It's All Kicking Off

Mid-may on the islands is always an exciting time of year; the seabirds are all back and we are fast approaching having all our species on eggs. It's not all about the seabirds though, as May also brings with it the excitement of migration.

First, an update on the seabirds. Guillemots, Razorbills and Shags are all on eggs, and some of the latter on chicks! The Kittiwakes will not be far behind, and we expect to see them on eggs any day now. Incubation periods for these birds range from 30 to 40 days, so come mid June the cliffs will be covered in seabird chicks. With all this action on the cliffs, it means its a great time of year to visit, especially as in the next few days we also expect to see our first Arctic tern eggs!

Razorbill incubating. Not the most comfortable-looking of positions ©Ed Tooth

Guillemot tending to it's egg ©Ed Tooth

Proud Shag with 3 prehistoric looking chicks ©Ed Tooth

Speaking of Arctic Terns, these magnificent wanderers are well and truly back, and in recent days have been creating their nest scrapes ready for imminent egg laying. You may remember that last year we put some geolocators on the Terns, so we could track their movements over the winter. We are very excited to report that we have seen at least 4 of them back on the islands. Now all we have to do is catch them again!

Arctic Tern sporting geolocator number 9 ©Ed Tooth

We are also pleased to report that our habitat trial plots are being well used at present. We set up a number of shingle and sand plots around Inner Farne and Brownsman to see if the Arctic Terns would use them. For us, it's a way of controlling the rampant vegetation effectively, and for them it's hopefully some ideal new nesting habitat. Our Sandwich and Common Tern are also back and days away from egg laying, and when combined with the hundreds of Black-headed Gulls, they make central meadow a noisy and crowded place.

Arctic Terns displaying on the new shingle plots ©Ed Tooth

And we can't forget the Farnes favorite, the Puffin. Most of the occupied burrows now have eggs, and above ground the islands are littered with thousands of theses colorful little characters. Puffin cam is also proving a hit in the visitor center. Three out of the four cameras are beaming live footage of incubating Puffins, and we are keeping all our fingers and toes crossed that in around a month, visitors will be able to get a unique insight into the underground world of a Puffling! We have also spotted our first Eider ducklings of the year, and the islands are now home to hundreds of dedicated females sitting tight on their clutches of eggs.



Puffin cam in action

Nesting Eider lying low ©Ed Tooth

Away from the seabirds, it has been an exciting week on the islands for migratory birds. Each spring the rangers constantly check the weather forecast, hoping to see easterly winds pop up. In the last few days an easterly airflow from the continent made all our dreams come true, and we enjoyed a fantastic few days birding. The accolade of star bird goes to the Thrush Nightingale that was found on Brownsman on the 10th, the eastern European equivalent of our own Nightingale. There was a frantic dash for the boat as rangers took turns visiting Brownsman to get fantastic views of this rare vagrant. It represents only the 4th record for the islands and the 11th for Northumberland. Running a close second was not one, not two but THREE Bluethroat that visited the islands. A strong supporting cast including Gadwall, Black Tern, Iceland Gull, Marsh Harrier, Tree Pipit, 3 Spotted Flycatcher, 5 Redstart, 2 Black Redstart, 11 Wheatear, Garden Warbler, 10 Blackcap, 4 Lesser Whitethroat, 6 Whitethroat, 2 Sedge Warbler and a Grasshopper Warbler has made for some very happy rangers this week.  

Star bird! Thrush Nightingale ©Ed Tooth

Stonking male Redstart ©Ed Tooth

Grasshopper Warbler putting in a rare appearance out in the open ©Ed Tooth

One of the three Bluethroat to visit the islands ©Charlotte Altass



With more easterlies forecast for next week, and tens of thousands of seabirds present daily, now is surely the time to visit. So grab your Tern hat and binoculars and come and see us!

With Fronds Like These...

The waters around the Farne Islands are rich in marine life, and by undertaking regular surveys of the creatures found around our shores we can gain an insight into the health of this enigmatic environment.

