Lihou
- 29 June 2006
Jamie, Michelle, Catherine
and Paul made a quick visit to Lihou during an afternoon neap tide.
Only 90
minutes to work the island. Started with gulls on southern roped off
end. Jamie
and Michelle had been over the day before and ringed eight Great
Black-backed
Gull chicks and three Herring Gulls on the island.
Between
us we relocated a few of these and added another couple of Great
Black-backed
Gulls. Also ringed a Lesser Black-backed Gull chick in this part of the
island.
There were several
Oystercatcher nests still with eggs. The Ringed Plover nest by the
landing
beach had cracked eggshells (indicating hatching?). However, there was
no sign
of either parents or young. Jamie
reported that when first discovered, visitors were disturbing the
nesting
parents by inadvertently walking too close due to the build up of
seaweed over
the normal access path up to the island.
The Environment Department had instructed Environment Guernsey
to rope
off the area and encourage visitors to access the island via an
alternative
route.
We
then walked around to visit Lihoumel, avoiding two camouflaged
Oystercatcher
nests with eggs by the Venus pool. The small colony of Cormorants was
very
interesting. Jamie had ringed 12 from this colony earlier, but there
were still
two new ones to ring, along with three Shags. This small colony is
ideal to
work. Several big Shags (which Jamie had ringed on previous visit) were
still
near their nests.
Surprisingly
we found five dead Shag chicks (including three ringed ones). It is
unusual to
find so many failed fledglings – possibly an indicator of poor
food supplies
(leading to a pretty poor breeding season across the Bailiwick for
Shags)? There was also evidence of a rat
population
living on Lihoumel.
We
finished with quick visit to a small colony of gulls in the NE corner.
Here we
ringed another two Lesser Black-backed Gulls (hiding down rabbit
burrows), and
a Great Black-backed Gull. We found one
dead adult Herring Gull and one dead adult Lesser Black-backed Gull in
the
grass.