Bird Sightings

By Thomas Weston

My day started at 4am this morning, a slight glow in the sky and the sounds of the Millcombe Song Thrush, plus a rather active Swallow filled the air as I disturbed from my sleep. The original (non-bird) alarm was set a little later and I was up, washing up by 5am so everything was ready for the morning. I then headed down to Millcombe in the first really nice sunshine we have had for a while. It was also quite warm to start and by 6am I had the nets open.

An early start made some look more tired than others: a Painted Lady by Thomas

Millcombe woke up. The session was quite quiet to begin, though a Spotted Flycatcher flying around the Gas Store was a highlight. There were 10 birds caught, ringed and/or processed today: 3 new Linnets, including a stunning adult male; our breeding pair of Blackcap with the female being new and the male caught earlier in the Spring; a new juvenile Chaffinch fully fledged and ready to go; a retrap breeding Goldfinch and a retrap breeding Dunnock. The highlight for me are always the lesser know and lesser appreciated birds so the new juvenile and retrap adult Wren were pretty good highlights. Even more so, we found it’s nest! A rather artistic looking one and one we will record for the BTO Nest Recording Scheme in due course.

I packed up around 10am, as it got a little too warm to be sat in the blaring sun. I came back to the office, completed some of the Bird Day admin, inputted the ringing data, and before I knew it, it was lunch time already.

The Conservation Team met up in Barton Field with the aim to catch the presumed moulting Mallards. However little to our knowledge, the ducks had not started moulting and flew off as soon as we got there. The ducklings were nowhere to be seen and the temperature rose more so we all headed off a little hot but alright. The butterflies and moths out today were nice to see, a walk around Millcombe in the afternoon yeiled two broods of fledged Willow Warblers, with another brood reported to have fledged at the Terraces too! On dropping off the ringing book, I took it a little steadier ahead of my Tavern shift covering for a poorly member of staff.

Eleanor and I worked together, had dinner together and decided a summer solstice walk was needed. We walked through Millcombe and found 3 Pipistrelle Bats and heard the first jumping Guillemot chick, a sign of things to come and a weirdly seasonal change as we head into midsummer/ ornithological post-breeding/autumn!

By Lucile Doyen

Today started on the middle of a cliff, under the sole light of two red head lamps and a light drizzle. It was around midnight. Gaya was recording Manx Shearwater responses to different conspecific vocalizations, with an interval of 30min between each playback to reduce disturbance. The two birds she targeted produced no response, and we wondered if we had spent two hours recording empty nests under a sky that threatened to show us what British rain is like. This is part of science ! The silence of the Manxs was soon broken by a good amount of them enjoying the bad weather conditions to come back on the Island, and we probably saw 30 of them flying around in the last 20 minutes on site. It reminded me of the first night I joined the team of ringers to catch Manx on this cliff, one of the most beautiful of my life. The sky was full of birds and stars that night. Walking on the cliffs was intimidating at first, but the presence of all group-members and learning more about Manx ageing and sexing from Thomas made it a most wonderful memory. 

 One of this year's youngsters by Lucile

An adult male Chaffinch caught and processed in the Village by Lucile

By Jessie Dermody

A very rainy day today, but luckily it was still quite warm on the island. Most of my planned activities for the day revolved around the water anyway, so I didn’t mind getting very soggy. The assistant warden team aimed to test our baited remote underwater video (BRUV) setup today. This is the camera trap that Chloë mentioned in her last blog post.

Jessie and Chloe carrying the BRUV frame to the beach. Photo by Chloe Langmead

We hope that this will be a very useful tool in assessing which sea creatures are thriving within lundy’s marine protected area, as we can use this camera to count how many different species are present in a given area. Chloë, Tara and I spent a good part of the day attaching the camera, bait canister and weights to our frame. We had a couple of setbacks, including a broken camera, a lost camera and some issues with mounting the camera that we did have. Once we’d fixed these issues, we lowered our BRUV onto the seabed to film for an hour, and went to do some rockpooling!

