New Arrivals...

How better to celebrate mid-winter (erm...I mean summer!!) than the discovery of a Whimbrel  (Spói) chick today while coming back from taking photographs of the new bridge.  Despite a cold wind today we have had some lovely sunshine and managed to get out on the reserve to count nests in part of the Arctic Tern Colony (270 nests, with some areas still left to count). 


The adult Whimbrel must have nested close to the path that goes to the sea cliffs and after watching their distraction behavior for a couple of minutes we spotted a little speckled head on a mound near the path.


The whimbrel is a large wading bird. It has longish legs and a long bill that curves near the tip. It is brownish above and whitish below. In flight, it shows a white 'V' shape up its back from its tail (RSPB Website).

Adult Whimbrel

Whimbrel Chick hiding in the grass

     

Bridge over mildly turbulent water...

At Skalanes we are trying to make the walk to the sea cliffs safer and more accessible to older visitors and those with small children. The old bridge over the stream was quite narrow and difficult to cross when wet or icy. So with the help of "Master Bridge Builder" Hjalti we have created a wider and safer bridge to allow even more people to gain access to the sea cliffs. 

New base poles are put into position

Notches are cut to level the cross beams

Hjalti leveling one of the cross beams

The finished bridge; wider and safer than the original

How to ruin your holiday!

I thought I would share a realisation with you all. NEVER believe car manufacturers that tell you that your car is a 4x4 unless it actually looks and behaves like a 4x4. Just because all 4 tyres are powered, it does not mean you should drive it into a river. Please see the attached photograph as a means of illustrating this...

You should also NEVER strip down to your black underpants regardless of how deep an Icelandic river is to recover your car unless you wish people to "take the piss".

In the end the Rescue team had to pull it out and a recover lorry had to be sent. The car was a Ford Cougar automatic and the male driver had already damaged the car on one of our other fords (he didn't seem amused by the section of plastic floating in the waterfall ford). It seems likely that he hit one of the large rocks in the ford and the car stalled and started filling with water.

Duck Tales!

As I write this post I am being harassed by two small bundles of fluff!

One of the female eiders near the centre was sitting on a nest of seven eggs, four of which had hatched, but she was disturbed and left the nest with the four ducklings in tow. Rather than leaving the remaining eggs to cool and the ducklings to die we took the three remaining eggs into the centre and over the last 24 hours we have had all three hatch. The first two are doing very well and are waddling around the staff accommodation and generally looking cute! The third is coming on ok, although it has poor motor control and very little strength in its neck at the moment.

Tomorrow we will be introducing our hyper bundles of fluff to the bath tub!

Eider Duckling!

Hyper bundles of fluff!

Students!

For nearly two weeks we have had 5 students from University of Glasgow out on the reserve helping us with practical land management as well as doing some project work of their own. Last week they were joined by a group of 7 students from Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) who were undertaking a GIS mapping project on the reserve.

The best map we have for the area is from 1948 and is made up of old US Army and British Admiralty charts. The SCSU students have been out with GPS units mapping major features like the rivers, the centre, bridges, the track, the ridge line and the ever expanding lupin growth. Hopefully over the next couple of months we will see the data compiled and added to aerial photographs to provide a useful graphical basis on which we can plan further work.

On a personal basis I had the chance to help map the three river systems from the coastline up into the mountains and to explore parts of the reserve I have never been to before.

GIS Mapping on the upper reserve

Jo mapping one of our three rivers

Prof Heidkamp, Bjartur and Izzy

Josh mapping a waterfall

Garmin advert!

Prof Heidkamp showing the students how it should be done

Izzy mapping the river near the centre

Lizzie & Jo (Glasgow Uni) take a break after mapping one of the rivers

SCSU students planning the days mapping tasks

Mapping the gorge was very interesting! (Prof in  orange on the left)

Joanna mapping the gorge

Bjartur taking a break from running around the reserve

Yes, I did fall through a hole in the snow!

The art of camouflage…

At Skalanes we have a substantial colony of common eider ducks  (Somateria mollissima). The female birds pull some of the down from their breasts and line their nests with it. As eider ducks are sea ducks and spend the winter in cold environments their down is particularly good at trapping air and insulating the birds against the cold.

Female Eider

During the summer the eider nests are visited on a couple of occasions and a small amount of the down is removed from nests that have excess.  The eider is then cleaned up by hand before being cleaned by a specialist and used in eider down duvets.

Female eider ducks blend into their surroundings very well and to illustrate this I have taken a couple of photographs. See if you can spot the nest in the first set of photographs, before looking at the close-ups in the second set. (Click on an image for a larger version)

 

A - Behind the chicken shed, can you spot her?



B - Telegraph poles, any luck?



C - Coastal moorland

Time to see if you were correct...



A - Female eider behind chicken shed



B - Female eider nesting between old telegraph poles

C - Female eider on coastal moorland



Red Legs!!

Red legs (and no I am not talking about sunburn) have been causing a stir at Skalanes. Mainly because they belong to our first chicks of the 2011 season. We have so far seen two redshank (Tringa totanus) chicks running around in the meadow just above the centre. 

The redshank are clever and have nested right in the middle of the Arctic Tern colony, who are now getting quite aggressive towards the gulls and ravens, thus providing our little redshank family with a certain degree of protection.

