On Saturday, together with PhD student Matt Morgan and final year student Holly Fox, we led three nature walks along the Humber as part of the #Colliderfest at Hull, a festival where sciences and art merge. We've done these walks for a few years now and there is always something interesting for everybody, and even always something exciting for us, who are more familiar with the wildlife with which we share our city.
We set up our pop-up poster in The Deep lobby, and met the first group of people at the shark sculpture. The weather was ideal for the walks, still, sunny and not too cold, and the Deep, which was hosting several Colliderfest activities, including ours, was busy with people queuing to get in. Overall, a total of 16 people came to the walks and it was a wonderful bunch altogether. They shared the activities they were going to join as part of the Colliderfest and there was some infectious enthusiasm!
A Black-headed Gull on its breeding plumage.
On the first walk we had 8 people, including two children.The tide was quite low but starting to flow, leaving plenty of exposed mud. We walked along the promenade chatting. There were four species of gull around and people were interested in learning to tell them apart. The children peered through the binoculars. People shared their experiences of local wildlife, from a Glossy Ibis that seems settled at Cleethorpes, to a pair of Robins nesting in the shed or some seal watching at Flamborough. We watched a Sparrowhawk that had flushed gulls and feral pigeons. Then, on the half-tide basin, the old entrance to Victoria Dock, we were lucky enough to find a Shag, sitting on a floating blue platform where Coots usually nest. It was a young individual, and from the distance we could see that it had a ring. As we approached, it was unfazed by the group of people watching it and taking photos from above. It was resting in the sunshine, with the leg where it had the plastic ring tucked right in! After a long few minutes of waiting, it finally stretched and Holly got a photo with the code: SFL on a green ring. Then it yawned and Matt got an epic photo (top shot). It gave us a wonderful opportunity to speak to the people attending about bird ringing, and the international travels that many birds engage in during migration and that is revealed by bird ringing. Holly made a note to report the ring to the shag ringing scheme and then report what the history of the shag was.
After a quick but delicious lunch at Next Door, we met with the final group: a couple visiting their son in Hull. They were quite knowledgeable about birds, and after a quick tour of the mouth of the river Hull, spotting Redshanks and a Grey Heron fly over, we headed for the dock again. We were down for a big surprise. First, an adult plumaged shag with a blue ring took off from the slipway, flying over the Humber. In the photos I took I can see a blue ring, but the code is not readable. When we got to the dock, the young Shag had been joined by an adult plumaged one, this one with a white ring (TAF). It sat on a wooden platform under the bridge, regularly pestered by some pigeons that were nesting just behind it. Although it wasn’t too alarmed by our presence. It did eye us out a bit nervously, so we decided to let it be. The clouds were gathering and we had a brief spell of hail. We set off and spotted five Shelducks on the Humber, a new Hull bird for the year for me! The sun started shining again and the man of the couple rushed back to get more photos of the adult shag in better light. A great example of how nature on your doorstep can create as much excitement as it does in wilder spaces.
How to tell a Shag from a Cormorant?
Shags are marine diving birds which feed on small fish and are related to the more familiar Cormorant. Shags are smaller and slimmer than Cormorants, with a thinner bill with a yellow gape and mandible. The head profile is quite distinctive and in any plumage their forehead is more vertical than the Cormorant. In breeding plumage they are black with a metallic green sheen, and sport a short crest. Immatures are brown with a white chin.
Are Shags so rare?
Shags have declined in recent decades, and are Amber listed birds. They are affected by changing weather patterns, plastic pollution and lower prey availability. Having said that, if you visit Flamborough Head or Bempton Cliffs, you have a good chance of spotting one. They breed on rocky coasts, and a few pairs breed at Flamborough. Shags are a regular passage migrant at Spurn, and they enter the Humber too. Influxes of Shags on our coasts tend to follow storms in Scotland, and there were some severe gales last Thursday. Cormorants are quite common in Hull, but Shags are much rarer, although there is a string of records in Hull, particularly in the autumn and winter along the Humber foreshore. They’ve also turned up in parks and lakes in town occasionally, including one at at East Park in December 2018, and another one at Princes Quay lake in March 2021.
What to do if you see a ringed bird?
If you find a bird with a metal ring, you can report the code to the organisation named on the ring itself. Reading metal rings is usually only possible with dead birds. Colour plastic rings with codes, however, can often be read with binoculars or from photos and can be reported to their ringing schemes (this website allows you to search for the relevant project). You can email the organiser and should get back a report with the story of the particular bird, where it was ringed, what age/sex it is and also when and where it has been seen before. Urban areas can be quite productive for spotting ringed birds, as they are often used to people and allowi people to get very close.
The story of our two Shags
Holly got to work and reported the rings to the ringing organiser. Both Shags, and most likely also the one we saw in flight but couldn’t read the code, were fitted with rings from an Eastern Scotland project. Less than two days before reporting them, Holly got the reports for both birds. Thank you so much to researcher Josie Hewitt for her speedy reply!
The adult-plumage Shag (TAF on white ring) we saw is just 2 years old and was ringed as a chick in Craigleith, a small island in the Firth of Forth, East of Edinburgh. It is too young to have bred, as they usually start at 4 years old. It has been seen in the Isle of May a few times, and last winter it was reported sitting on the harbour rocks at Dunbar. This is the first time it has been spotted outside Scotland.
The immature (SFL on green ring) was ringed as a chick last June on the Isle of May, and this is her first voyage outside Scotland too.
The aim of the Edinburgh CEH project is to find out where Shags go in the winter, well, the answer is, at least some of them don’t want to miss Colliderfest in Hull!
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