ones it scoffed were all medium-sized).

We were all pretty knackered after that trip - at least 20 miles of very fast tracking and intense concentration to ensure we didn't lose visual contact, even when it flew among other birds.

We cruised back to the island. Graeme was happy for me to drive, and I managed to avoid running over someone's salmon nets, thankfully. The fisherman was looking a bit worried when we were getting near.

We tried some tracks to the north of the island, again Sandwich terns only at this stage. We managed to track some feeding from at least two other birds, then with Julie on main duty, we managed to track a bird to the point when it caught a fish and took it back to the colony - a large sandeel. Again, we tried to follow it in, but with Thomas (Graeme's son) taking the RIB as fast as he safely could, it eventually lost us, about 1km short of Coquet island. Never-the-less, we were all feeling very pleased to have got a complete fishing journey.

A successful foraging trip and we were there to witness it!

The wind was picking up rapidly, and we tried to track a couple more birds, but couldn't kept losing them when the spray blew into our faces. The wind was even too strong for switching to line transects. So we called it a day. Another very useful day.

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.

More bad weather

We thought we were going to get a reasonable day according to the inshore shipping forecast, but woke to full flags and lots of white caps on the sea. I tried to get hold of Graeme before he left Whitley Bay, but was too late. We went down to the Marina to have a chat after we'd got a more detailed weather forecast. The wind was set to drop down at midday, so we resolved to get in touch later.

It's a shame for him, because he has already arranged cover for himself at his business.

We go out later, after the wind has indeed dropped. But it's still a Beaufort force 4 out there. We begin some line transects, travelling south-east past the island (the same as the busy one yesterday, but in reverse). What a difference! We probably saw as many birds as the previous day, but they were feeding much further out from the island - in waters up to 50m deep about 15km from the island. And we saw fish being carried into the colony from these furthest points as well. We did one more leg before giving up on the weather. We were only able to do these transects because we had a following sea, and the remaining legs would have meant ploughing into the waves and not being able to see the terns and survey properly.

It was a tough few hours, but I'm so glad we went out; we would never have found out that the birds were travelling so much further to sea than the previous day.

Why did they do this? Is it because the weather is rougher?

Gratuitous shot of a Sandwich tern with a sandeel

More line transecting

After another day blown out by NE force 4-5 winds on the Sunday, we ventured out again on the Monday to complete the line transecting legs. We picked up where we had finished off in Druridge Bay in pleasant Beaufort 3 winds.

Most of the legs were pretty quiet, but one leg, which went north-west past Coquet island was hooching with feeding birds. We seemed to meet feeding flock after feeding flock in an area up to 5km to the east and north-east of the island, and included 2-3 roseate terns to the north of the island. This was hard work, but we managed to cope with all the numbers.

Alas, there was a problem with the GPS, and we have had to go to other sources to reconstruct the track we followed. Moral: make sure we check the state of the batteries before starting each transect.

We had a bit of spare time available, so we tried to track some birds from the colony out to their feeding areas. Success! We managed to get up enought speed to follow two common and one Arctic tern out to their feeding grounds, and watch them feeding.

With the weather set to improve, and getting some reasonable data, we are feeling much more optimistic about what we're doing.

Champion!

Saturday 6 June 2009

Line transecting

After a bit of hand-wringing and a chat to Linda back in Aberdeen, we concluded that we wouldn't be getting much work done if we wait for the weather to be good enough to chase birds.

Although not as useful as following adults to their feeding areas, we could at least do some line transecting. This is a standardised survey where you pinpoint all birds you see as your boat follows fixed lines. This should really be done from a bigger boat, but we had already decided that it would be perfectly valid to do this from a smaller boat, because nearly all of the birds we would see would be flying (I won't go into the details of the methodological considerations here). We would take the range and bearing to each bird, so we could pinpoint more accurately where they were actually feeding.

The previous day, I had plotted out a random route worked out by Linda. As always, it's important to put these onto an Admiralty chart to ensure the route doesn't take us over any rocks or other obstructions.

Although the route was a bit bumpy in places during the day (Seastate 2 or marginally higher at times), and wet in the rain, we managed to complete seven transects. We found it a bit challenging at first - the first line had a lot of birds on it for the first 10 minutes - and we struggled to identify birds and write down all the details onto wet data sheets. But we coped. I am conscious that without a good way to estimate distance, that this method is dependent on us measuring distances to birds accurately, or at least consistently.

The comforting thing about the day was that we saw few birds over waters deeper than 40 metres, and the two northern-most transects we followed were almost completely devoid of birds, apart from a couple of individuals transiting at the coast.

All told, we felt we had done something useful, and have found something that will keep us occupied while we wait for the weather to go calm enough for us to follow individual birds. However, with the wind forecast to increase again over the weekend, we will have to wait until we can get out to sea.

Thursday 4 June 2009

Chasing terns

We went down to Amble Marina to meet up with Graeme and Dave, who had brought their RIB "Moby" from Beadnell Bay in a choppy sea. Kitted up in dry suits we ventured out into the North Sea to try out the survey methods.

I should explain what it is we're trying to do.

We need to design protected areas for five tern species around their most important nesting sites. There are too many important colonies in the UK to individually taylor a boundary around the most important feeding sites for each, so we are having to come up with some generic rules for where to put the boundaries, based on studies at a few key colonies. We've had some success with predicting where other seabird species feed based upon the habitats they use, and we want to use the same techniques on terns. We can look at the habitats used by terns by following nesting birds as they leave the colony and pinpoint the exact spots where they catch fish. If we can work out the habitats at each of these spots, we can build up a picture of the places they use, and the places we should protect, based upon the locations of their preferred habitats.

