Little Terns & the Hayling Oysterbeds     -      30th May 2007

If you go down to the Oysterbeds today, you may not get a big surprise, but may witness courting, displaying, mating, breeding, squabbling, fighting, colour, beauty and tragedy.

Easy to find (take the main road onto Hayling Island, a mile past the bridge, take a right immediately past the Esso garage, use the car park or the overflow, walk to the right and you will probably hear the cacophony which heralds the amphitheatre). The performers are within viewing distance, but binoculars or a telescope will enhance the spectacle.

Situated between the vast Chichester Harbour, and Farlington Marshes Nature Reserve, the winter months provide close-up views of waders and geese for which this entire mid- south coast area is famous, being considered the third best locality in Britain. For the Oysterbeds Lagoon however, the best shows are retained for the spring and summer months.

 

March sees the island given over to the courting gulls, including large numbers of our iconic Mediterranean Gull, stunning in their summer-plumage costumes. This once-rare bird to Britain, is thriving here, probably as a result of global warming. After their pair-bonding, they make their exit to the islands to breed, graciously giving way for the entrance of the real stars of the show - - the terns; both the 'Common', and the 'Little Terns'. Hayling Oysterbeds is one of Britain's main breeding locations for these small, rare, beautiful birds. Their performances include a display of bobbing and weaving, screaming, shrieking and diving, and also passing over the glistening silver fishes to the females and chicks.

 

That is the good news.

The bad news - For the last 4 years, the terns have encountered disaster after disaster. Their problem is their genetic imprint. Unlike the majority of the gull species who have adapted to man and changing, declining habitats, the Little Terns remain stubborn and defiant. They require, nay demand, shingle, which must not be too steep, must not be too shallow, and no vegetation. They should be nesting, as did their ancestors, on the beach. Dogs and people make this impossible, so volunteers and the local council, have tried to recreate this environment, here at the Oysterbeds.

The last few years have seen the Little Terns hit by heavy extended westerly winds which scorched all the vegetation and killed all the chicks, a 24-hour force-ten which again resulted in decimation, high tides have completely covered the island, 2 years ago the silver fishes and Sandeels were 2 weeks late resulting in the starvation of the chicks, another year kestrels discovered an easy restaurant, rats managed to swim out devouring all the eggs and chicks, predation by gulls and foxes, even an uncontrollable dog ran riot amongst the nests. As a result, little or no successful breeding, although last year they did have a late second attempt and finally, 23 chicks were fledged. Promising, but not great.

Jason Crook will again be the full-time warden this year, aided by a team of volunteers. Their job is to assist the birds, keeping an eye on predators, tides and people, asking fisherman or dog walkers, to refrain from disturbance for 3 months a year.

Usually there is someone with a telescope, so feel free to ask for a look. You may be attacked, kicked and bludgeoned, you may be told to **** off, but on the other hand, this is unlikely, most nature lovers are polite, keen to share their knowledge and their optics. The theatre is open 365 days a year, never closes and the show can be viewed from dawn to dusk. It is, all of it, totally free of charge. There is no conceivable excuse for not visiting.  Visit.                  

 

                                                     

Here, Jason, together with his photographs, fills in a bit more detail. Anyone who knows him, can only respect the meticulous records he constantly maintains, getting to know every bird on the islands. He will usually be seen at the Oysterbeds, and even us old cynics, must welcome the council spending money on something for the good of us all to enjoy, plus helping vulnerable creatures, with probably no votes to be won.                                  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Seabirds and waders at West Hayling Local Nature Reserve – the Hayling Oysterbeds

 

Breeding Season 2007 Updates (In reverse order) by Jason Crook -

Oysterbeds       Hayling Island

AUGUST 24TH 2007

( FINAL UPDATE)

As the summer season draws to a close at Hayling Oysterbeds this will
be my last update for a while. It has been another long breeding
season on the reserve and there are still some very late breeding Black-
headed Gulls with young which are finally fledging as I write. Three
young Common Terns have now fledged but spent several days lingering at
the reserve as they developed their flying skills, occasionally being
led away into the harbour by their parents as they explored the rest of
the world! The single Oystercatcher chick has also fledged and, along
with the other two juveniles fledged earlier in the summer, can usually
be seen roosting on the reserve at high tide with their parents.

For most birds the season is now all but over and increasingly their
focus will be on undergoing a post-breeding moult or beginning their
long trip to wintering grounds off the West African coast. Ringed
Plovers, Oystercatchers and Black-headed Gulls will be undergoing a
complete moult of more-or-less all of their feathers, both body and
wing feathers, as they feed up on the food-rich mudflats and waters in
Langstone Harbour and (for some) elsewhere in The Solent (or perhaps
further afield). Whereas many of the Little Terns have now left there
are still plenty of Common Terns using the area but these will also
soon be on their way as they suspend much of their moult until they
arrive at their African wintering grounds. Interestingly there were up
to 25 or so Common Terns busily displaying over the lagoon during the
first half of the month and, given that two pairs have raised young
this year there should be plenty of them around nesting on the reserve
next year. One or two pairs of Little Terns briefly joined in (giving
hope for next year) but more unusually there have been up to five
Sandwich Terns, including two pairs, displaying like there was no
tomorrow!

