My daughter recently made the sad discovery of more than 50 dead seabirds on the shores of Loch Sunart.
The birds, identified as guillemots, have been removed for testing by the appropriate agencies and we await the results of the cause of death.
I won’t speculate on the reason for the sad demise of such a large number of wildlife without facts, but one of the birds had a ring so we reported that to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
Within a day or two, we had a reply to let us know the bird had been ringed as an adult, so at least two years old, in 1997 on the Treshnish Isles - so the bird would have been at least 29 years old.
It was not the first time we had been involved in bird ringing. Back in the Rum years, we helped ring various birds so had been involved in those first records of identifying and logging ringed individuals. And last year we reported a dead cormorant we had found, with information returned to us to let us know where and when it had been ringed.
The BTO reports that the oldest bird evidenced by ringing data was a Manx Shearwater, aged 50 years and 11 months.
The furthest travelled bird was an Artctic Tern who was recorded covering a distance of 18,000km from Wales to Australia and the strangest recovery of a ring was an Osprey ring found in the stomach of a crocodile in the Gambia.
This contribution of the public in adding to data records is known as ‘citizen science’. It is a fantastic way for us all to get involved in reporting on the natural world and allows scientists and statisticians to draw large scale conclusions.
Annual citizen science events such as the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch conducted over many years will provide an evidence base for tracking bird populations.
We have also participated in the garden butterfly survey and been part of citizen science counts of bugs on our car number plate after long journeys, joined rangers on moth trapping events, thrown quadrants on rocky shores to identify seaweeds and sea ‘critters’ with local marine charity CAOLAS, assisted with the native oyster project also run by CAOLAS, joined in seabird colony surveys on the coast of Rum with NatureScot and helped identify successful breeding burrows of Manx Shearwaters on the Rum hills by checking for chicks in known and marked sites.
Alongside these more formal and agency managed citizen science opportunities, I have been struck these last few weeks by the local knowledge and personal record keeping which many wildlife watchers carry out, sometimes without even realising they do it.
Our local facebook group was filled with posts in late April of people noting the date and location of hearing the first cuckoo call of the season and whether it was earlier or later than previous years.
Reports of slow worms, adders and butterflies emerging for the spring were also being posted. As were people sharing stories of skeins of geese flying high overheard in large numbers on their migratory routes, distant honking noises as they passed alerting us to the ’V’ formation up in the sky.
Beside the loch, our post swim chat had included mention of the first spotting of tiny moon jellies, the return of the swallows to the shed where people get changed after swimming and, as ever, what the water temperature is, what the tide is doing and where in its cycle the moon is so we know whether we are swimming in neap or spring tides.
In the garden, we are already noting the tiny fronds of bracken, which look like little seahorses, curled up ready to spring into life and invade the edges of the raised beds, recalling what date the last frost was in previous years in deciding when to start planting things out and wondering whether it will be a ‘good year’ for the soft fruit.
Our spotting of long-term patterns and noting these seasonal happenings and whether they are early or later than usual is something so many of us do and it is well worth checking to see whether these observations can be recorded somewhere officially to add to citizen science databases.
Which reminds me, early May is the time to dig out the tick removal tool and the midge spray as it won’t be long before we’re needing both.
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