The recent Super Moon has given us an excellent chance to do this, and we’ve had a fantastic time embarking on team rock pool adventures. A Super Moon is when the moon is closer to the earth than usual (there are 6 this year), which causes larger than usual tides. We have taken full advantage of these extremely low tides and discovered a diverse range of fauna on the Inner Farne shore. One of our highlights was a nudibranch – a Common Grey Sea Slug (Aeolidia papillosa). It’s an odd looking thing, covered in cerata, which are fleshy appendages that look like fur. This sea slug feeds on anemones, but it doesn’t stop there. The Grey Sea Slug goes the extra mile and ingeniously steals the stinging defence of its anemone prey! Rather than digesting the stinging cells, the sea slug absorbs them and moves them up to the tips of its cerata, giving the sea slug its very own stinging defence.

Common Grey Sea Slug (Aeolidia papillosa) ©Lana Blakely

Common Sunstar (Crossaster papposus) ©Lana Blakely

Velvet Swimming Crab (Necora puber): the largest swimming crab in British waters ©Lana Blakely

Orange-clubbed Sea Slug (Limacia clavigera) ©Lana Blakely

Blue-rayed Limpet (Patina pellucida) ©Lana Blakely

But it isn’t just the rock pools we’ve been keeping an eye on. The breeding season has been rapidly building momentum, and the cliffs are bustling with seabirds. The island is once again filled with a cacophony of sounds, with the distinctive calls of Kittiwakes cutting through the hum of thousands of Guillemots. Puffins are busily reaffirming pair bonds after a long winter, tapping beaks with their partners before tending to their burrows. We’ve also been busy, successfully installing cameras in four Puffin burrows; now you can get a rare glimpse of their underground behaviour on a television in our Information Centre.

Puffin Cam

But the recent stormy weather has taken a toll. Over the last few days gale force winds have driven huge waves against the island’s north rocks, forcing birds off of the cliffs, including nesting Shags. Our Sandwich Tern roost, which had been growing daily, dropped from a peak of 523 birds to around 350 in just a few days. Fortunately numbers have been building again, and counts of Common and Arctic Tern amongst them have increased to double figures, so hopefully we will soon be back to our full complement of a few thousand terns. One species that hasn’t been put off is the Eider, with new nests appearing almost daily, tucked safely against piles of vegetation on the island’s central meadow.

Eider Duck on Nest ©Tom Hibbert

As well as slowing the onset of the breeding season, these strong northerly winds have also put the brakes on spring migration. Despite an initial mini-influx of migrants, including a small fall of Chiffchaff on the 11th April (12 birds across Inner Farne), our first Willow Warbler (10th April) and some fantastic views of Black Redstart, it has been a quiet few weeks. The majority of highlights have all been at sea, with long hours of mostly unproductive seawatching resulting in the occasional island scarcity. Recent additions to the year list have included Black-throated Diver, Great Northern Diver, Tufted Duck, Velvet Scoter, Goldeneye and Gadwall. This last is a real rarity, with the pair seen flying north likely to be the only record of the year.

We’ve also had some success with our gull roost. Dragging ourselves from the warmth of the tower to stand in a freezing wind, slowly picking our way through hundreds of gulls, isn’t always easy, but it can be very rewarding. In the last few weeks we have recorded up to 4 Iceland Gull and 3 Mediterranean Gull. One Med Gull was a first-winter bird (born last year) with a red Darvic ring on one leg; by reading the unique code on this ring we were able to discover that it had been ringed as a chick in Poland in June 2015 – over 800 miles from the Farnes!

Polish-ringed Mediterranean Gull

However, the star of the year so far is a bird that none of the rangers anticipated. On the 6th April a commotion amongst the gulls drew our attention to an Egyptian Goose on the south rocks of Inner Farne. This represents the first official record of this species for the Farne Islands! There are seven previous records from the nineteenth century, but these were all classed as escapees, as the species was not yet established in Britain.

Egyptian Goose