 Assistant warden Tara testing what our camera would see if a fish approached the bait. By Chloë Langmead

We were supposed to lead a rockpool ramble today, but the weather did not allow for that, so the three of us went for a ramble by ourselves! I was very happy to find two sea slugs (my favourite animals) in the pools, Favorinus branchialis and Antiopella cristata – the Crystal Sea Slug!

Crystal sea slug on the underside of a rock in Devils Kitchen by Jessie Dermody

This was my first time finding a crystal sea slug myself, so I was very excited. Favorinus is also an exciting find, as this species of slug feeds on the eggs of other nudibranchs, so its presence here shows that there are lots of slugs around.

 Two Favorinus branchialis sea slugs in Falmouth, Cornwall (I couldn't photograph the individual I saw today). By Jessie Dermody )

We also found an interesting fish, a large edible crab and both types of cushion star! The most commonly reported cushion star (Asterina gibbosa) and has many different colour morphs, whilst the other type of cushion star (Asterina phylactica) is a lot smaller, and can be identified by the red star in the middle. Along with one of the large cushion stars, I discovered many starfish babies.

Tiny baby cushion stars (likely Asterina gibbosa). Terrible iphone camera photo by Jessie Dermody

After rockpooling, we returned to retrieve our BRUV. Unfortunately, when we tried to pull it up out of the water, we noticed that part of the frame was caught on the rope, and we were at risk of breaking it. Eventually, we managed to pull it up using a mixture of the rope and a boat hook. Upon reviewing the footage, we realised that our setup had fallen backwards while under the water, so instead of filming the seabed, it had been pointing upwards the whole time!

An anti-climatic BRUV screen capture. Can you spot the sand eel?

Not many sea creatures were caught on camera today, which was disappointing. Then again, that’s what a pilot test is for! The camera worked and we learnt a lot about what to look out for in deployment sites. Hopefully our next try will be more successful. Given the weather today, I do not have any other exciting sightings to report! I will hopefully have some better news in my next blog post

By Greg Lee

A calm start to the day with fog and light rain curtailing any opportunity to open the nets in Millcombe. With a busy day for the boat, my main task was joining Emma out at Jenny's Cove to run the seabird station mid-afternoon after tackling some of the rarity descriptions for the spring early morning. 

On my journey out to Jenny's Cove, I sighted a Meadow Brown whizzing over the ground, my first of the year for this grassland butterfly species of high summer. Certainly it made me think of the numbers that would be out across some of my favourite Cotswolds butterfly haunts, Prestbury Hill, Rough Bank, Swift's Hill, Daneway Banks etc. In the long grass, a Heath Spotted Orchid was still in flower, though was surprisingly cryptic. I also spotted a Swift scything through the air, just one of many seen by several observers across the island today. At this time of year, many non-breeding adults will wander around looking for potential nest-sites for the following season. These immature birds are sometimes known as "bangers" as they will knock potential nest-sites to check if they are occupied. In Jenny's Cove itself, the gurgling of Guillemots and whinnying of Kittiwakes filled the air and it was certainly a good show of Puffins, all in all making for a good day for showing members of the public our special seabird colonies. A Kestrel passing through interesting sighting, we're speculating that at least three individuals are currently on the island at the moment. 

Heath Spotted Orchid by G.Lee

Later on, we said goodbye to researcher Jayden Parker who has been with us for the past three weeks. As we headed down to say our goodbyes at the Oldenburg, we noted an impressive amount of jellyfish in the Landing Bay, mostly Moon and Blue. A small shoal of Sand Eels shimmered as they caught the light, these fish are a very key part of the diet of many of our breeding seabirds. Fortunately, the waters were quite settled and with the low cloud, made for quite a pleasant late afternoon.

The Oldenburg departing by G.Lee

Other sightings across the island for the day included a Reed Warbler chuntering down in Millcombe, two House Martins moving south and a grand total of 26 Swifts passing through. 56 Painted Ladies reflected the further increase of these butterflies.