We have had to change the date of the following presentation to Thursday 17th August. Still the same time, just a different date because Dr Swinnerton’s flight plans have had to change. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you wish to attend please can you email elizabeth.corry@durrell.org to reserve a space as seating is limited.
Puffins, petrels and pests – saving seabirds across the Atlantic
An evening presentation by Dr Kirsty Swinnerton
Durrell Academy 17th August at 19.00
Kirsty will talk about seabird recovery work in the Caribbean (British Virgin Islands, Antigua and others), her own work in Puerto Rico and show similar work undertaken in the UK (Isles of Scilly, Hebrides etc) and how seabird recovery programmes might work in Jersey. She will show how the problems (pests) and recovery actions (pest management, social attraction, nest-boxes) are the same in the different regions for different seabirds and how we can exchange ideas and lessons learned across species, organisations and regions. She will also illustrate how some of the same species use both regions (e.g. Manx shearwater, Arctic tern) – and, therefore, require management actions in both regions to benefit the global population.
Please come along. Durrell’s Academy is across the Zoo’s car park Google maps
In what has become a tradition, each year at around this time Birds On The Edge can unveil the updated list of Channel Islands birds. With kind support from our friends in the very active birding communities in Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Jersey the list, updated to the end of 2016, can be downloaded 
What has changed since the last list (to the end of 2015)? Well, that is very obvious to anyone looking closely at the species records and stems from the launch last year of the 
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We worry about our puffins. We worry a lot and not without good cause. Our puffins have probably been in trouble since humans and their hangers on, the rats, dogs, cats and ferrets that follow them, first turned up in Jersey. Or walked along the peninsula presumably. And it’s not like the puffins could have been totally casual in their choices of nest sites before arrival of humans – wolves, foxes, stoats and weasels didn’t need us to show them where the seabirds were. Picking places to breed where wolves can’t get to is probably a lot easier than choosing rat-free ones. It’s a surprise that the burrow-nesting puffin even made it this far – nowhere else will they nest where rats are even vaguely close by.
And what of the threats, do we know more about these? We know that our birds are unlikely to access somewhere to burrow thanks to the attentions of unwanted mammals. But how bad is this and how many of the pesky mammals are there on the cliff tops? Invasive mammals expert Kirsty Swinnerton is planning to find out and think up ways perhaps of getting rid of them. Or at least keeping them safely away from the birds. Local expert, and chough monitor, Keith Pyman has also wondered whether our fulmars, which colonised Jersey in the 1970s, might not be blame-free too. At least in not helping the precarious position of our puffins.
Fulmars are never normally any threat to nesting puffins but these petrels, who can spit some pretty foul stomach contents at anyone annoying them, probably don’t normally get that close to burrowing puffins. However, here in Jersey, fulmars nest on the ledges and mouths of cracks and crevices – do they block the puffins’ nests? Puffins find it hard enough to approach their Jersey homes anyway (puffins in big grassy colonies simply throw themselves into the ground and run to the burrow) those using small rock crevices find the precision approach difficult without the threat of the spitting fulmar. Keith has noted fulmars in the places where in years past he saw puffins disappearing underground.
The UK Government has released a 
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Always check before you strim. there might be hedgehogs or other wildlife nesting where you are working.