Other wildlife recently has included another species of tern to add to
the list earlier in the month as a juvenile White-winged Black Tern
appeared off the reserve on the evening of 20th. Another look for it
on 23rd revealed a juvenile Arctic Tern in Langstone Harbour but
nothing more exotic. There have also been recent sightings of Osprey,
Hobby and Peregrine over the Oysterbeds, while numbers of waders are
still increasing. For example there have been over 150 Ringed Plovers
gathered at the high tide roost and flocks of up to 70 Grey Plovers
(all in their gorgeous summer plumage) and 10 Knot. Small birds such
as Wheatear and Willow Warbler are trickling through in small numbers
and on 23rd a steady passage of Swallows and martins (including 30 Sand
Martins) moved through overhead. The “summer” really has turned to
autumn as the winds have firmly swung round to the north and we can
expect more migrant birds in the coming weeks.

As I look back on this summer I am also looking forward to next.
Plans are already being made by the Wildlife Trust and Havant Borough
Council to make further improvements to the reserve, especially to
benefit the Little Terns in preparation for their return next April.
It isn’t going to be easy but I hope that the experiences of the last
couple of years hold us in good stead.

Jason Crook
Seasonal Warden, NE Langstone Harbour

----------------------------------------------------------

 

Oysterbeds Update - 2nd August 2007

Hello all

Another month has passed of this so-called “summer”! There is good news and bad news, so I will begin with the good…..

The good news is headed by the Oystercatchers. One pair, possibly the most experienced pair on the reserve, has now fledged their two young but they remain very much a family. The youngsters will likely stay with their parents, and be dependent upon them, through the rest of the summer. They occasionally squabble between themselves as they fight for the attention (and food) from their parents. More usually though each juvenile shadows a different parent as they learn the basic skills of finding food. Distinguishing the juveniles from the adults is relatively easy as they still have slightly shorter and duller orange bills and, easier to see perhaps, dull pink-grey legs as opposed to the bright pink-red legs of the adults. Their plumage is of course all very fresh and their upperparts including wings, as well as being a browner-black compared to the jet black of the adults, have very neat but narrow paler edges to each feather. If you get that close to them you ought to be able to hear their incessant squeaky chattering as they make it perfectly clear to their parents that they are still around and (often) hungry!

The other pair of Oystercatchers which hatched two chicks a month ago has reared one of them to almost fledging and I will be watching this bird carefully during the next few days to see its first flights as only then will I count it as finally “fledged”. All the other Oystercatchers have failed but remain on territory around the reserve. This sounds like a poor season, and I would agree it is not the best and improvements can (and I hope will be) made, but consider the following. A typical Oystercatcher lives for at least twelve years and starts breeding at four years. So, an average pair may need to raise just two young during their eight years of breeding to “cover” their own mortality. Of course, productivity probably needs to be slightly higher than this as juvenile mortality is doubtless higher than adult mortality, but even if it is double then each pair needs to raise four young during their lifetime. Or one juvenile every other year. For the ten pairs that are breeding at the Oysterbeds an average of five young need to be reared each summer. Well this year it should be three, and last year it was five (from nine pairs). So, on balance, they may already be almost successful enough to maintain their population on the reserve.

The other good news is that from three pairs of Common Terns which re-nested after earlier failures two now have half-grown chicks on the south island. One pair, between markers B and C, have one chick which is growing fast. It can be seen on the west side of the island usually amongst the stones in a patch of longer vegetation (grass-leaved orache for the botanists amongst you) and has been seen at the entrance to one of my chick shelters….. The other pair have two chicks which can be located at the north end of an area of dense vegetation (annual seablite) between markers F and G, again on the west side of the island. Although these hatched a day or two before the other brood (now one chick) they will probably fledge slightly later as the parents have twice as many mouths to feed and have their work cut out! I am hopeful that they might all fledge but not until the third week of August.

There are also still some Black-headed Gulls nesting on the island. All of the earlier (actually traditionally-timed) nesting birds have gone, some of which fledged young. Another seven broods of mostly small chicks are on their way but, like the Common Terns, it will be much later this month before they fledge.

