Oil-covered birds are being washed up at an 'alarming rate', charity warns

Monday, 23 March 2020 - Environment

Seabirds covered in oil are being washed up on the island’s beaches at an alarming rate, a charity has warned.

The Manx Wild Bird Aid charity is currently dealing with some 17 guillemots that have been picked up.

The first cases were reported on Saturday lunchtime with distressed birds found on beaches along the east coast from the Point of Ayre to Port St Mary.

It is thought the oil spill originated near Anglesey, where there have been reports of oiled seabirds for a week or more.

David Cole, of Manx Wild Bird Aid, said he had reported the issue to the Coastguard.

Marine Operations have been notified and are in touch with the UK Coastguard. A spotter plane was expected to be sent up to investigate.

Mr Cole said: ’We picked up one bird from the Point of Ayre and one bird from Port St Mary but the epicentre seems to be around Laxey and Douglas.

’We treated more from the south on Sunday so the oil spill is obviously moving with the tide.

’On Saturday we just found the birds with no reports of oil on the beach but on Sunday people have reported finding tar on the beach.’

He added: ’It’s unusual that all the birds we have found have been guillemots.’

Some very small patches of what looked like heavy fuel oil were found on Port Soderick beach.

Mr Cole said there were two categories of bird - those that had been washed ashore that people have been able to pick up, and others which were obviously in distress but had gone back out to sea, preventing their recovery.

He said: ’The 17 are just the ones we have been able to pick up from the beach.’

Mr Cole, of Victoria Road, Castletown, admitted the birds’ chance of survival was ’not great’.

He explained the birds try to preen themselves and ingest the oil. They had to be hydrated and kept warm and fed before they were strong enough for the cleaning process to begin, which itself could be distressing for them.

Dog walkers are warned to be careful if they go on beaches.

Source

Mystery as 20,000 dead or dying birds showing signs of starvation wash up in the Netherlands

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up on beaches in the Netherlands

However the sudden bird deaths have not been reported in Belgium or Germany

Scientists are planning a mass autopsy in an effort to shed light on the mystery 

By AFP

PUBLISHED: 15:20, 6 February 2019 | UPDATED: 15:46, 6 February 2019

Dutch scientists have been left baffled after 20,000 dead or dying seabirds washed up on North Sea beaches in a phenomenon not seen for decades.

The fish-eating guillemots have been washing up between the northern Wadden Islands and southwestern Zeeland - all showing symptoms of severe starvation, a marine biologist said.

However the bird deaths are confined only to Dutch shores, with nothing reported in Belgium or Germany. 

Scientists are now planning a mass autopsy of hundreds of dead birds next week, hoping to shed more light on the mystery. 

'What's killing them is the million-dollar question,' Mardik Leopold, a maritime researcher for Wageningen University, told AFP.

'And we still don't know what the answer is. It's an alarming situation,' he added.

'The last time we saw high mortality rates like this was in the 1980s and 1990s.' 

High winds and stormy winter seas also could affect the birds' feeding patterns on herring and sprat as they become too fatigued to eat, Leopold said.

'But again, why are the deaths only localised to the Netherlands? Surely we're not the only place experiencing winter weather?' said Leopold.

Dutch media have raised the question of whether the deaths may be linked to a recent container spill, littering the Dutch and German coast lines with debris, including plastic toys, polystyrene, shoes and at least one bag with a dangerous powder identified by authorities as 'organic peroxide.'

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Hundreds of Dead Birds in North Iceland

BY ZOË ROBERT January 25, 2015 11:01Updated: January 25, 2015 11:15

Hundreds of dead guillemots were recently found by farmer Gunnar Óli Hákonarsson at Sandur in Aðaldalur, North Iceland. The birds, which were found on a beach east of the mouth of Skjálfandafljót river, are believed to have died from starvation due to bad weather in December. Foxes and ravens have been scavenging on the bird carcasses.

Continued ...

Mysterious 'penguins' spotted off Yorkshire coast

Sea life sanctuary forced to issue statement after lines jammed with 'penguin' sightings off Scarborough, North Yorkshire

By Agency

2:50PM GMT 20 Jan 2015

A sea life sanctuary has been forced to ask bird spotters to stop jamming the phone lines with reports of penguins off the Yorkshire coast.

The Sanctuary in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, has been bombarded with calls asking if any of its resident Humboldt penguins had escaped after sightings of penguin-like birds.

The calls have forced the centre to release a statement explaining it as a simple a case of mistaken identity.

Senior aquarist Todd German said: "We get a few calls every year from people mistaking razorbills and guillemots for their flightless cousins from the southern hemisphere.

