By Jessie Dermody
A busy day for me today, beginning with a trek up to the northeast of the island to monitor the fulmar colony. I set off a little later than I had planned, so I walked as fast as I could and scrambled down through the bracken to the survey point. I counted 52 Fulmars sitting in the colony, with another four on the wing. No visible chicks yet, although there was a Greater Black Back Gull with a chick on top of the rock above the colony. We have also spotted a Peregrine chick outside its nest in this area too! My job was to photograph the monitored sections of the colony so Emma can do a proper nest count at a later date. I also get a general count to go into the log book for that day. After my task was completed, I headed back to gannets bay for a seal disturbance survey.
An undisturbed seal resting 100m from any boats or snorkellers. By Jessie Dermody
Unfortunately, there was a lot of seal disturbance today. Two boats moored in gannets bay and sent out snorkellers and divers who seemed to not know how to snorkel with seals without disturbing them. There were several instances where seals were scared off the rocks by swimmers coming to close, as well as many seals which were prevented from hauling out by the people and boats in the water. In the screen capture below, you can see a very disturbed seal looking directly at the snorkellers. A few seconds later in this video, the seal moves rapidly off its rock into the water, wasting valuable energy as it will now have to search for another place to rest. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, disturbing seals while they are hauled out can have very serious and long-lasting effects. Disturbing female seals during summer can be particularly bad, as they may be pregnant at this time of year, and any disturbance will waste energy that they would normally have used to feed the pup inside of them.
A screengrab of one of the videos of seal disturbance taken today.
After draining my camera battery filming incidents of seal disturbance, I made my way to Jenny's Cove to run the seabird station for visitors there. A lot of the visitors today were very excited to see the islands auks up close through the scope. A few of them spotted some Ravens flying past the cove! There were also plenty of Fulmar and Kittiwake flying around the cove today. As 3pm rolled around, I headed back to the lodge to crash on the sofa and read before dinner and wildlife log in the evening. We had reports of 285 Manx Shearwater, 4 Gannets, 2 Black-headed gulls, 5 Storm Petrels, 12 Curlew and a Cormorant on todays Oldenburg crossings. We have also had at least one Grayling butterfly reported at log for the past few nights.
Today's Grayling. Photo by Chloe Langmead
By Chloë Langmead
Hello everyone, I hope you had lovely weekends :)
It’s been a busy day today! We have had the first sightings for the year of Mistle Thrush and Great Spotted Woodpecker today as well as a Reed Warbler singing in Millcombe.
Jessie and I started our morning with a Bee Walk. However there weren’t many bumblebees to be seen, our total for the transect were 2 Common Carder and 1 Buff-tailed. In contrast, the butterflies and moths have been out and about today, Emma and Greg saw 137 Meadow Browns, 5 Ringlets, 69 Painted Ladies, a Grayling and 4 burnet moths.
After the Bee Walk, Jessie and I headed straight down to the Landing Bay and met Tara for our snorkel safaris. We had two great sessions, during which we saw lots, including two beautiful Doto sp. sea slugs and a Boring Sponge. There were also so many Moon Jellyfish bumping about.
After the two snorkel safari sessions we were all pretty cold, but we soon warmed up as we kayaked, paddle-boarded and swam out to deploy the BRUV. This time we repositioned and angled the BRUV so that it was closer to the ground (a temporary fix until Ian kindly permanently adjusts it for us) and we crushed the bait up a bit more before putting it in the canister. We positioned it in the seaweed and while we have yet to thoroughly review the footage to identify all the fish species, we did have our first BRUV sighting of a curious Grey Seal who came to have a nosy!
Chloë and Tara deploying the BRUV on a paddle-board. Photo by Greg Lee
By Emma Abel
This morning started cool as Greg and I headed out to carry out some Puffin, Guillemot and Kittiwake monitoring before the heat of the day began. Jenny's Cove was busy with the usual calls of adult Auks accompanied by the high pitched peeps of their growing chicks echoing up from the shelves down below. As a couple of weeks passed since the first chicks were seen, some of the Guillemots and Razorbills are almost big enough to pick a nice evening and jump off their cliff down into the water. Puffins take longer to develop from hatchlings to fledgelings so I continued my observations of adults bringing Sandeels back to their burrows. Quite an entertaining sight as their speed of entry into smalls is quite impressive, such velocity employed in order to avoid other birds robbing them of their hard earned fish. Especially relevant for those that have their front doors right next to hungry Herring Gull and Lesser Black-Backed Gull nests.
Jenny's Cove in the morning sun by Emma Abel
Most Puffin chicks, affectionately known as Pufflings, stay deep in the safety of their burrows waiting for their parents to ferry in a fresh load of fish. However, occasionally when they are big enough they will wander to the entrance of their burrow and look out at the world, which was a special sight that I got to witness today! As I was scanning the cliffs, I noticed a small dark bird sitting next to a Puffin and was delighted to realise that it was a young Puffling with its smoky features opposing the bright colours of its guardian that quickly ushered it back into the burrow.
Another interesting sight from the cliffs was a Razorbill perching on a rock, showing off its legs which were a yellow colour unlike the usual dark black legs of its species. Presumably a genetic mutation leading to an unusual colouring, that had not affected its plumage in any way.
Razorbill with yellow legs by Emma Abel
After finishing my Puffin monitoring, I headed to Aztec cove to join Greg as I have not seen my Aztec plots and wanted to get a glimpse of some chunky Kittiwake chicks. As we were heading back up the cliff, Greg noticed a gull being bothered by a large raptor, excitedly pointing it out to me while trying to find it as it dipped down behind the hill. Binoculars trained on the mysterious bird we saw that it was in fact a Buzzard! A bird that seems so common elsewhere in the UK, yet on Lundy is an uncommon sight to see, with this individual being the first since August last year. We saw the Buzzard lazily flying away inland, losing sight of it until 30 minutes later, when setting up for Seabird Station we once again heard the gulls alarm calling and had a lovely view of the bird soaring overhead, heading inland once again.
We ended the afternoon with a very pleasant Seabird Station, chatting to visitors in the sun. No more pufflings were seen but people were very pleased with their colourful Puffin sightings and a large Herring Gull chick was providing the baby charm.
Lundy map - click to enlarge