Please note that November’s task is a week earlier than normal to avoid clashing with Remembrance Sunday.
The details Join the National Trust for Jersey’s rangers at Grouville Marsh (Les Maltieres) for a morning of reedbed management and an opportunity to take a close look at the Trust’s recent wetland restoration project.
If you have any questions, or if you wish to be added to the Jersey Conservation Volunteers email list, please contact either Julia Meldrum (tel: 441600; j.meldrum@gov.je) or Jon Parkes (tel: 483193; jon.parkes@nationaltrust.je).
The site Meet at Long Beach carpark on Gorey coast road.
Jersey Phone Book map 11, square KK16. Google maps here. It’s a short walk over the road and through the back of the reedbed.
Parking There is parking at Long Beach carpark.
The task This task will involve cutting, clearing and burning reeds as well as some willow coppicing. Each year the Trust endeavours to cut and clear a section of the reedbed. This encourages greater floral diversity and creates a differing age structure within the reedbed. Removing or burning the cut reeds helps prevent the build-up of dead plant matter which can lead to the reedbed drying out. We will also be cutting some willow in order to prevent scrub encroachment.
Meet at 10.20 promptly for a 10.30 start. We will be finished work by 12.30 for well-earned refreshments.
Tools needed All tools will be provided.
Clothing needed Please dress for the weather, we go ahead whatever Nature throws at us. We can supply a pair of gardening gloves if you don’t have them.
Children All are welcome, young or old although we do ask that volunteers under 16 years of age are accompanied by an adult.
Refreshments The famous Kim’s Kafe will open to provide refreshments when work finishes at about 12.30.
With the breeding season behind them for another year the choughs decided it was time for some well-earned R&R. In the video below it is obvious to pick out the pairs who, after months of nest attendance and chick feeding, can now focus on themselves.
Handy from the observers point of view as confirmation of old and new pairings was achievable. Pyrrho, for example, had been involved with a young male (and his sister!) although two seasons of nest-building had got her nowhere. Now she is preening and foraging with Duke. Lets hope she will have more success next year.
Pyrrho evidently has a new ‘man’ in her life -Duke. Photo by Liz Corry.
Having more time on their hands allows them to explore the Island. With the run of good weather making winter still feel like a distant memory, the choughs have been visiting their favourite spots as well as discovering some new ones. Well at least new to our knowledge.
Les Landes is their go to for guaranteed sun, sea, and soil invertebrates. A bounty of leatherjackets and dung beetles has meant that half the group have not bothered to return to Sorel for supplemental feed. We may even have a new roost site or two on the north-west coast.
Crows and choughs foraging together on the sidelines. Photo by Liz Corry.
Les Landes Racecourse gets 5 stars from the choughs on Trip Advisor. Photo by Liz Corry.
A record number of 31 choughs were spotted this month at Les Landes (please let us know if you think you have seen more). On the ground they are difficult to count when mixed in with crows. Once in the air they can reach heights the crows can’t, or at least can’t be bothered to. There are not many places in the British Isles where you can see 31 choughs circling on the thermals.
Choughs rising high on the thermals above Les Landes. Trust the red arrow or enlarge the photo and look for black dots. Photo by Liz Corry.
Two were at Petit Plémont at the same time as the Les Landes group leaving 13 unaccounted for. Confirmation of all 46 choughs alive and well has not been possible this month. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It marks a turning point in the project. The birds are finding new areas to forage, possibly new territories. Supplemental food is, at present time, not essential for every individual. The crucial thing is that it is there waiting at Sorel in case they need it.
View of Petit Plémont headland from Grosnez. Photo by Liz Corry.
Improving supplemental feeding methods
The choughs have been trying out different designs of food-hoppers over the past month. Up until now we have used either traditional ceramic dishes or guttering (yes guttering) to hold the supplemental feed. Whilst the latter was an improvement, in terms of reducing competition between the choughs, it still had drawbacks.
A new design is needed to address the ‘3 R’s of Sorel’: rain, rodents, and ruddy magpies. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against magpies per se. The problem is that they need to understand the concept of sharing equally.
Taking advantage of a choughs’ slender bill to design a magpie proof feeder. Photo by Liz Corry.
We can take advantage of the choughs’ slender bill to get around the magpie problem.
Holes of varying sizes were drilled into boxes filled with pellet and mealworms then filmed to see which were used by the choughs.
The design also needs to account for the length of the bill. Optimal sward height for foraging choughs is 5cm. The feeders need to be slightly less than this.
Understandably the larger holes are favoured as they allow quick easy access. They can use the smaller holes evident by the empty boxes the next day. The magpies can’t. Images of perplexed magpies were caught on camera.
Camera trap images have shown the magpie-proof designs working so far. Photo taken on Apeman camera trap.
To date we have no images or videos of rodents trying their luck. If they do have a go there are simple solutions to stop them.