There are four teams doing this study this summer in Anglesey, Northern Ireland, Firth of Forth, and our team in Northumberland, concentrating our efforts at Coquet Island. This island is low and flat with abundant vegetation and lies about 1 mile off the coast near Amble. From a distance, it looks like an oil tanker, with the lighthouse appearing like the accommodation block on the ship. Large numbers of Sandwich, common, Arctic and roseate terns nest on the island.

Is it a ship? Is it a supertanker? No, it's a tern colony!

So how did we get on? Not very well. We sat in the RIB, bouncing about in quite a rough sea (seastate 3 - 4) until we could spot a Sandwich tern leaving the colony to travel in a direction where that would be smooth enough to follow it at speed. The first bird outstripped us easily, using the following wind. We tried with two more birds, but each time with Graeme taking the RIB as fast as he could, the Sandwich or Arctic tern gradually pulled ahead until it was lost from sight. We tried with an Arctic tern returning to the colony (upwind) and fared a bit better, but still lost the bird. We finished the day with following a couple of Sandwich terns that were actively searching. This was easier, as the birds were flying slower, but faced some extra problems with birds getting lost in a feeding flock.


"I can go faster than you!". Sammy the Sandwich tern

So we returned to the marina, feeling dispirited about what it would take to follow terns from the colony given the prevailing conditions at sea. We took a look at the weather forecast for the next few days, and realised that it was going to be a rare event when the sea would be calm enough for us to follow birds from the colony to their feeding areas.

The weather was forecast to be slightly worse the next day, so we cancelled Graeme for the day, so he could get on with other work.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Finding our feet in Amble

Today we set out to get things going and make sure people knew we were about and starting work. In the morning we made a number of calls, and we negotiated internet access with a nearby guest house to use their WiFi (hence why I can write this blog).

We couldn't go out in the RIB today so went up the coast to Long Nanny where there is a National Trust wardened tern colony. At the car park, we bumped into a birder called Gary who seemed to have heard of us and the work we are going to be doing. He has a birding blog: http://newtonstringer.blogspot.com/


Posing Arctic tern

The tern colony is vast, with hundreds of pairs of Arctic terns and a small but growing number of little terns. We made contact with the wardens and found out how the season is progressing. We plan to return to the area later in the season to study the forgaging trips of the little terns and study their use of the sea. But the little terns have only recently started to lay eggs, and the first chicks won't start to be fed for another two weeks or so. The early indications are that the nesting season is a bit later. We watched as a carrion crow made repeated forays into the colony, accompanied by a swarm of furious Arctic terns, only to emerge seconds later with an egg in its beak. A volunteer warden was trying to pursue it with what looked like a high-tech catapult. But it was too wily and managed to keep its distance. I wonder how long before more drastic measures will be employed.

There seemed to be plenty of sandeels coming into the colony as display fish for the Arctic terns. I did see a gadid and a very young 0-group sandeel, so they aren't all bringing in grade-A display fish.


Arctic tern with grade-A display fish (sandeel)

We did some trial watches of the little terns, picking a spot a short distance away from the colony where we could try to watch them feeding from a high vantage point. The first thing we tried was to count the rate at which little terns passed in either direction. At first, all was quiet, then the final minutes of the watch were quite frantic. Out high vantage point proved difficult to be sure that we'd detected all flights. Most of the birds we saw uttered an occasional call to betray their presence. More interesting was when we spend half an hour watching individuals leaving the colony to see what they did. They all seemed to spend a bit of time at the mouth of the Long Nanny river, if they didn't get chased off by another bird if already present. They then flew fast northward toward Beadnell harbour, and starting to search for food at the same place each time. Often it proved difficult to follow an individual, because there seemed to be quite a bit of territorial behaviou - if a bird was already feeding at a particular spot, it wouldn't tolerate another bird encroaching on "its patch". We started to see a pattern by the end of the watch.

We returned to the car, did a shop in Alnwick on the way back to the house. Julie cooked a delicious meal (aubergine bake for the foodies out there). We were visited by Graeme, who will be driving the boat for us. It was good to meet him and just talk through what we want to do and make plans for our first attempts in the boat tomorrow. First impressions were good, and I hope he felt the same way about us. I think we're all a little apprehensive and at the same time excited by the work we'll be doing.

Off to Northumberland

Thought it was about time I reinstated the blog. I had lots of good intentions about doing the blog to let people know about my new life in Old Portlethen (aka Portlethen Village), but never seemed to get around to doing this. Maybe I'll get the taste for blogging again.

After a lot of preparation - I have to admit mainly by others rather than me - we set off in my fully laden car from Aberdeen to Amble in Northumberland. It was a very pleasant drive on a hot sunny day. We used my Satnav to help find the ideal route from the A1 to Amble, which it surely did. Maybe we should have heeded the warning sign "Not suitable for through traffic". My fully laden car bumped its way down a rough track, with the continuous sound of weeds scraping my sills (sounds painful). Eventually we got back to a sensible road and to the house in Amble.

After unpacking the car then our bags, we went exploring. The house is 3 doors away from a superb fish and chip shop - The Harbour Chip Shop - very highly recommended, and would give Zanres or the Ashvale a run for their money.

We took our meal down to the harbour and watched Sandwich and common terns feeding in the evening light on the River Coquet. We heard the unmistakable "keewik" call of two roseate terns as one of them excitedly showed off its newly-caught sandeel to its mate.



Common tern in Amble