Plastic found in almost all gannet nests on Alderney

09/01/2019

Virtually all of the 8,000 Northern Gannet nests on Alderney are contaminated with plastic pollution, a survey has found.

This shocking statistic comes despite the fact that, as recently as 20 years ago, only small quantities of plastic were seen in the nests on the third-largest of the Channel Islands. According to the Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT), plastic build-up in the breeding colonies is killing the birds, with some entangled gannets found hung or missing legs.

Northern Gannets are known to forage as far as 20 nautical miles in order to collect nesting materials and the plastics found in the nests generally consist of rope or line from the fishing industry. Alderney, 15 km from France and the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands, holds around 2 per cent of the entire global population of Northern Gannets.

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Rare bird sighted at Alderney lighthouse garden

26 March 2018 at 12:15pm

Nature lovers in Alderney have been treated to a sighting of a rare bird over the weekend.

A white-spotted bluethroat was seen hopping around the garden of Alderney's Mannez lighthouse on Saturday by members of the Alderney Bird Observatory.

The small birds have a distinctive bright blue bib and rusty coloured plumage and are currently in migration from their wintering grounds in north Africa through German and Eastern Europe.

This sighting is the first time a bluethroat has been recorded in Alderney for five years.

Bird experts say this sighting could help with further research in the future.

There are surprisingly few historical records of this species given our geographical location, it is likely that these super little ‘Robin-like’ birds have simply been under-recorded due to lack coverage, the next few years observatory research work will give us a better idea of their regularity or otherwise.

– JOHN HORTON, ALDERNEY BIRD OBSERVATORY

Last updated Mon 26 Mar 2018

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Alderney becomes Britain's 20th Bird Observatory

Britain’s birds are amongst the best monitored animals in the world, and it just about to get even better as a brand new bird observatory joins the nineteen others that are scattered around our coast.

Alderney Bird Observatory becomes the most southerly bird observatory in Britain

Alderney Bird Observatory (ABO) received official accreditation at a recent meeting of the Bird Observatories Council (BOC), a gathering of all of the bird observatories, making it the twentieth in the country. Ranging from Fair Isle, Shetland, in the north to Alderney, Channel Islands, in the south, Britain’s bird observatories have kept an eye on the comings and goings of our birds since the first observatory Skokholm, Wales, opened in 1933 – these unbroken observations make them amongst the largest datasets in the world.

Many firsts for Britain have been found and documented at Bird Observatories but it is the day-to day observations of birds on the move that are the most important, birds making their way in and out of Britain on their migrations from far-flung destinations. Since the 1960s several of these have changed the timing of their migration as a response to a changing climate. The Swallow now arrives back in the UK on average fifteen days earlier than it did in the 60s, and the Sand Martin over twenty days earlier, whilst for the Cuckoo the timing hasn’t really changed. It is vital that we keep an eye out for changing patterns in the future if we are to fully understand the pressures that many of our birds might face and how we might help those that are showing declines.

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New bird observatory set up in Alderney

13 May 2016 at 6:04am

A new bird observatory has been set up in Alderney to attract tourists and help monitor bird populations.

Tourism bosses in the island hope the new centre will entice bird watchers and boost visitor numbers.

The observatory is likely to be of great interest to many watchers as it is the most southerly in the British Isles.

It means it will be the first to identify migrant birds from Africa and Europe.

Warden John Horton says many visitors will be attracted by the location.

We're really the linchpin to which all of those 2.5 million bird watchers will be looking to Alderney to say 'when are our swallows coming, when are our warblers coming back', and we'll be able to tell them before anybody else. – JOHN HORTON, WARDEN AT ALDERNEY BIRD OBSERVATORY

An important role of the observatory will be to monitor bird populations, with birds flying into the island tagged so they can be recorded.

Read on ...

Alderney may get first accredited bird observatory in Islands

19 November 2015

The colony of northern gannets on Les Etacs, a rock off the west coast of Alderney, has grown since two birds first nested in 1940

The first nationally accredited bird observatory in the Channel Islands will be located in Alderney, if a pilot scheme is successful.

