Alderney Wildlife Trust

Alderney is the third largest Channel Island (after Jersey and Guernsey) and is the closest one to the French coast. I started working with the Alderney Wildlife Trust in March 2013, initially on a one year placement that extended to 21 months due to how much I enjoyed it there.

Bottlenose dolphins off the bow of our tour boat

As the seabird ecologist (retitled Ramsar ecologist in 2014) it was my role to fulfil the ongoing management plan for Alderney’s Ramsar site. This role included so many aspects, from boat crewing and PhD student assistance to primary school education and media work. But it was the monitoring of multiple seabird species where most of my work was focused.

A view from within the gannet colony of Les Etacs

The logistics of monitoring multiple colonies on numerous offshore islets with limitations to personnel availability and sea/weather conditions is not easy, especially when considering the boat being used also had to be used as a tour boat for visitors. But the experience it gave me was ideal preparation for a job on Bird Island where numerous work streams will have to be well balanced to get the best data available.

Fulmar incubating an egg

I worked with numerous species on Alderney, including puffin, gannet, fulmar, ringed plover, common tern and shag (although unfortunately the razorbills were in a location that was impossible to monitor, much to my disappointment!). But there were a few work streams in particular that stood out for me in my time on Alderney:

LIVE

Views of puffins from Alderney's live camera (note the puffling just out the burrow in the middle of the third shot)

Alderney has live web cameras on their gannet and puffin colonies during the breeding season. These cameras and the ecological work around the species’ is the main factor constituting an educational program available to primary schools across the UK. This program, LIVE: Teaching Through Nature, was an amazing way to be able to show the wonders of nature to the next generation and hopefully inspire the next group of wildlife conservationists.

Lesser black-backed gulls

Lesser black-backed gulls

OK, let’s get this out the way first…. there is no such thing as a seagull!! Many species of gull live in the UK, the most commonly sighted one in coastal towns is the herring gull, whilst my personal favourite is the lesser black-backed gull. I spent a long time monitoring this species around Alderney, working with the Channel Island Bird Ringers to study them closely. Their foraging and migratory habits were fascinating aspects of their ecology and their breeding success has been very hit and miss in recent years. Finding out more about this species is something I am still getting involved in today.

Storm-petrel

Not as big as an albatross but just as impressive!

Storm-petrels are within the same family as larger petrels and albatross, but the European storm-petrel is just the size of a sparrow. As such, to avoid predators they only come to land at night to feed their chick whilst they spend the day far out to sea foraging for food on the water’s surface. As most seabird ecologists will attest to when you have these birds close-up they have a very unique and amazing smell! To get close-up to them we undertook ringing studies that have allowed population estimates that are more reliable and higher than any previously done around Alderney.

But most importantly to me I started dating my girlfriend, Nicci, during a storm-petrel survey in July 2014, so they will always be a special species.

Nicci looking out for seabirds around a gannet colony on Les Etacs

This blog is nowhere near in depth enough to fully describe how important Alderney was for my personal and professional development. Without my time there I would not have been ready for the job with BAS and I would recommend it to anyone looking at getting in to a similar career; so for more details on the Ramsar work in Alderney click here.

Sunset behind the Sister Rocks