With the easement of travel distance restrictions, it was
nice to be able to make an early evening visit to the Elegug Stacks at Castlemartin again, where we hadn’t been for
several months, just to see how the auks were doing near the end of their
breeding season. Unfortunately, this year will be the first one for very many
years without a count of the breeding seabird colonies along this stretch of
coast due to Covid 19 issues.
Most of the earlier breeding Razorbill chicks had seemingly fledged. Many of the Guillemot chicks had probably fledged as well. However, there were still quite a few to be seen and heard and lots of adults still attending the main colonies on the stacks.
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| The chick flapping its tiny wings and the two above will soon be ready to jump off the top of the Stack |
Sadly, no Kittiwakes at all there this year. The once thriving colony (peaking at 500-600 occupied nests in the early 1990s) is no more!
There seemed to be relatively few large gull chicks around –
perhaps earlier stormy weather affected them? Some late LBBGs were still incubating
or brooding small young.
We couldn’t see any evidence of Shags breeding and Fulmar
numbers also looked to be a bit down.
Recently we’ve also noted c. a dozen of more Puffins at their usual location on the east side of Stackpole Head, so it was nice to see double figure numbers there.
The small Oystercatcher breeding population also seems to have
produced more young this year. Perhaps less human disturbance on the accessible
beaches might have helped this this spring?
