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.

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.