Wednesday 16 July 2014

Trip to Middleholm

The Pembrokeshire ringing group and former Skomer Wardens Anna and Steve Sutcliffe have been monitoring and ringing the breeding Shags on Middleholm since 1985. This year Ed and I were able to join in and we had the most amazing time scrambling around the island looking for nests and ringing the chicks.


Lovely Middleholm
We found 23 nest sites and we ringed 25 chicks from 9 nests which equates to 2.78 chicks fledging per pair – a high productivity level. This is good news as the Shags have not been doing well in recent years.

 
Shag chicks in the nest

"Be careful, they have long beaks..."

Happy chick back in the nest
The proud parents

And a chick from last year with ring (on the left)

Bee (Skomer Warden) and Pia Reufsteck (Pictures)

No comments:

Post a Comment