Four members
of the Pembrokeshire Ringing Group visited
St Margaret's Island yesterday to carry out the annual ringing of
Cormorant chicks and successfully ringed 87 chicks. But they found a scene of devastation too
with at least 60 large nestlings found dead on the nests
following the bad weather last week. They were all of large size with
20=35% covering of feathers but the rest of the body covered in down. They
would have been too big to be brooded and covered by their parents so in
the torrential downpours we experienced in the last 10 days they would have got
completely sodden and with the strong winds succumbed to the cold. Many
nests contained one or two dead chicks draped over the nest cup. It is
possible that the parents also struggled to find food for their chicks in the
bad sea conditions but in over 50 years of studies on the island this sort of
mortality has never been seen before.
It is worth
noting that on Thorne Island the Cormorants were around two to three weeks
earlier than the St Margarets colony and were seen incubating in the second
week of March and on 12th June all but three or four chicks had
already fledged whereas on St Margarets most are still a couple of weeks away
from fledging. There were also some
very small chicks and one nest with eggs – presumably all relays.
Anecdotal
observations on both Thorne Island and St Margaret’s was also that the numbers of Herring Gull
chicks seems to be quite small so maybe the weather has created a problem for
the gulls too. A visit to Caldey this week
will tell us if this is the case and the Skokholm warden is planning to look at
his colonies too.
