A little background to our increasing effort with Storm Petrels...
Skokholm warden, Rich Brown, believes nest site availability is a limiting factor to the breeding population on the island, currently c2000 pairs. With the building of two Petrel Stations on Skokholm with their c 250 nest chambers and with Lundy and Ramsey now rat free there is a great opportunity for the population to increase.
This is Storm Petrel Station II on Skokholm, built and ready for the 2024 breeding season.
This herringbone front contains the entrance to almost 120 nest chambers
See the following link for the story of building Petrel Station I in 2016
Our ringing at Strumble Head, North Pembs follows on from earlier studies by Ian Spence. He commenced Storm Petrel ringing at Strumble in 1983 and ringed for short spells, mostly in July every year from 1991 to 2003. In that time he ringed 847 birds and controlled 39 at Strumble.
Having concentrated our efforts in Ceredigion at Mwnt, for the reasons outlined above, we are now increasing our efforts at Strumble instead. So far this season we have captured 124 Storm Petrels including 9 controls.
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| Ringing at Strumble - Stephen Hyam |
Here are some of the movements resulting from our increased effort at Strumble Head this month. In our June blog we mentioned some other movements from West coast breeding colonies. We hope that our continuing study at our non breeding site adds to the picture of Storm Petrel movements.
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| Storm Petrel movements July 2024 |
Re-encounter reports from Strumble received so far this month..
The recovery history feature added this year to DemOn, the BTO online reporting tool, enables us to see that some Storm Petrels are also encountered in other locations between the ringing and our re-encounter dates.
As an example, the Storm Petrel ringed on Bardsey had also been re-encountered on the Lleyn peninsula
21/07/2020 Ringed Bae y Rhigol, Bardsey
31/07/2021 Porth Iago, Llangwnnadl
22/06/2023 Porth Iago, Llangwnnadl
14/07/2024 Strumble
The Storm Petrel ringed on Little Saltee had also been re-encountered in Cornwall
01/07/2022 ringed Little Saltee
18/06/2023 Gwennap Head, Porthgwarra
15/07/2024 Strumble
Strumble Head has the advantage of being a convenient site for visitors to come along to experience and learn more about our Storm Petrel ringing. Anyone is welcome to join us at a session.
One of our trainees, Anna Webberley, who works for Sea Trust , arranged a visit for some youngsters from the Marine Biology Club with their parents.
"Our Marine Biology Club had a fantastic time on Friday night on their trip to Strumble Head to see Storm Petrels being ringed with the Teifi Ringing Group! Everyone enjoyed learning more about the importance of bird ringing for conservation as well as getting to see these amazing seabirds up close. Both children and parents had a go at perfecting their ringing hold with Bernard the toy Gull, before getting the chance to help Teifi Ringing Group members release a Storm Petrel.
Thank you to the Teifi Ringing Group for letting us join the session and thank you to Stephen Hyam for photographing the evening!"
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| Sea Trust Marine Biology club at Strumble - Stephen Hyam |
Rich D and Wendy J
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