Now the bad news. It has been a complete failure for the Little Terns this summer. Up to fifteen or so birds visited the Oysterbeds during July and there was a little interest in nesting with some nest scraping and courtship activity but only one pair settled and laid eggs. It soon became apparent that the female bird incubating was not being attended by a male and I watched her on several occasions flying off into the harbour to feed and so leaving her eggs to the mercy of the elements. She eventually gave up. I am already looking to improve conditions for this species for next year but there are no quick fixes or easy solutions. There are things that can be done and, because I know that the site can be very productive for this species, work will continue into the future to build again on the success of the site last year. I hope to be able to prove that this year was a minor blip in proceedings.

Ringed Plovers have also done poorly and have, for the second year in succession, failed to fledge any young. The brood of three at the beginning of July didn’t last and, by the third week of the month, all the adults had lost interest in breeding and had begun to flock up with other returning birds from elsewhere. I did see a juvenile in mid-July, but this was not locally reared.

The return migration for other species is gaining momentum and in the last few weeks numbers of waders have really started to build. Whimbrel and Common Sandpiper are typically early in their return passage and the Oysterbeds is undoubtedly the best place to see these two species around the shores of Langstone Harbour. Peak counts have been 33 Whimbrel (on 20th July) and 16 Common Sandpiper (on 28th). Most of these have been adults but the first juveniles of both species were seen at the end of the month. The regular roost of Redshank held 101 birds on 24th July with smaller numbers of Dunlin and Turnstone. A Sanderling visited on two dates and single Greenshank on three. Up to 50 Bar-tailed Godwits gathered to feed at low tide just south of the reserve.

Numbers of tern in the main harbour are now building rapidly to reach a peak during the next few weeks during which time it should be possible to see one or two of the scarcer species – Roseate, Arctic and Black Terns – from time to time. But you need to be patient and willing to look through the flocks of Common Terns to find them. A search on 1st August revealed single adult Roseate and Black Terns plus two juvenile Arctic Terns. Together with Little and Sandwich Terns these made up six species of terns… in ten minutes of looking!

Jason Crooks 2nd August 2007

 

Update -3rd July 2007

Another two weeks have passed since I last wrote. In keeping with the trials and tribulations that are affecting many other Little Tern colonies this summer the scene at the Oysterbeds is typical with a species struggling to breed successfully. The other seabirds are also having a hard time with the exception of one…. Black-headed Gulls are still plentiful on the reserve with a total of 13 broods to date (11 surviving), a few others on nests and a few too many hanging around.

The weather has recently been atrocious, the worst summer weather in my memory, with persistent wind and frequent rain, some of the latter prolonged and heavy and falling in September-like temperatures. The underlying (or actually over-lying) cause of this appears to be the route that the Jet Stream is taking, a high altitude conveyor belt of fast-moving air which is directing low pressure centres from the North Atlantic across the British Isles much further south than is usual at this time of year. These conditions prevail during occasional summers, the exception this year being the length of time and the amount of rainfall resulting from all this frontal activity. Monsoon June is how I will remember it, but I hope that it will become a distant memory soon!

Since the predation of most of the Little Tern nests and young at the Oysterbeds in mid June things have not improved. The few remaining pairs with nests (on the north island in the lagoon) have subsequently failed too, this time almost certainly as a direct result of competition for space (and peace and quiet) from the Black-headed Gulls. The latter have been seen, typically in my experience, preventing the terns from incubating properly with the result that they eventually gave up. During the last week the only Little Terns to be seen on the reserve, up to eight birds, have sometimes been seen courtship feeding, displaying and even nest-scraping but the weather has not been kind to them. Feeding in the harbour in strong winds would have been difficult and I suspect the females have never had the opportunity to get into condition to produce eggs to lay. The season draws on and it remains to be seen if these birds will settle… I hope they will.

An equally bumpy story can be told of the Common Terns. The three remaining pairs left sitting after the period of rat predation hatched their eggs within a day or two of each other but three days later the chicks had all vanished. A mystery.. well no, as I observed one of the Black-headed Gulls predate two tern chicks (from different nests) in a half hour period on the last day. Whether this gull was a particularly rogue bird is anyone’s guess, but this is not the first time I have observed Black-headed Gulls kill chicks of other species at this site in recent years so I suspect that there are more chick killers out there than I might like to think (a bit like rats really).

I ended my previous update with tales of the Oystercatchers. The brood of two young are almost fledged and are expected to make their first flights soon. Actually not soon enough, as they have recently been seen to feed along the landward shores of the lagoon where they are at risk from land predators and uncontrolled dogs. I have enticed them back to the islands a couple of times already, well at least on those occasions they have avoided the obvious dangers even if the parents may have ended up with a sore throat from shouting at me! The young are doing well and the parents are perhaps the most experienced birds commandeering the best nesting site on the reserve and continuing their unrivalled success (hopefully) in rearing young.

