It’s this time of the year again when a number of our UK birds are winging their way back from their wintering grounds such as Africa or the Antarctic! The arrival of our migrant seabirds to our coasts marks the end of spring and the start summer!

As a result, in advance of their return and with added funds from our LIFE project, wardens have been able to start preparing to the colonies earlier in the season. This includes clearing the rampant vegetation growth and discouraging large gulls from taking over tern’s nesting areas. ​

Due to the tern colonies being understandably coastal based, both the wardens and seabirds have to endure unseasonable weather. Over the years, even equipment and infrastructures like hides used across all of our project sites cannot withstand the passage of time and constant exposure to sea salt.
​
The replacing of such infrastructure is not always easy since the terrain is rugged and separated from the mainland by water. It’s incredibly important to get this done in advance of the season as without a working hide, the wardens would not be able to monitor the colony including identifying what the terns feed their chicks and the fates of individual nests. All of this is used to help direct the future management and protection of the terns.

At some sites, it is possible to bring the dissembled parts of an observation hide across by boat, but in case of one of our Anglesey sites, it was decided that a helicopter would be the only method to transport the new hide.
​
It wasn’t however as easy as it sounds; with many previous attempts abandoned due to poor weather, the end of April was our last chance. On the day, poor weather delayed the trip by about three hours! Fortunately, once the helicopter crew made it to the island, it all went smoothly. We also managed to get the old hide off the island, though the helicopter had to drag it through the sea to stop it spinning!

This puts things in perspective though, how something quite simple on mainland can be much more difficult to do on rocky shores. We hope that the hide will not require replacing for many years to come.
​
With the new hide in place, the wardens will make full use of it for the monitoring of terns, which have already started to settle and will soon be on eggs!

The Roseate Tern LIFE Recovery Project revived the annual newsletter of which the first issue started back in 1987. The latest edition we were able to find was 1996 and in 2016 we reached out and contacted roseate tern colonies on both sides of the Atlantic Sea. This was a resounding success and subsequently repeated in 2017. The newsletter has continued to expand with new colonies contributing to this edition including the UK, Ireland, France, Azores, USA and the Caribbean. A valuable addition in 2017 was receiving articles from a variety of scientists whose investigations will further our understanding of the tern’s lifecycle. This combined with summaries from site managers about their colonies and the techniques they are trialling is incredibly valuable. Their results will direct our future management practices. Ideally it is our hope that this cross-Atlantic collaborative newsletter will continue to bridge gaps across roseate tern colonies.

In 2017, the roseate tern populations across both North America and Europe continued to increase with a key number of colonies having a record breaking year. This included USA’s Great Gull Island, Buzzards Bay and Ireland’s Rockabill and Lady’s Island Lake. In addition, Coquet had their best recorded productivity count ever.

On a more sombre note, the roseate tern colonies in Florida are continuing to decline rapidly with habitat loss, predation and hurricanes attributed as the main cause. Wardens are working hard to counter this through creating artificial platforms and trialling lures. Initial surveys between 2016 and 2017 show a 33% decline for the Virgin Island’s populations, however more survey years are needed to accurately assess it. In Northern Ireland, the remaining roseate tern pair were unsuccessful in fledgling any chicks due to high levels of predation.

Meanwhile, other colonies are continuing to recover such as Maine (USA), with wardens working on tackling predators and invasive vegetation. The roseate terns in the Azores also fared better with the population growing by 35% since 2016. Ile aux Moutons (France) and Falkner Island (USA) are continuing to slowly increase and the latter site trialled a common tern exclusion zone which yielded some good results.

With each colony facing a multitude of threats and pressures including climate change; it is great hear about the scale of habitat restoration work, vegetation, and predation control being undertaken that has yielded positive results.

The 2017 newsletter is available on our project website: http://roseatetern.org/documents.html

While the exchange of knowledge and networking are surely stimulating endeavours, without a formal way of operating, clear set of actions and a follow up, these activities rarely produce a real difference for birds. It takes a lot of commitment from participating organisations and, above all, individuals who take part in such exchanges, to take the relationship to another level. In case of the networking exchanges between French, Irish and British roseate tern colony managers, we have managed to build a working relationship and bring a colossal change to the management and monitoring practices in France. 

So far, French colony managers have had a very much hands-off approach, providing only basic stone shelters and minimum monitoring effort to avoid disturbance. The emphasis has been on “naturalness” of the colonies. This, together with human disturbance and predation, has resulted in a very low year-on-year productivity.

Last year, we have visited all the current and former roseate tern colonies during a five-day trip to Brittany. It was obviously very useful to learn about local constraints, management practices, etc., which allowed us to come up with a set of recommendations for the two main colonies. Moreover, we have built strong relationships, which expand beyond purely professional sphere.

​Besides being a really friendly bunch of people (us including), dinners, stayovers, picnics with obligatory wine or cider made the whole experience bounding and lingering in our memories. However, what really made a difference was an idea to invite French colleagues to Coquet. It seems that only then the concept of creating artificial nesting habitats and intensifying monitoring efforts landed on fertile soil, which would otherwise be difficult to achieve with any number of presentations and elucidations. ​

Not surprisingly then, last week I found myself on the train to Brittany with the excellent company of Paul Morrison (Coquet) and Stephen Newton (Rockabill) to help Bretagne Vivante creating their first ever terraces and deploying nest boxes. Working clothes, French berets with the LIFE project logo and other gadgets – we were gearing up for hard work. 

After the Île aux Dames colony collapsed in 2011, the main two colonies are currently located in Île aux Moutons (43 pairs last year) in the south coast of Brittany and Île de La Colombière, located near St Malo in the north.

We have landed on Île aux Moutons with a bunch of Bretagne Vivante staff and volunteers in a beautiful weather; 100 boxes ready (made by local schoolkids), geotextile deployed to kill the vegetation over winter, shingle from the nearby beach ready. We are keen to work, but not before an obligatory cup of coffee – this is France after all.

Steve was orchestrating the location and direction of facing the nest boxes in relation to the planned monitoring hide. The rest of us removed stones, cleared vegetation, created patches of shingle and set the nest boxes. We have decided to go for a combination of patch conditions to check what the birds might prefer, ranging from boxes on shingle, bare ground and treated land. We also removed rock shelters, as they don’t provide adequate shelter, compared to nest boxes. The work was a success, everybody was in high spirit, enhanced by excellent picnic, wine and local cider as mentioned above – obligatoire.

The next day, we visited Île de La Colombière – a much smaller colony, which supported 6 pairs in 2017 – hence only 40 boxes. Here too, we were accompanied by the local staff and volunteers. The weather on the north side of Brittany was not as forgiving as the day before, our worries deepened when we saw a little grey plastic boat to take us to the island. We had enough skippers between us to decide that after all we can sail. The job was obviously quicker, but we found signs of rats, as the island is close to the shore and accessible by foot in the low tide. The local managers will be working on eradicating the rats before the coming season.
​
Plus, if you need us, we are here to help – the “special” relationship does not end with Brexit.