Placing feeders off the ground using materials they cannot grip prevents rodents from climbing onto the boxes. Plumbing pipes come in handy for that sort of thing…and gives a shopper in a DIY store a whole new perspective on things.
Prototype chough feeder raised off the ground to stop rodent access. Photo by Liz Corry.
A timed-release hopper would be advantageous from a staffing point of view; it wouldn’t require someone going up every day of the year.
An automated pet feeder was a hit with the choughs…and magpies! Photo by Liz Corry.
The choughs took to a model of cat feeder straight away. Camera trap footage shows them waiting around for the lids to open. It also shows them going back at dawn to check in case it magically refilled overnight.
A combination of the above designs would be most efficient. Especially one that could cope with the coastal weather. Oh and barn owls….
Inter-Island Environment Meeting
The Inter-Island Environment Meeting (IIEM) was held in Jersey this year. The two-day event took place at Crabbé on the 20th and 21st with optional field trips around the north coast.
A field trip to Sorel on the Thursday afternoon allowed the delegates to see first-hand the work undertaken by Birds On The Edge. Annoyingly most of the choughs were having far too much fun over at Les Landes.
This year’s meeting theme was partnerships and their importance in the success (or failure) of conservation work. A poster was presented showing how stakeholders, such as Ronez Quarry, have played a role in the chough reintroduction.
All the presentations demonstrated just how well effective partnerships can benefit conservation work both on land and sea. With talks about turning the tide on plastic waste, monitoring human disturbance at the Écréhous, and how Guernsey’s gardens are providing a lifeline for pollinators.
There was even a talk on Montserrat by the UK Overseas Territories As someone who has lived and worked in Montserrat it was a nice surprise. It was also nice to see some familiar faces in the video shown by Alderney Wildlife Trust highlighting the benefits of a good volunteer programme. Two of those volunteers were past chough project students!
Poster presentation by Alderney Wildlife Trust. Photo by Liz Corry.
Thank you for all those who suggested names for this year’s chicks. Some suggestions have already been used, sadly on birds no longer with us. We have gone with Bumble and Bee for one brother and sister clutch. Nothing to do with a secret love of Transformer toys,rather their black and yellow leg rings. We also liked the suggestion giving recognition to Jersey’s Lily Langtry and have gone with Lily and Lotte (her middle name was Charlotte) for the two unnamed sisters.
Public awareness is essential if a conservation project is to succeed, particularly with species reintroductions. There was initial concern from the public when the idea of reintroducing choughs to Jersey was mentioned. Crows and magpies, close relatives of choughs, are considered pests by a lot of Islanders and can be controlled under Jersey law in order to protect agricultural produce. Choughs are highly specialised feeders only eating insects you tend to find in soil or animal dung.
A chough eating a dung beetle in Jersey. Photo by Liz Corry.
Public understanding and acceptance of choughs was, therefore, needed to ensure success. In addition, support for the choughs should lead to support for the wider Birds On The Edge project. In turn attracting funding and resources such as public volunteers.
It has now been five years since the first choughs were released into Jersey. We wanted to find out if the Jersey public were aware and what they thought of the species. Two studies were conducted this summer by visiting graduate students; one focused on children, the other on adults.
I focused on children as they are a key demographic group at Jersey Zoo. By engaging children in conservation education, they can be inspired to make well informed decisions affecting sustainability in the future, and in this case help to protect the red-billed choughs in Jersey.
To conduct the study, I visited eleven of Jersey’s primary schools with a questionnaire for the children to complete before and after an educational presentation on the choughs and Birds On The Edge. Being a Nottinghamshire lass, navigating the back roads of Jersey on a rusty borrowed bike was a challenge in itself! But after a lot of wrong turns and frantic pedalling up and down hills, I manged to interview 16 teachers and 330 children across the Island. Teachers were generally very enthusiastic about including their classes in the study and the children seemed excited to learn about a new mysterious animal.
Reintroduced choughs and sheep in Jersey have been working together to improve the Island’s biodiversity. Photo by Liz Corry.
The results showed that only a very small percentage of the children interviewed were aware of the red-billed choughs in Jersey. A proportion of the children guessed that it was a bird, but hardly any knew that choughs were living on the same island as them. In fact, I had a lot of children reading their questionnaire and asking me “what is a cough?” accompanied by some fantastic drawings of what the children believed the choughs to look like including sloths, hedgehogs, monkeys and even a unicorn! Likewise, most teachers confessed that they did not know about the project.
After the educational presentation, the results showed a huge increase in knowledge and understanding both of the choughs as a species and its history in Jersey. In their post-taught questionnaires, many children mentioned how the choughs became locally extinct, the habitat and resource needs of the choughs and what Birds On The Edge is doing to help. In addition, after the visits, there was some evidence of children sharing their new found knowledge of the red-billed choughs with other parties. This included two boys attending the chough keeper talk at Jersey Zoo, given that day by the Head of Birds, and practically presenting it for him!