"This year we've been more than usually inundated because of exceptionally large numbers of 'little auks' appearing close to shore on their migration from the Arctic down to wintering grounds in the North Atlantic.

"Though not much bigger than a starling, the little auk looks even more like a penguin, especially if viewed from a distance and its size isn't obvious.

"They usually pass our shores a long way out to sea, but winter gales have brought them closer in this winter."

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Crowdsourcing funds long-term seabird study

In the space of just two weeks, zoology professor reaches crowd-funded target to maintain his long-term study of guillemots on Skomer

“The whole crowdsourcing experience has been exhilarating,” says Tim Birkhead, professor of behavioural ecology at the University of Sheffield. “I want to say an enormous thank you to everyone who has donated to my guillemot monitoring research on Skomer,” he wrote last week in an update to his JustGiving page as he reached his crowd-funded target of £12,000. This is enough to keep the project going for one more year until a more stable source of funding can be found.

Birkhead began working on guillemots on Skomer in 1972, for his PhD. Every year since, he has been back to collect data from several breeding colonies on the island. But in 2013, the Countryside Council for Wales(which had been supporting the project) was taken over by Natural Resources Wales and funding was discontinued.

In February this year, winter storms made it difficult for guillemots and other seabirds to feed, resulting in the death of some 40,000 ocean-going birds. With the “seabird wreck” making the case for the guillemot study even more compelling, Birkhead wrote to NRW’s chief executive Emyr Roberts in March asking him once more to reconsider the decision to withdraw funding but says he has received no reply. “They should have taken responsibility, and reinstated the funding so the full impact of the wreck could have been evaluated.”

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After 42 years of charting the health of our seas, scientist’s studies now face the axe

Guillemot survey has provided wealth of data on climate – but funding could be cut

Robin McKie

The Observer, Sunday 26 October 2014

Tim Birkhead has been monitoring guillemots for 42 years – with intriguing results. His surveys, carried out on Skomer island in Wales, have provided key information about the wellbeing of the sea birds’ population around the British Isles and has also produced important insights into the health of our seas.

However, the zoologist’s four-decade-long project is now threatened with closure. The newly formed quango Natural Resources Wales has said it will not continue to fund the £12,000-a-year survey, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. Unless cash can be raised as a matter of urgency, this year’s survey will be the last.

The news has dismayed the 64-year-old professor of zoology at Sheffield University. “This is an incredibly short-sighted decision,” Birkhead said. “We have built an extremely important database of guillemot population parameters and breeding rates, which tells a great deal about variations in numbers of these birds, about the health of their populations and about the health of our seas in general. But that entire database is now under threat merely to save a modest amount of money.”

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Concern over plunge in Dunnet Head guillemot numbers

Written byGordon Calder

THE number of common guillemots at Dunnet Head has fallen by 45 per cent in the past 13 years.

That is the dramatic finding in a count which has been conducted by RSPB Scotland. It shows the number of gulliemots on the cliffs at Dunnet has dropped from 8,980 to just 4,880 since 2000 – a reduction of 45 per cent

Other species such as razorbills, puffins and kittiwakes are also struggling to cope with increasing challenges, including a lack of food and the effects of climate change.

The end-of-season counts which were carried out by the RSPB reveal similar drops in places such as Orkney and Ailsa Craig in the outer Firth of Clyde.

Common gulliemot numbers at Noup Cliffs in Orkney have gone down by 41 per cent while the figure at Ailsa Craig shows a decline of more than 27 per cent.

The downward trend has led to the RSPB warning some of Scotland’s seabird colonies could become extinct unless action is taken. The charity has called on the Scottish Government to act to protect the birds.

It argues that species like common guillemots, razorbills and puffins are struggling to find sand eels as they move northwards due to the effects of climate change.

"They are facing increasing challenges including a lack of food and the effects of climate change, leaving Scotland’s once bustling seabird ‘cities’ in danger of falling silent," said Allan Whyte, the marine policy officer at RSPB Scotland.

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Guillemot eggs are self-cleaning

By Victoria Gill, Science reporter, BBC News, Valencia, Spain

Guillemot eggs have special structures on their shells that make them self-cleaning, according to new research.

The study began after scientists noticed the liquid-repelling properties of a batch of eggs that had water spilled onto them.

Further analysis revealed tiny cone-shaped structures on the eggs' shells were responsible for this property.

The findings were presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Valencia, Spain.

Dr Steven Portugal from the Royal Veterinary College in London who conducted the research told BBC Nature that the project started with a "minor spillage" in the lab.

"I accidentally spilled distilled water over a batch of eggs," Dr Portugal recalled.

Continued