The Alderney Wildlife Trust, with the help of the British Trust for Ornithology, will launch the pilot observatory next year.

The Wildlife Trust hopes to meet the required level of excellence for accreditation by 2018.

Manager Roland Gauvain said: "It is an exciting project."

There are already 19 observatories in the UK and Ireland, which enable researchers to monitor bird populations and migration patterns.

However, Mr Gauvain said that there was a "relatively small" number of observatories on islands, which includes the islands of Farne and the Calf of Man.

He said Alderney was in the unusual location of being close to the French continent where it could see a large number of birds in a small area.

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Alderney campaign to protect ringed plover birds

3 May 2014 Last updated at 11:03

Platte Saline is the last breeding colony of the ringed plover in the Channel Islands

After just six ringed plover chicks reached adulthood in six years, wildlife experts have urged the public to avoid nesting sites.

Tim Morley from the Alderney Wildlife Trust said human interference had a major impact on the only Channel Island breeding site for the birds.

He said in 2013 three of the chicks reached fledging age and one nest had already been seen this year.

He said if the issues continued they would consider fencing off the area.

Platte Saline in Alderney is home to the only known regular breeding population of ringed plovers in the Channel Islands.

Breeding season is from late April to July and the birds nest at the high tide line on the beach.

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Alderney's puffins 'need better legal protection'

Alderney conservationists say tougher laws are needed to protect the island's 340 puffins.

The colourful seabirds are returning to breed following a winter which killed about 16,500 of the northwest European population.

The Alderney Wildlife Trust said dog walkers who repeatedly allowed dogs to disturb nests should be prosecuted.

Dozens of storms killed an estimated 32,000 seabirds in northwest Europe, about half of them puffins.

Trust manager Roland Gauvain said: "Anywhere breeding birds are trying to establish, especially where you have dog access near to them, disturbance can put them off their nests or destroy the nests, not intentionally, just the activity itself can cause the damage.

"This year, because they've been so stressed during the winter period, the chance of that happening, we would argue, are massively increased."

Mr Gauvain would like to see more beaches closed to dogs during breeding season and a 1954 wildlife law toughened.

"People are not in any way inclined to hurt wildlife," he said, "but it's about not understanding that walking your dog when you're 30 metres away from a nesting site is causing it problems.

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Pufflings; rare footage captured in Alderney

Living Islands live: a Puffin Season on Burhou

July 2013. After five years of trying, real-life, live footage of the actual fledgling walk of a Puffling has been captured for the first time and shared with the world to see by Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT).

Notoriously shy

Pufflings are notoriously shy, and footage which captures the first long waddle out to sea by a fledgling chick is extremely rare. The team behind the unique LIVE broadcast continual live footage of the Puffins of Burhou, a small island one mile north-west of Alderney, has confirmed it is definitely the first time footage has been captured in the region.

The magic moment as one of the Pufflings from the colony, the largest in the Channel Islands and British Channel, makes its hesitant journey to float off on the tide into open water and into its first flight.

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Gannets Could Be Affected by Offshore Energy Developments

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2012) — Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that proposed offshore renewable energy developments in the English Channel have the potential to affect the foraging behaviour of northern gannets from Alderney in the Channel Islands.

The study by the University of Liverpool, the British Trust for Ornithology and Alderney Wildlife Trust, funded by the Alderney Commission for Renewable Energy, used GPS technology to track 15 northern gannets breeding on Les Etacs in North West Alderney to find out about their feeding habits and whether the routes they travelled could be affected by proposed English and French offshore energy developments.

Not dependent on specific feeding sites

The study found that on the whole gannets flew in the same direction and for the same distance but they vary significantly in the amount of time they spend searching for food which suggests that individual gannets do not depend on specific feeding sites.

Louise Soanes, from the School of Environmental Sciences, said: "We found that the area where the gannets travelled for food overlapped with nine sites earmarked for offshore marine energy developments which suggests that the feeding habits of these birds could be affected, as well as the potential for collision with wind turbine developments.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121109091200.htm