First visit to the most Oystercatcher’ed island in the entire White Sea

10th June early morning we are there - at Devichya Luda island.



The tide is high and still going up, so all the birds with ID-colour rings are around the areas that are already “former breeding”. Within the first hour we find the tracks of a large fox (likely solitary male) on the sand at higher parts of intertidal area. Means this year Oystercatchers again flew to here for nothing – as we find out during the day later absolutely all their nests are already predated. On entire 2 by 0.5 km island that usually holds ca. 70-80 Eider nests, at least 30 Oystercacher nests, about a dozen Turnstone nests, a colony of 30+ pairs of Common Gulls, 7 to 10 Herring Gulls nests and a few other less numerous birds – there are now onle two nests of Arctic Terns, who are good defenders, and a single nest of Common Gulls that survives so far only because it is placed high up on a large boulder in the intertidal zone.

Nevertheless we make absolute success in finding ID-coloured birds. The major ringing effort here was taken in 2000 and in 2002 by Lena the only Oystercatcher ringer, and since then only the fledglings of local pairs were ringed. Also with individually distinguishable colour rings. Short update so far: number 09, 08 and 12 (now x2) blue are there – ringed in 2000 and still coming each year in spite of the fact that the last three years at least were unsuccessful. On the picture – 08 and (supposedly 12) x2 blue-ringed are together scaring away unmarked strangers.



Untill now 08 was paired with unringed bird, so was the 12th – but without the nest I cannot guess if they are indeed together now, or it it is only for the guarding of the area.



Most valuable are the ID-marked Oystercatchers that were ringed as grown up chicks. Poor quality of Polish (Ecotone) colour rings make it much more difficult to read. While the former juveniles ringed with Canadian rings (Protouch if I remember well) have their orange-black rings in a very good condition, all the Polish rings – red with white letters when initially – lost the red top layer and can be read only in the good sunshine when the letter/digits pressed into plastic can still be seen well.
We are still most hapy to find two of those at least (we saw more but count only those that are 100% read) – A06 orange and A33 “former red”. They are both born here on the adjacent island of Kurichek in 2004, and now here in the “club” on Devichya Luda.
In fact all individually marked Oystercatchers we saw stay in the sites they were ringed in 2000 and 2002 – in spite of the fact that breeding effort is already unsuccessul.



Additional nice finding – bird “C” (assumed LC but flew away before fully read - this is the right bird on the photo above) – that is the one ringed in winter of 2003 on the Dutch Schiermonnikoog! Waders prove connections.

First update from the Oystercatcher islands

On the night of 6-7th June we finally took the train from Moscow to Kandalaksha, and on the 8th arrived to this town in the NW corner of the Kandalaksha Bay, the White Sea. The islands here are not only protected as part of the Kandalaksha State Nature Reserve, but are also included in one of the first Russian designated Ramsar sites “The Kandalaksha Bay”.
On the picture you can see the islands at half-tide: the islands closer up are not strictly protected but are included in so called “tourist zone”, kind of the buffer areas for the nature reserve itself. Farther away the group of islands is where we work and live – there is a group of wardens and research staff houses on the larger island with the hill (Ryashkov), and the Oystercatchers are mainly breeding on the islands around and more to the south (left of Ryashkov). This is actually the “best Oystercatcher area” for not only entire Kandalaksha Bay, but for the whole White Sea.

On the 9th June we are transported to the main island – met there by the first A41-yellow Oystercatcher that was individually ringed last year and now has its nest at almost the same spot as last year in front of the houses of research staff, just 3 meters distance.

Obviously the viccinity of people is a safer place – elsewhere on the island the nests are predated by Red Fox and by corvids (Raven and Hooded Crow). Even the nest on unringed pair on the roof of the research staff house (so called White House) did not survive this year – predated before we arrived, and likely by a Raven. Still the breeding of previous 5 years on the roof gave its results – later on 9th June we found one of the offsprings of the “roof pair” – ringed in July 2007 as a chick and re-sighted on the same island this year for the first time ever (A35 formerly red ring, now almost completely worn off and hard to read).


Stories of 10th till today will follow – hopefully GPRS connection just from the island still permits to upload what we want.