In the middle of December Al and I began the monitoring
program for the skuas. The area studied is similar to the geep study site
(North Valley, Top Meadows and Bottom Meadows) but as these are smaller birds
and hold a larger territory around their nests amongst the tussock they are a
bit harder to locate.
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| Can you see the skua through the tussock? Not easy to spot, hence marking the area with a blue and orange marker post |
Fortunately though skuas are very vocal and when in any
proximity to their nests we can hear their alarm call. The nest is quickly
marked and the ring number of the adult(s) in attendance noted when visible.
This gives us our breeding population count. To be sure we mark all the nests
we visited the area three times over the course of 10 days.
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| Skua pair on a nest |
At the end of the 10 day period we had actually visited the
area 4 times (an extra pass through made alongside other work) and managed to confirm over 70 nests or territories in the
study area. For the skua count the actively held territories are also counted alongside
the actual breeding pairs to better understand the population levels.
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| Taking notes on a skua nest (photo courtesy of James) |
During the course of the nest marking we actually came
across the first chicks to hatch. This breeding pair is known to produce the first chicks a bit early every season, whilst the majority of nests will hatch in late December and early January.
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| The first skua chicks - so early they had hatched the day before monitoring starts on the skuas! |
Over the subsequent 40-50 days, which is the time it takes a
skua chick to fledge, Al and I will make weekly checks on a sample (around 40) of
the nests. This will allow us to work out the productivity of the population. Hopefully they have a good season!
It is not just the skuas that are hatching at this time of
year though. The mollymawks, shags and macs are all hatching as well and I will
be sure to put up posts on our work with them through the season.
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| Grey-head chick |
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| Shag chicks |
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| Mac chick |
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