The amazing thing is that the female redshank must have incubated her eggs right through the snow and heavy rain that we have had, so it is brilliant to see these first little chicks running around...and boy can they run. Have a look below and see the size of those red legs!!

redshank chick showing that they can  run when needed

redshank chick pausing for the camera!

Redshank are a medium-sized wading bird with longish red legs and a long, straight bill. In the UK in winter, as many as half of the birds in Britain may be from Iceland (RSPB).  They feed on insects, earthworms, molluscs and crustaceans in coastal areas and in  wet marshes and bogs. Find out more about redshank at this link:  http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/r/redshank/index.aspx

Mixed Feelings...

Today has been a beautiful day on the reserve with blue skies and warm sunshine.

On many nature reserves wardens have to carry out predator control and Skalanes is no different. Often it is to defend breeding bird colonies against foxes, mink, crows and gulls who can consume large numbers of birds eggs. 

Of course some losses are natural and always expected, but where birds are ground nesting (such as at Skalanes) it is often easier for these predators to have a massive impact on the breeding productivity of the bird colonies.

As an example, in recent years, the Arctic Tern colony at Skalanes has struggled to raise any youngsters (we have several hundred adult terns!!) and this is probably due to a mixture of weather conditions, reduced food sources and predation. Arctic Skua will chase the adult terns until they drop fish, depriving them of food as well as causing the adults to leave nests which in turn means the cooling of eggs. The eggs themselves are also eaten by Skuas, gulls and Ravens.

Accepting that countryside management sometimes means making difficult decisions I headed out this morning with a rifle and two farmed duck eggs.  My walk to the cliffs took me past a couple of eider duck nests that had recently been predated, broken egg shells scattered near by.

Eventually I reached the spot I had selected, a cliff edge frequented by some Herring Gulls, and I placed the two duck eggs in an old nest. Retracing my steps I moved to an adjacent cliff that overlooked my "decoy nest" and waited....

Thirty minutes later an adult Arctic Skua landed next to my nest. This was not really what I wanted as it has mainly been gulls that have been bothering the breeding birds. A male eider from a nearby nest made a brief and very valiant attempt to defend my eggs, but the Arctic Skua returned and started destroying one of the eggs.

Firearms are not new to me. I have been a member of a rifle club and shot .22 target rifle for a couple of years, but this is the first time I have contemplated shooting a live creature. I believe that the important thing to remember is that we are not killing randomly or for the fun of it and we are not trying to exterminate predators. We are managing the number of predators to allow ground nesting birds the opportunity to breed in relative safety. Many birds have already lost eggs this year due to the snow and flooding that we have had, and left unchecked we would lose hundreds of eggs over the season to predators.

Yesterday I found our first Arctic Tern egg at Skalanes, today Izzy found one on the road that had been predated!

So with this in mind I lined up the scope and took the shot. Arctic Skuas are interesting birds and amazing to watch in the air. The death of one as a result of my actions did not fill me with any kind of excitement or pride. I took the shot, I killed it and now there will be one less predator to impact on the terns, eiders, snipe, redshank, whimbrel, plover.....

What I have learned about myself however is that I do not like killing things. Do not get me wrong, I do not regret my actions and in the future I am sure that I will have to shoot a variety of predators and "pest" species as part of my work; I have learned that I can kill when there is a need. However I will never be a hunter and I will never just kill for the sake of it as some people do.

AMAZING Volunteers

Tuesday 24th May was the day that our first volunteer group of the 2011 season spent with us at Skalanes. It was not the day they were meant to be here (that was Saturday 21st) but the volcanic eruption had forced the group to drive the north route around Iceland and heavy snow had trapped them the other side of the mountain.

However on Tuesday Oli and Bjarki took two cars over the mountain to pick them up, before bringing them out to the first ford where I collected them. My first impression of the group as I drove them to the centre was that they were "amazing"! I based this conclusion on the fact that the mountains were amazing, the wildlife was amazing, the centre was amazing....you get the idea.

Living and working at Skalanes for the past 8 weeks you start to accept the beautiful and wild scenery and the natural history of the area as "normal" and it takes the fresh eyes of visitors to remind you of what you take for granted on a daily basis.

Thus began the adventures of volunteers from the UK, France, Slovakia, Romania and the USA.

We were not sure how long the group would be able to stay at Skalanes as they had arrived late, but luckily for us they were able to stay for the full week. What followed was a whirlwind mixture of tree planting, shoveling manure, vegetable garden digging, beer brewing, cheese and bread making, fire wood collecting, pig and cattle herding, laughter and general enjoyment.

The group that overused the word "amazing" in the first 15 minutes of their stay were truly amazing! Never did they tire of the tasks we gave them and we had plenty of those. They tackled everything we gave them with a brilliant mixture of enthusiasm and humor. Individually they were lovely people and as a group everyone got on very well.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and we said good bye to the group last night after a couple of pizzas and beers in town. They have truly set a high standard for all following groups to attain!

Hopefully the wet weather we have been having will change towards the end of the week and we will now be able to get out and do some more monitoring work.  I have come across several snipe nests over the last couple of days with eggs in them so I hope to mark a couple and then check up on them every so often to see how they are getting on.

No volunteers for a couple of weeks, but students from University of Glasgow and South Connecticut University next week.

"Dirty" SEEDS Volunteers celebrate finishing a turf wall

SEEDS Volunteers out on the reserve

Ringed Plover

Snipe Eggs