Join the National Trust for Jersey’s Lands Team this coming Sunday (3rd October) to help control the spread of the invasive non-native species purple dewplant along the coastal strip of St Ouen’s Bay.
Native to Southern Africa, this succulent was introduced to Jersey as an ornamental plant, where it has sadly escaped out into the wild. A comprehensive introduction/demonstration will be provided at the start of the task, but essentially this task will entail carefully removing purple dewplant by hand.
If you have any questions, or if you wish to be added to the Jersey Conservation Volunteers email list, please contact either Julia Clively (tel: 441600; j.clively@gov.je) or Jon Parkes (tel: 483193; jon.parkes@nationaltrust.je).
The site We will meet in the car park opposite the National Trust for Jersey Wetland Centre (Sands) 10:15 for a 10:30 start. We will be finished work by 12.30 for well-earned refreshments.
Jersey phone directory Map 6, F12 and Google Mapshere
Parking There is parking close by, opposite the National Trust for Jersey Wetland Centre (Sands).
Tools needed Equipment will be provided but if you have a pair of gardening gloves and a gardening tub/bucket it would be helpful if you could bring them along with you.
Clothing needed Please dress for the weather. We can supply a pair of gardening gloves if you don’t have them.
Children All are welcome although we do ask that volunteers under 16 years of age are accompanied by an adult.
Refreshments
After work we will sample Kim’s latest batch of delicious cakes, washed down with a well-earned cup of tea or coffee.
We very much look forward to seeing you on the day.
We are delighted to be back! Join us this Sunday at Devon Gardens, St Martin, to improve habitat for wall lizards
Task Great news! The wall lizard population at Devon Gardens is on the increase thanks to JCV’s previous hard work but there is still more we can do to remove areas of dense ivy and agapanthus threatening their habitat.
If you have any questions, or if you wish to be added to the Jersey Conservation Volunteers email list, please contact either Julia Clively (tel: 441600; j.clively@gov.je) or Jon Parkes (tel: 483193; jon.parkes@nationaltrust.je).
The site Meet at the bottom of the gardens, ready for a 10.30 start. We will be finished work by 12.30 for well-earned refreshments.
Jersey phone directory Map 11, LL15 and Google Maps here Please meet at the car park at 10am to allow us to walk over to the site and start work for 10.30am. We will finish for 1pm.
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
Tools needed Tools will be provided but if you have a pair of secateurs, pruning saws or loppers bring them as they will be useful.
Clothing needed Please dress for the weather. We can supply a pair of gardening gloves if you don’t have them.
Children All are welcome 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 café to treat you all when work finishes at about 12.30.
Just in case their calls were not loud enough. Photo by Liz Corry.
By Liz Corry
Breeding season roundup
Don’t let the sound of a begging youngster fool you. The 2021 chicks are now fully independent. They just like to try their hand (or wing) once in a while with their parents.
Four youngsters have survived. This is a disappointing number although four is better than none. Thankfully, each from a different family which helps a little to spread the genetics around. Speaking of which, their DNA sexing results came in at the start of August. We have one male and three females. They all have names now too:
Rocky, breaking gender conformity with his bright pink leg ring, is the offspring of Dusty and Chickay.
Rémi, as reported last month, is wild-hatched Minty and Rey‘s first chick. She might be a St Ouen parishioner, but certainly isn’t seen as an outsider by the St John residents.
Wally Jnr. shares a lot of characteristics with her mother Wally when she was a fledgling at the aviary. There may have been a Kevin Jnr. but we never managed to sample the second chick before it perished.
Monvie is Bo and Flieur‘s girl who sports a mauve over yellow ring. Her name is taken from the Jèrriais greeting Man vyi meaning my old mate/friend (if addressing a woman it is Ma vielle). Its pronounced a little like you are saying ‘mauvey’ which helps to remember her leg ring colour. Learn more about the language at L’Office du Jèrriais.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the body of the missing fifth chick was found by Ronez Quarry staff on the 16th. We ringed it on 30th June so we knew it was Dusty’s and now know it was male. Judging from the state of the body he had died when we first reported it absent from the feed.
Two breeding pairs at Sorel resting in the rocky shade. Photo by Liz Corry.
Not all of the breeding pairs survived the season. We lost a male resulting in a ‘divorce’ of another pair and the re-joining of old flames. It also looks like we have lost the female who roosted and tried building a nest in Trinity. She has not been seen anywhere since early summer.
All being well, we will have two new pairings attempt to nest in 2022 bringing it to eleven pairs. The same as in 2021 despite our losses.
West is best
View of Grosnez with the other Channel Islands on the horizon. Photo by Liz Corry.
The choughs still preferred to hang out on the north west coast in August. Who could blame them with the views.
Cliffs from Grosnez to Plémont are frequently visited by choughs. Photo by Liz Corry.
Not to mention the ‘playground’ that is Les Landes with the racecourse, stables, paddocks, rooftops, and scattered WW2 German-made structures.
As long as they keep out of the way of the occasional model aircraft and, more permanent, resident peregrines!
This peregrine at Grosnez might be more familiar with choughs than I would like. Photo by Liz Corry.
Food for thought
From March to July this year we had a student placement working on the project. Riccardo rose to the challenge of re-establishing our breeding colony of mealworms for the supplemental feed.
We have never really had enough continuity and/or success to fully rely on in-house production. We buy in 1.5kg-2kg of mealworms per week from the UK to supplement the choughs’ diet. We get a discount since it comes with the bulk order for Jersey Zoo’s residents. Yet this still equates to hundreds of pounds a year.
