After a morning of gull ringing in Mont Cuet
landfill with the North Thames Gull Ringing Group, a text message from
Tara,
Island Rib Tours, confirming that there was a two hour window in her
bookings to
get the seabird ringing team out to the Humps that afternoon was too
good an
opportunity to miss. Chris Mourant and
Catherine
Veron took four of the North Thames Gull Ringing Group (Chris, Ken,
Derek and
Andy) with them and headed out at 12.30 for Longue Pierre with Island
Rib
Tour.
Slight drizzle soon cleared up to give a clear
window for the seabird ringing. Two
trips were necessary in the small tender to get everyone ashore but we
were soon
all on dry land, more or less dry (Derek having experienced a mini dip
in the
sea en route!)
Chris led the ringing, whilst Catherine
concentrated on marking all the active Shag nests with plastic numbers
and
noting the number of eggs or nestlings as part of Paul Veron’s
Shag monitoring
scheme. Permission from the States of
Guernsey Environment Department had previously been granted for 50
nests to be
marked on the Humps, with the intention of marking a further 50 on
Jethou.
On first inspection, the islet looked like it
was hosting a productive season for seabird breeding with good numbers
of Shags,
Cormorants and Guillemots. The team soon
discovered approximately 60 active Shag nests (40 of which were marked). A total of 60 Shag pulli were ringed (with
approximately 10 – 20 left un-ringed due to lack of time). There were also 13 Cormorant nests noted,
most with good sized pulli too agile to catch.
Two nests however still contained young, too small to ring and
only one
Cormorant pulli was ringed (G2437). The
colony from Godin had obviously split in 2009 to include Longue Pierre.
Although previously nesting on Longue Pierre in the 1980s, this was the
first
year in more than 20 that Cormorants were once again nesting on Longue
Pierre. The
total number of pairs on both rocks was 25 (i.e. similar to the total
for Godin
alone from c 2000).
The Guillemots seemed to have had a good season
as well with 4 -5 eggs noted in the two smaller colonies on the east of
the
island; both which also had Shag nesting close by (Shag pulli left
un-ringed to
limit disturbance to Guillemot eggs).
There were also adults and eggs in the Guillemot colony at the
top of
the islet on the northern end. The
largest colony in the centre of the islet was well used but no ringing
was
attempted due to time limitations.
Two Great Black backed Gull chicks were colour
ringed (black code on yellow plastic ring 0L4 and 0L5) with potentially
more
hiding in the vegetation which was beginning to thicken.
Tree mallow and a species similar to Fat Hen
were beginning to establish.
In the excitement of the excellent seabird
breeding success on Longue Pierre, Catherine missed the two phone calls
from
Tara and the team was late returning to the boat. Apologies
to Tara and Island Rib. However,
the seabird team was thrilled with the seabird breeding success evident
on the
islet so far, a welcome change to the very poor seasons experienced in
2007 and
2008.
Catherine Veron
8th June 2009