Just to keep you interested

Posted by

Wendy James on Twitter @wendy_TRG

Storm Petrel 2674680 has been exploring the Welsh coast! Ringed by Teifi Ringing Group at #Mwnt in 2017, it was at Porth Iago in 2018 then this year was caught by Pembs RG at Wooltack Point on 11th July, then just 9 days later was retrapped on Bardsey Island

...it's good if you have a breeding colony

where you can put on GPS tags AND get them off again.
Work undertaken in Spain (Benidorm) with Mediterranean Storm-Petrels has tracked 22 complete foraging trips of individuals from the colony (and back again). Foraging trips lasted 1-4.5 days taking in an impressive 303-1726km - much further than previously thought.

Birds were foraging over deep sea areas of the Alboran Sea and the Cartagena Canyons. If we took these figures and looked at sea depth I wonder how far, and for how long, European Storm Petrels from Nan Ron would forage.

Ref: http://animaldemography.blogspot.com/

Rotger, A., Sola, A., Tavecchia, G. & Sanz-Aguilar, A. (2021). Foraging far from home: GPS-tracking of Mediterranean Storm-petrels Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis reveals long-distance foraging movements. Ardeola, 68: 3-16.

C19, who'd have know?

As we are all currently confined to home territories outings have had to be postponed, cancelled, or put into abeyance. Our annual visit to Nan Ron, although still some weeks away, may actually be caught up in the tail end of the current situation - and we may not be able to visit this year.
I have had a look though all of our visits over the last years to find out when the latest visit in the year was made, and Stormies were still being caught. The answer was the 14th Sept, so I/we must live in hope.
While looking back through these years I started to play with some of the figures. Below is a graph which shows the annual totals, in blue, and the cumulative total in red. This relates to new birds caught only.
Since 1999 when we actually started to target Storm Petrels we have rung, on average, c1600 birds per annum. The best years to date have been 1999, 2004 and 2005 when over 2400 new birds were ringed. Last year, 2019, we rang 2358; but we should bear in mind that we now not only ring but collect full biometrics on most birds and, where informative, we photograph as well.

To date we have rung 34,246 birds.

Breeding Storm Petrel survey

I've just received from Danni (Thompson) at JNCC a map showing the survey locations looking for breeding Storm Petrels on Nan Ron. This was undertaken in 1995. It is our intention under Danni's guidance to resurvey the complete island this year for comparison. We're going to be busy......

?last of 2019 first of 2020?

2592002
03.08.2017 // age 6 // Tiumpan Head, Western Isles
31.07.2019 // age 4 // ENR
727days 110km 

GPS track on Italian Storm Petrel

Posted by Feberico De Pascalis via his Twitter account (@fdepa1) the first GPS track of an italian storm petrel - a 28g bird travelling up to 200km from its breeding colony foraging in a single day! Wonder if it does this every day?

and more.

First two British controls, then Norwegians
2739230
12.7.2019 Shillay Island, Western Isles
29.7.2019 ENR = 17 days 190km

2762170
17.4.2016 Fair Isle Bird Observatory
29.7.2019 ENR = 13 days 190km

2E07409 
26.08.2017  Herdlevaer, Oygarden, Hordeland, Norway
31.07.2019 ENR = 704 days, 561km

ED00284
09.08.2014 Hamnaholmen, Romsdal, Norway
01.08.2019 ENR = 1818 days, 675km

ED03463
20.07.2019 Lindesnes Fyr, Vest-Agder, Norway
02.08.2019 ENR = 13 days, 670km

Good news x2 (or is that three?)

1. We heard, just before Christmas, that one of our grant applications had been successful. Our request to the Seabird Group had been approved, so we have some money in the pot to enable us to molecularly sex some of the birds we catch this year as part of our study on trying to produce a definitive method for pheno-morphological sexing of Storm Petrel (i.e. can you do it by just looking at the bird in the hand together with a few measurements).
2 and 3. Have just had news back of the Portuguese birds caught last year.
Both were initially caught and ringed at the same place - Ponta de Almadena, Portugal - one on the 18th June (N7599) and the other (N7624) on 20th. N7624 was recaptured on Nan Ron on the 30th July and N7599 the next night. So both had covered the 2411km in about 40 days.