Cormorants and herons

A couple of weekends ago I joined Jim, Gary and Mick at Attenborough Nature Reserve to (hopefully) ring cormorant and heron pulli. It was a gorgeous morning and as we met, the nature centre car park was filling up fast with visitors eager to enjoy the long awaited sunshine. Rob (who works at Attenborough) soon arrived and he and Mick headed off to collect the boat. A few minutes later and we were life jacketed up and chugging out to one of the many islands on the reserve.

 

Cormorant nests on one of Attenborough's many islands

As we neared, we assessed the age of the birds we could see on nests to ensure that none of them were old enough to be likely to try to leave their nests in our presence. Thankfully, they were all small enough to ring safely so we landed at the end of the island and Mick got to work with his climbing gear. Pretty soon, he was up the tree and lowering the chicks down to us. As we ringed the chicks, Mick added a number to each nest to allow us to monitor the nests more easily in future.

 

Mick climbing up to the nests

 

Cormorant nest number

The chicks were ringed with both a metal ring and a darvic (colour ring) so that they can be monitored without needing to be recaptured. First nest done, we moved along the island a little, numbering nests as we went. We ringed a second brood of chicks under the watchful eye of another of the island’s inhabitants.

 

Canada goose watching us ringing cormorants

 

Me with a cormorant chick

Cormorant chick with darvic

After ringing two broods, we left the island, as we didn’t want to keep the adults off the nests for too long, and went to check on a heron nest whose chicks had been too young to ring on the previous visit. The chicks were now a perfect size and we were able to add metal rings and colour rings to these birds too. With the pulli ringed and safely back in the nest, we headed back to the nature centre. The wind had picked up to levels that were both unsafe to climb in and too cold for adult birds to be off chicks for long so we called it a day.

 

Mick with a heron pullus ringed and ready to go back in the nest

Hopefully, data gathered from future sightings of the colour ringed herons and cormorants will provide currently unknown information such as whether they nest in the same nest each year, whether chicks return to their natal site to breed, longevity and so on. Attenborough Nature Reserve is a very heavily visited reserve so hopefully, lots of re-sightings will be reported for these birds. It will be fascinating to see what can be learned in the years to come.

 

Thanks to Gary for the cormorant pictures.