The other Oystercatchers have not been so lucky. One of the two pairs on nests on the north island hatched one of their three eggs a week ago but the chick did not survive past day two of its life and the other two eggs didn’t hatch. I reckon the proximity to nesting (and hassling) gulls was to blame for the loss of the chick, but the eggs may well have suffered from emersion in salt water during a period of high tides in mid-June. A pair of Oystercatchers that nested on the seaward side of the lagoon had their nest inundated and washed away by the same tides, and many (if not all) of the other pairs with nests elsewhere on the reserve would have suffered a similar fate. Some will re-nest (for their third nesting attempt this year) but others will give up soon. The remaining pair nesting on the north island in the lagoon has just hatched two of their eggs and two fluffy chicks can be seen occasionally when they are not been brooded!

Ringed Plovers are having the same problems as the Oystercatchers, so again not an altogether happy time but some hope. The pair with a nest on the north island is being forever hassled by surrounding gulls. Those on the south island have just hatched and up to three chicks can be seen.

So there is still activity at the Oysterbeds and a few Little Terns can still be seen. Oystercatchers and Ringed Plovers have chicks on the islands in the lagoon with perhaps more to come, and the Black-headed Gulls are doing well in view of the weather.

The breeding season for some other birds has already ended with those failed to breed elsewhere returning to the Oysterbeds in increasing numbers. At least 28 Redshanks and two Common Sandpipers can be seen around the lagoon while Curlews are becoming abundant again on the surrounding mudflats. A few Whimbrels are set to join them soon and form their traditional roost on the outer bund walls of the reserve where a lone Grey Plover has resided this week and the first Greenshank appeared on 2nd. A small flock of Shelduck has been a regular feature this summer but these may soon head off on their annual trip to Germany to moult before they return in late September. There has recently been an adult male Stonechat in the field opposite the north end of the Hayling Billyline track accompanied by a juvenile on the first date I saw it. They haven’t bred there but no doubt originate from nearby on Hayling Island.

Jason Crook

 

15th June 2007

Since my last update the situation at the Oysterbeds has changed. At the end of a busy weekend for both the seabird colony and visitors things were looking very rosy and everything was going well just six days ago. The first brood of Little Tern chicks appeared on Wednesday 6th June and then, after a few days gap, the next ones. There was lots to see by Sunday including a brood of two very pale chicks at the southern end of the colony which were allowing very close views and an insight into the intimate lives of these endearing seabirds. I left the reserve at 9.30 pm on Sunday evening. By midday Monday I was back, but alarm bells were ringing when I couldn’t see the “pale” brood of tern chicks. I checked all the sites of all the birds nesting on the reserve. The alarm bells kept ringing when it was clear that several nests had been abandoned, including a line of nests at the southern end of the south island. Something had happened and I already thought I knew what. I stayed through dusk and into the first part of the night. Little unexplained happened except (and with hindsight crucially) in an area where there were Common Terns nesting. It was very dark and, even with the aid of torch light, very difficult to see what was happening. I left having seen nothing disturb the Little Tern nesting area.

Despite this attempt to see what was happening and subsequent attempts (both late night and early morning) I have failed to see the culprits on the island but have little doubt that it is rats responsible. The pattern and pace of the disappearance mirrors that of last year and I know it was rats then (I saw them in moonlight plundering nests, and found a stash of broken eggs on the island). The disappearance and abandoning of eggs/young has continued every night this week and today (Friday 15th June) there are none left on the south island. Up until now the birds on the north island have remained unaffected (or unvisited) but there are only a handful of Little Terns nesting there amongst a good number of Black-headed Gulls some of which have young. This is not the ideal situation for the terns (nesting amongst much larger and more aggressive species) but I remain cautiously optimistic that these terns might be successful yet.

All possible scenarios to account for what has happened has been considered and all rejected on the evidence available. I may still be wrong, but, with the exception of lacking sight evidence of the rodents on the island this year (they were exceptionally difficult to detect last year clearly being strictly nocturnal) the pattern of what has happened is identical between the two years (albeit on different parts of the island(s)).

I am of course already on the case for remedying the problem but I know that there are no quick fixes. I had already being doing some rodent control on the reserve (mostly unsuccessfully) since I started on 8th May but in a limited capacity given the resources available to me on this very public site. More resources and effort are required and are now being made available.

There are many adjectives I could use to describe my own disappointment and a similar number to express my sadness that visitors in recent days have been greeted with a depressing situation. But my overall and immediate concern is for the terns. As things stand at the moment this is a disaster but we will have to wait to see whether (and where) the terns try to nest again. It is perhaps likely they will try on the RSPB reserve in Langstone Harbour where they might join the handful of pairs already nesting there.

Rather than end this update on a negative note I will tell you about the Oystercatchers. The brood of two young are growing fast on a diet of worms brought to them by the parents. The other two pairs nesting on the north island in the lagoon are still on eggs. There are another seven pairs elsewhere on the reserve (giving a total of ten pairs, contra my previous update!) including one pair perilously close to today’s high tide mark……

Regards
Jason

Jason Crook

 

5th June 2007