Kelp Gull Project: May 2013

30 hour famine

A local church arranged a 30 hour famine to raise funds for poverty alleviation in the Bitou area. For a period of time, the participants did a community service, and one group did a clean-up at bird island. Although CapeNature and CoastCare had recently done a sweep of the peninsular, it was already arranged and so I took full advantage of the available help. Charl and Di were in charge of the cleanup and got me involved. Charl did 3 trips in his boat to drop Di, Demi and myself along with 8 kids on Bird Island to spend about 2 hours collecting rubbish. I did an introductory talk about the Kelp Gulls and showed them some of the pellets that I had collected a few days before and then set them loose to collect rubbish and keep a special look out for regurgitated pellets. The time was successful indeed! I found another bagful of pellets with the help of Demi, a cool rodent type skull and a washed up gull egg, and also received an assortment of pellets from the extra helpers.

A Greater Flamingo, a rare sighting for this area.

Some of the kids participating in the 30 hour famine, and the clean-up.

The washed up egg.

The unidentified skull.

Colony clean-up

Part of my project is looking at the foraging areas of the gulls, and one way of doing this is to look at the things that the birds take onto the colonies, and to dissect their regurgitated pellets. When I heard that CapeNature and CoastCare were doing a cleanup on Keurbooms peninsula (also known as bird island), one of my field sites, I jumped at collaborating with them for my first cleanup of the colony. A big team went through that site, while I and 3 Nature’s Valley Trust interns cleaned up the Lookout beach colony. A large number of pellets were found, and an assortment of other plastics and rubbish. My bakkie is now a storage spot for almost 10 half-filled plastic bags of rubbish awaiting classification and organisation before being recycled or taken to the dumpsite. The pellets that I found were really interesting, clearly showing the urban and natural variation in the birds’ diet. All sorts of plastics, foil, take-out packets, glass and chicken and lamb bones were found as urban food sources, while fish bones and shells were found as natural food sources. Really getting into the pellet dissection could yield some seriously interesting data!

My bakkie load of rubbish and pellets!

A spread of some pellets I picked up.

Wonderful whale watching

Gwen and her team have since left Plett and moved on to do whale surveys in False Bay. This left me with the job of joining the commercial whale watching tours and photographing any whales seen. Unfortunately, being winter with no tourists, the trips out to sea have been minimal. Fortunately, the one trip I did do we managed to find a whale! Score! It is amazing to see the peoples joy and excitement over the whale sighting and I realised how incredibly blessed I was to have spent the time I did with Gwen and her team, with so many sightings and being able to get so close! On the handful of trips I did with Gwen, we managed to find at least one whale on every trip, sometimes even two or three. For the first two weeks in False Bay, with trips to sea almost every day, Gwen didn’t see any whales. How lucky am I?!

Cape Cormorant roost at the seal colony.

Not going to look!

Can't neglect the gulls!

Plop!

Up and up and up and up!

White-chinned Petrel.

Bryde's whale.

Beach bird

After a big storm some years back, Lookout beach (one of my study sites) became an island where you had to walk through at least hip deep water to reach it. Lately the channel formed by a raging Keurbooms River has been closing and you can remain high and dry from parking your car to walking onto the beach. Shane and I decided to take a walk one afternoon and headed to Lookout beach, hopefully to find some cool shells. Shells we found, but we also found the ever present Kelp Gull (no surprises there!) except this friend had a ring on, bonus! So Shane got some photos and I entertained myself combing the beach, good teamwork!

The ringed bird. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Gull prints in the sand. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Abrupt take-off! Photo by Shane McPherson.

Evidence of another beach comber. Photo by Shane McPherson.

An unringed bird watching our passing. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Ringing on the R102

In PMB, the once monthly ringing site is at Darvil, which is a bird sanctuary at a sewage treatment plant. In Plett, the once monthly ringing site is a beautiful fynbos reserve site along the garden route, talk about awesome! Once the permits for the site had come through, the first ringing day was a big event, with a variety of people, and, wait for it, a film crew (!). Mark casually mentioned the evening before we went ringing that we would meet the film crew earlier and drive through to the site from there. A little bit intimidating but cool! And when Ken and Derik from Net News arrived I felt a lot better; two wonderful, chilled guys who were easy to talk to and relax into the process of setting up for the mornings ringing. It was truly an amazing morning of ringing. The site is really stunning, the bird life is too exciting and there are all sorts of plants, butterflies and other interesting organisms around too! One of the first birds into the net was an Orange-breasted Sunbird, a much anticipated catch! At the end of the day we had a good haul of birds, including an out-of-range White-browed Scrub Robin, a White-starred Robin, Cape Sugarbirds, various sunbirds and an Olive Woodpecker. A very smart, short video clip was made by the Net News guys, which is worth a watch.

Putting up nets while chatting with the guys, and the camera! Photo by Shane McPherson.

Mark and the birds in the limelight! Photo by Shane McPherson.

Orange-breasted Sunbird. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Bar-throated Apalis. Photo by Shane McPherson.

White-starred Robin. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Beautiful Proteas. Photo by Shane McPherson.

A second trip to the ringing site, specifically with the Plettenberg BirdLife club was rained out but the Brown clan plus Shane and myself went ringing on the Sunday and had a most pleasant time! Having extra people is wonderful; there are various people that are in training for their licenses, and sharing the purely awesome experience of seeing such beautiful birds up close with a variety of birders and non-birders really uplifts the heart. That said, to have a cruisey, relaxed morning with a select group of people is also so special. We had a stunning time, catching birds, talking, laughing and eating (snacks are important!). Again we had a good catch of birds, including the much anticipated Victorin’s Warbler and Cape Siskin, a Yellow-throated Woodland Warbler and an Olive Bushshrike. And now the question remains, what birds will we catch on the next ringing session??

A drizzley morning that turned into a beautiful day! Photo by Shane McPherson.

Olive Bushshrike. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Victorin's Warbler. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Yellow-throated Woodland Warbler. Photo by Shane McPherson.

Radical Raptors round 2

A return trip to Radical Raptors yielded a lifer for me, a Black-chested Snake Eagle. Dennis had been rehabilitating this bird, which was almost ready for release, and asked Mark to come and ring it. Mark was kind enough to share the love and so one morning Mark, Cindy, Shane and I headed to Radical Raptors to ring the bird. Shane had the honour of ringing the juvenile bird as Mark has already ringed one of this species. A relatively swift and simple ringing and series of measurements, albeit with some blood drawn – bird 1 human 0, and the deed was done. Mark and Cindy headed off to work and Shane and I spent some time looking at the birds and chatting to Dennis. A special treat was to see BJ, the Cape Vulture, having his breakfast. Since being in captivity, and specifically being fed by Dennis, he has developed a tendency to beg, like a little baby bird! It is a most curious thing to see this big bird tuck his long neck back into his body, spread his wings and flutter them around while making croaking noises. And how he runs, a skipping hop which entertained me no end! A ringing job well done was rewarded with coffee and a chocolate brownie at the local café next to radical raptors, ah yeah!