For most of us (well, for me anyway), Little Auks are a very infrequent sighting, either as a stream of tiny black and white whirring dots over the stormy seas off Flamborough Head, struggling north again after being blown south by a winter storm or else a cute (but probably doomed) bird on a random duck pond or coastal ditch...
So it was a pretty impressive experience to find myself sat half way up a scree slope, amongst the rocks and boulders of a Little Auk colony. Pretty unconcerned about our presence (birds were sat on the rocks next to us), their main concern was the occasional passing Glaucous Gull. On an island with no raptors, these brutes are the top aerial predator and more than capable of catching a Little Auk in flight (I watched them do it!). With every pass of the gull, the whole colony would take off, whirring around together across the slope: interestingly, every time they did it, they flew in the same direction, following a clockwise loop over the sea...
Fugelsongen, the island where this accessible colony is located, means 'bird song', named after the cute burblings of the birds in the burrows.
No comments:
Post a Comment