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Brownsea Island's nature reserve has been very busy for terns, dainty gull-like birds from Africa that nest on man-made islands in the lagoon. This year was one of our most successful so far with 449 nesting pairs of three different tern species. You can still spot Sandwich terns on the lagoon and fishing around the Harbour before the last stragglers set off for some winter sun in Africa.
A Tern for the Better!
A record number of 263 pairs of Sandwich terns chose this spot to nest this year. They managed to raise 90 chicks, which is well over the 0.2 young per pair needed to sustain a healthy colony. Terns are long-lived birds and in 2007, of fourteen Sandwich tern leg rings that were read, four of the birds were found to be over 20 years old. One had even been ringed in South Africa!
The tern islands surrounding the MacDonald hide give the closest views of Sandwich Terns in the country, and for this reason it is Bill Oddie's favourite hide. Poole Harbour and Poole Bay have plentiful supplies of food for the terns and this means sand eels - A recent study found that nearly 75% of all the fish fed to Sandwich Tern chicks were Sand Eels
We also have a healthy colony of common terns, distinguished from the Sandwich variety by their red bills. They managed to fledge 50 young from 185 nests.
Rare Roseates
The surprise of the season was the successful breeding of a pair of rare roseate terns. It is the first record of roseate terns breeding anywhere in Poole Harbour and the first in Dorset for over 20 years. One of our rarest seabirds, the roseate tern has red status as a bird of conservation concern because of the severe decline in population. Most of the breeding colonies in the UK are off the Northumberland coast, in Anglesey and in Pembrokeshire.
This pair chose to nest in a man-made nest box on the far side of the lagoon and produced one chick We will watch with great anticipation to see if they show up again next year.
Autumn arrivals
The autumn birds are really coming through now, with large numbers of black-tailed godwits and avocets (700 at the last count) already established for the winter. They make a spectacular sight. Short-term visitors include spotted redshanks and elegant greenshanks, while the enormous and perfectly named spoonbills are building up their numbers (5 at the moment) - will we get another record number for the UK this year? Brownsea can always produce surprises - a great white egret popped in briefly this month before moving on to warmer climes.
Brownsea Island nature reserve is open daily until the 1st November however National Trust landing fees apply. To find out more visit our webpage all about Brownsea Island Nature Reserve
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