There were other cases of children telling their parents and one child even identifying a chough on a family walk in St John! This is very encouraging news, demonstrating how children can act as a catalyst for change by sharing their knowledge to influence their friends’ and family’s actions which affect conservation matters and help protect the choughs.
Moving forward, it would be fantastic to do more in-school workshops. Only a small percentage of the children in Jersey took part in the study but it showed how children can be massive assets for increasing awareness. It would also be great for teachers to include the choughs in more of their own lessons; a fantastic example of animals and their habitats which is a part of the Year’s 3, 4, 5 and 6 science curriculums. However, teachers had concerns about the time available to them to teach their classes about the choughs (particularly Year 6 teachers who face the pressure of SATs). To overcome this, we could provide schools with more resources, for instance red-billed chough reading comprehension resources: infiltrating classes without directly teaching about choughs whilst remaining focussed on the children’s upcoming exams.
As part of my workshops the children created posters to inform the public of Jersey all about the red-billed chough population, all completed posters were entered into a competition and were judged by a member of the Jersey Zoo education team. Grouville Primary School had the winning poster and the class had the opportunity to visit the choughs at Sorel.
The winning poster designed by a group of children at Grouville Primary School. Photo by Catherine Firth.
All entries were fantastic and can be seen here. A big thank you to all the children who took part and the teachers who sent in all the entries! Everyone at the Zoo particularly enjoyed this poster from Grouville:
Grouville children are clearly cut out for careers in conservation! Photo by Catherine Firth.
If only conservation were that easy!
Catherine Firth carried out this research for her MSc in Endangered Species Recovery and Conservation at Nottingham Trent University. She is currently working as a Conservation Knowledge intern at Jersey Zoo.
At the Fourth International Workshop on the Conservation of the Red-billed Chough held in October 2013 in Vila Real (Portugal), it was unanimously expressed that the next workshop should take place in Segovia, Spain. Segovia is not only beautiful but it is also full of choughs amongst the famous buildings. What better place?
This is the first call of the Workshop. In the near future there will be complete information on aspects of the event including the precise location of the meeting, communications by road, bus, train and plane, places of accommodation, registration fees and scope of services offered. The organisers will also answer questions that the participants may generate.
This Workshop is open to all interested people, professionals and those from public and private institutions alike who are keen on choughs, both red-billed and Alpine (yellow-billed) choughs.
Communications from any part of the world are welcome covering different aspects related to choughs, including:
Research and monitoring
Conservation
Cultural: literature, history, music and exhibitions of painting, photography, crafts.
Education and dissemination
Protection and legislation.
The organisers have developed two committees to oversee the event structure: an organizing committee from Foro GeoBiosfera and a scientific committee composed of researchers.
Please contact the Organization of the Congress for all information at comunicación@forogeobiosfera.org
We hope that this event will be an outstanding success in the scientific and conservation worlds of these unique bird species.
The details Devon Gardens is a public garden in Gorey that is home to several important Jersey species. The walls provide great habitat for wall lizards and wild strawberry but are becoming overgrown with vegetation, threatening the habitat so we will be working to remove areas of dense ivy.
If you have any questions, or if you wish to be added to the Jersey Conservation Volunteers email list, please contact either Julia Meldrum (tel: 441600; j.meldrum@gov.je) or Jon Parkes (tel: 483193; jon.parkes@nationaltrust.je).
The site We will meet at the bottom of the gardens. Jersey Phone Book map Map 11, LL15 Google maps here
Parking There is on-road parking as well as several public car parks nearby and parking on the pier.
Note: You may need a disc or scratch cards depending on where you park.
The task Improving habitat for wall lizards and wild strawberry.
Meet at 10.20 promptly for a 10.30 start. We will be finished work by 12.30 for well-earned refreshments.
Tools needed Tools will be provided but if you have a pair of secateurs bring them as they will be useful.
Clothing needed Please dress for the weather, we go ahead whatever Nature throws at us. We can supply a pair of gardening gloves if you don’t have them.
Children All are welcome, young or old although we do ask that volunteers under 16 years of age are accompanied by an adult.
Refreshments Kim will be setting up her pop up cafe to treat you all when work finishes at about 12.30.
By Liz Corry
There was even a talk on Montserrat by the UK Overseas Territories As someone who has lived and worked in Montserrat it was a nice surprise. It was also nice to see some familiar faces in the video shown by Alderney Wildlife Trust highlighting the benefits of a good volunteer programme. Two of those volunteers were past chough project students!
By Catherine Firth
Catherine Firth carried out this research for her MSc in Endangered Species Recovery and Conservation at Nottingham Trent University. She is currently working as a Conservation Knowledge intern at Jersey Zoo.
At the 
Sunday 14th October 2018 – Devon Gardens, St Martin – 10:30-13.00
