Tuesday 13 April 2010

Mediterranean days

Second-summer Mediterranean Gull over the islands


Guillemot now eggs

Monday 12th April comments:
The fine, settled weather continued and at times, the North Sea resembled a pond – it was that calm. The breeding birds have continued to settle and the early start to the season continued – we’ve now got Guillemot on eggs! The first Guillemot eggs were seen on the cliffs of Inner Farne – some seventeen days earlier than two years ago! However more unexplainable was the lack of Puffins – the entire population departed for the open sea, disappointing the visiting public in the process. Despite the absence, it was still a very pleasant day to be on the islands.

On the migration front, the number of Mediterranean Gulls has increased – we’ve now got four with two second-summer birds (potential breeders). Other birds of note included a male Velvet Scoter through Inner Sound (with the lingering large Common Scoter flock) and some impressive Corvud passage.

4 comments:

James said...

The puffins have been hit and miss at Bempton too so far this year.

MinsmereMothMan said...

Hope the Med Gulls breed! They're top birds. We've got nearly 40 at Mins but I still never tire of them!

Emile de Bruijn said...

I was very pleased to discover yet another excellent NT blog - great to see these stories from the Farne Islands. I have just started a blog about NT acquisitions (http://nttreasurehunt.wordpress.com/) and I thought minhe was the first - how wrong I was!

Jan said...

worried about the lack of puffins - seemingly not just at the Farnes.

There's a nice little piece by Gordon Buchanan in BBC Wildlife magazine this month - article about Nature with the Family - and Gordon's piece is about him bringing his wife and kids to the Farnes.