Thanks to Riccardo’s efforts we might be making a breakthrough. After a month of breeding we have produced about 500g of mealworms. Not enough to cancel the UK order, but it should keep our costs down.
There is potential to expand the operation…providing a certain DIY store continues to stock our ‘high-tech’ housing facility aka drawers.
Mealworm breeding setup for the supplemental feed. Photo by Liz Corry.
It’s a delicate balance of temperature, humidity, and the right amount of nutrients appropriate for each of the four life stages. Fingers crossed; we can continue Riccardo’s good work now he has returned home to Italy.
Next time you see an advert for ITV’s I’m a Celebrity….just think about the effort and expense that goes into raising mealworms. And then the waste!
Last month we reported our first successful rearing of young from a wild-hatched pair. Three chicks in the Plémont nest followed by the subsequent fledging of two.
Then, like a high street in lockdown, it went eerily quiet.
There was no sign of the third chick out and about. The Plémont cliffs are not very forgiving at high tide for a young bouldering chough. Easy to imagine it not surviving. Yet also hard to determine since we weren’t seeing any members of the Plémont family.
When Minty and Rey, the parents, eventually appeared at the feed they showed no interest in any of the juveniles. Observations were further hampered by the lack of choughs at the feed. We had to put in the extra mileage, literally, to travel in search of choughs or wait until the evening when they start heading home to roost.
A roost check at Plémont provided no answers just a stunning sunset.
The only info we had was from a member of the public who had photographed Minty and Rey with one unringed juvenile at the Pinnacle on the northwest coast. This was taken in June before we had managed to ring any of this year’s young.
The first Jersey juvenile from wild-hatched choughs. Photo by Anthony Morin.
Four weeks of not knowing then suddenly we had our answer. Reviews of camera trap photos set at the aviary showed Minty passing food to a chick. A chick we had ringed on 14th July and had seen at the feed every day since! Until that last week in July we had never witnessed Minty or Rey show any interest in the youngster.
Maybe that is their parenting style? The young chough is fairly robust, gets on with things, is confident around the aviary and within the flock. They raised her well.
We have named her Rémi which means ‘the first ones’ in Gaulish. Rather apt for the first true Jersey chough resulting from the reintroduction.
Family hierarchy: Rey. Minty, and Rémi. Photo by Liz Corry.
Five ‘gold’ rings
With much effort, we continued to try and trap unringed juveniles in the aviary. As already mentioned, the birds were not hanging around Sorel as much as in previous years. Leftover supplemental food and their preference of sites such as Grosnez, Les Landes, and L’Étacq implied they had resources elsewhere.
When choughs were present at the aviary they were, and still are, not as confident about going inside. No doubt for multiple reasons although strong influences will be the peregrines hunting above the aviary field and the overgrown vegetation potentially harbouring threats.
We switched tactics to try catching later in the day, around 7pm, by which point choughs roosting at Sorel or Ronez would be foraging closer to home. This worked on two occasions allowing us to ring, measure, and sample two juveniles.
By the close of July there were no more unringed choughs to be found. In total we had ringed five chicks all with a yellow ring to represent 2021 and a second unique colour. Sadly, that meant some youngsters had perished.
The yellow ring represents 2021, the bird’s year of hatch. Photo by Liz Corry.
2021 Breeding Season summary
Of the ten nests we knew about, only 50% survived to fledge a chick or more. We accounted for twelve fledged chicks yet only four still alive.
There is a slim chance a fifth chick, ringed pale blue over yellow, is simply playing an unintentional game of hide and seek with us. Seven adults are consistently absent at the afternoon feed. A few of those have been spotted along the coastline from Grosnez to Le Pulec. Is the missing chick with them? A task for August will be monitoring this northwest corner and determine the whereabouts of the pairs.
Wally Jnr. keeping close to her parents at Sorel. Photo by Liz Corry.
There was an eleventh pairing in spring who were busy collecting nesting material in Trinity. As first timers we did not hold out much hope. It appears they did not even make it to the egg laying stage. No nest was found. Lots of false hope through seeing them steal twigs from pigeon nests. No actual Trinity chough nest.
This may or may not be related to the disappearance of the female. Then this month, the male was seen with a different female over in… guess where…Grosnez.
Tracking down choughs at Grosnez. Photo by Liz Corry.
Pinel was starting to worry us until we found him at Grosnez. Photo by Liz Corry.
Green fingers
We are carrying out several ‘gardening’ tasks around the aviary to create a less imposing surrounding for choughs, open up some foraging opportunities for them, and allow us to see when operating the hatches from the adjacent field. It should also mean less cover for feral ferrets to hide in and less attractive areas for rats.
Where are the sheep when you need them?! Photo by Liz Corry.
This meant a lot of grass strimming and removal of bracken. Hedgehogs, slow worms, and green lizards inhabit the embankment, so care is required. I also discovered a bumblebee nest and several ant nests; the latter a favourite of wild choughs.
Slow worm and an ant nest uncovered at Sorel. Photo by Liz Corry.
In amongst the bracken there are shrubs the National Trust planted about ten years ago. Each year we try and help these out by removing the vegetation suppressing them like the delightfully named sticky willy. I’ve left the aromatic wormwood…how do we feel about a Birds On The Edge branded absinthe? We could raise a glass to toast the wild Jersey choughs!
Wormwood Artemisia absinthium, is one of many herbaceous plants found at Sorel. Photo by Liz Corry.
Sunday 3rd October 2021 –– St Ouen’s Bay, St Ouen 10:15-12.30
