Lihou
Island
16 June 2011
Jamie Hooper and I met up at the Lihou Causeway soon after mid-day in
order to cross to Lihou to ring gull chicks. The weather was just about
perfect with clear blue skies and a moderate westerly breeze to keep
things cool. Once across the causeway we worked a clockwise circuit
around the island’s coast checking the upper beaches and rocky
outcrops for gull chicks. This was a well-timed visit for although
there were still a small number of nests with eggs or tiny young, most
appeared to have half-fledged young. This meant that most of the gulls
found were large enough to take colour rings, but not so big as to
attempt to fledge and flap/fly down the beaches.
The southern and western coastlines were quite sparsely populated with
only a few Great Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls found. We did not
venture out to Lihoumel, as the first of the islets appeared to be
covered in very large young Shags on the point of fledging. Continuing
around the west and north coasts we found a few more Great Black-backed
Gull chicks, and the usual Herring Gull stronghold on the stony beaches
of the east coast came good with a reasonable number of well-grown
chicks.
We only had time to cover the eastern half of Lissroy, before the
rising tide forced us to get back to Guernsey before the causeway began
to cover. The very small colony of a dozen or so pairs of Lesser
Black-backed Gulls by the pool suggested that it may well be worth
returning to the island in a few weeks’ time to see if the chicks
hatched and survived.
By the time we left the island we had ringed 28 Herring Gulls (27 with
colour rings) and 18 Great Black-backed Gulls (17 with colour rings).
This seemed about the usual success for recent years on the island. As
witnessed in recent years we did find a significant number of empty,
clean gull nests, which strongly suggested that a significant
percentage of the gull population had failed to produce young this
year. However…overall productivity appeared to be on a par with
recent years. Having said this there are some early signs of a decrease
in Herring Gull numbers in some parts of Lihou.
PKV
17 June 2011
